Never mind the B*****, here's the other financial stuff

0:03Welcome to This Is Money podcast sponsored by Charles Stanley Direct. I'm Georgie Frost and joining me and Simon Lambert today is Lee Boyce. And coming up, a hold for interest rates this week, but oh, was it close, indicating a Christmas cut could be on the way. Lenders certainly think so, as we're seeing something of a mortgage war erupt between major lenders as households see the cheapest deals since 2022. We look at where house prices are expected to go up the most over the next five years, how much households are saving as uncertainty reigns supreme. Beware of these sneaky new speed cameras and the real versus fake grass turf war that's reportedly dividing Britain.

0:43We reveal what an artificial lawn does to your house price. Don't forget to get up to date with all the latest breaking money news. Just go to thisismoney.co.uk or download the app. But first, a message from our sponsors. Do you love talking about money as much as you do listening to it? Then you'll love this. Charles Stanley Direct's financial coaching service gives you a real human, yes, an actual expert to help you make sense of your finances. No jargon, no pressure, just clear answers to your money questions. Book your free 15-minute call today at charles-stanley.co.uk forward slash financial coaching.

1:18Go on, your future self will thank you. Remember, investment involves risk. Now, back to the show. But first, a message from our Simon.

1:29Simon Lambert: Hello, listeners. It's me. And I have a message for you. I know that obviously our podcasts have been a bit budget heavy recently. So we have decided to do something today. We are obviously not going to be able to do the entire podcast without mentioning the budget because we're talking about things like interest rates and stuff like that. But we are going budget light. so we are allowed five mentions of the budget just five we will count them down and after the fifth one nobody is allowed to mention the budget again this is your public service announcement over and out can we sort of euphemistically refer to it or does that also count just wanted to get the rules straight here simon no we're not allowed to euphemistically refer to it.

2:19Simon Lambert: It's not one of those panel games where you say, and in the financial statement, the Rachel Rees will make on November the 26th. This is going to be a cross between just a minute. I'm sorry, I haven't got a clue, but much lower quality than either of those two things and Mallet's Mallet. All right, right. Now those are the rules. Let's get into the show. Despite the last minute hike from the likes of Goldman Sachs, we got the result that most of us had been expecting from the Bank of England. Interest rates were held this week at 4%. But ooh, ooh, was it tight. Five members, Lee, of the MPC voted for a hold.

2:53Four for a 25 basis point cut to 3.75%. Do you know what? I've been sitting here thinking about what were some sort of classic nil-nil draws or results where the favourite won out, but only eventually. And then I just thought, that'll take me down a little rabbit hole. We don't need to go down. But Lee?

3:10Georgie Frost: It's in the football result thing, isn't it? 4554 or something like that it was a 5-4 thriller it was it was on a knife edge um it was very close there was rumors ahead that it was a could have been a cut from a sneaky little cut uh we've got another meeting uh on the 18th of december so there could be a christmas cut um i think markets are pricing it and that's sort of for a half chance that that could happen i think a lot of eyes will be on the next inflation reading currently at 3.8 percent if that's remains stubborn you know it's difficult to sort of see a way of where there isn't a rate cut but yeah very close decision much closer than what we've had in recent times it's obviously been at four percent for a little while i think the pressure will be on to basically start getting base rate down a little bit but it's going to all hinge on this inflation figure it's an interesting one though lee isn't it because they did say if you take a look at the the minutes that they do think inflation peaked just want to hold steady a little bit but things are a bit uncertain are they not yeah well that's you the message no you can't that's talking that's talking about things in a roundabout way but we could in the economy in general there's mixed pictures all across everywhere i think at the moment i would actually say that all of us feel uncertain and individuals businesses everyone it just all feels all up in the air a little bit at the moment kind of looking forward to a new year i don't usually feel like i'm getting to that point where kind of oh let's crack on into 2026 right and see what happens next let's see if we can turn some of that uncertainty into some certainty unfortunately we've got a long way to go before we get to the new year simon what did you make of of the result you know in the simplest terms when the economy is running hot, the Bank of England increase rates when it's running cool, unemployment's rising, as we've seen in the States, for example, when growth is sluggish, people aren't spending, that's when they reduce rates.

5:12And it feels pretty chilly right now.

5:15Simon Lambert: It does feel pretty chilly right now. But some of that might be your perception rather than what's actually going on in the economy. Because the Bank Bank of England actually slightly upgraded its forecast for GDP this year from 1.2 % to 1.5%. So the Bank of England told us yesterday that it thinks growth is actually better than it previously thought it was going to be. So it thinks the economy is surprising on the upside, not the downside. That was due to a better than expected start to the year. Obviously, it does feel quite chilly right now. And it may be that the end of the year, it might be a bit of Sven year.

5:56Simon Lambert: First half good, second half not so good, as the great man would have said. But the Bank of England does expect this to slow to 1.2 % next year. GDP growth. In context, Simon, it doesn't sound very big. Yes, it's an increase, but it still sounds a bit rubbish. No, it's enough to make us the second fastest growing economy in the G7. Not the fastest, as certain people promised before they came into power, along with a number of other promises that they may or may not have fulfilled but second fastest isn't bad it means we're growing better than you know our major european peers and so on we are not growing by as much as the u.s u.s growth is a weird one though there's some very interesting number crunching that's gone on that basically highlights exactly how much of u.s growth is just down to ai data center spending um and ai infrastructure spending and it's really quite a large amount so you can only imagine if we had that going on in this country then our growth would be substantially higher with whether we want it going on in this country is of course a completely different matter because our electricity grid and and ability to generate the energy that we need at a price that is suitable for consumers and businesses is not overly impressive so power guzzling data centers are probably not the ideal thing for the uk economy but i'm going to blow the budget here right i'm using up one mention okay this is strike one there was there was talk from some quarters which i just didn't really get that the bank of england might cut ahead of what i just mentioned because it would kind of help rachel reeves out now it doesn't really help her out that much because the obr will have already done their government borrowing cross measurements that's already factored in the calculations are done and secondly why would you cut now why wouldn't you wait until next month when you know what's going to be in it and then you can assess the impact on the economy going forwards because a lot of the stuff that we do when we talk about these things is we do look backwards rachel reeves has criticized the obr for doing this for looking backwards on productivity the bank of england you know it looks at what's happened in the past but it's looking forwards so broadly speaking if you're going to be making a crucial interest rate decision and deciding whether to cut or not then ideally you want to know where you stand so you can go okay this is what we think is going to play out over the next year because it's hard enough predicting what's going to play out over the next year without second guessing what's going to happen in two and a half weeks time i won't ask you then what what happens next What I will ask you, though, Lee, is not what this decision means for our money at the moment, because let's be honest, well, not a lot.

8:44I mean, nothing's changed. I mean, we know that generally speaking, when interest rates come down, good for borrowers, bad for savers. However, what's interesting is if you take a look at mortgage rates at the moment, even though there hasn't been a cut, it looks like lenders think one is on the cards because we've seen something of a battle breakout in recent weeks, haven't we, Lee? between the big ones as well, the likes of HSBC, Barclays, NatWest, Halifax, Santander, all cut their rates recently and some more than once. So Lee, what's going on out there?

9:13Georgie Frost: Yeah, there is a bit of a mortgage war kind of bubbling away between the major lenders, which feels like the first time in quite a long time. A big part of it, George, is the way that banks price their rates is via the Sonia swap rates. And Sonia swap rates are basically the interbank lending rates. and that is based on expectations of where rates will be at a specific time in the future. So it kind of means that banks feel a little bit more confident that basically base rate is likely to come down. Currently two-year SONIA rates are about 3.5 % and five-year at 3.6%. A month ago that was 3.7 % and almost 3.8%.

9:53Georgie Frost: So there's been a bit of a lower SONIA rate going on And what that has resulted in is the bigger banks really going for it, actually. And one passed our desk this week, which was from Nationwide, 3.64%, which is reserved for the very best borrowers, essentially those with 40 % deposits, right? But it's still a sign that things are improving in terms of mortgage rates. That's the lowest available two-year fix since September 2022, which is when we had the you know what the liz trust quality quietang but it's all right if we can refer back to old budgets i don't oh yeah that's fine that's fine that's fine yeah so since that since the uh quality quietang uh liz trust mini budget the sting on the tower though with that nationwide mortgage is it does come with a chunky fee 1499 pounds so you will need to go and do your due diligence and compare around but uh nat west 3.71 to your fix bark is 3.73 and that's got an 899 pound product fee all it is is it kind of shows that mortgage rates are coming down and coming down fairly significantly i mean nationwide has reduced the rates of up to 0.25 percentage points for new and existing customers across the board so interesting moves there and as you say all of those other major lenders and hopefully it's going to be a sign of things to come for borrowers and those people that are potentially coming off long-term fixes five-year fixes that are still around that were about a percent from five years and this thing's not going to be as bad as it has been for others.

11:34Lee what should you be doing right now if you are coming off a deal?

11:37Georgie Frost: Well you definitely want to be shopping around seeing what your lender's kind of offering you quite often you can lock in ahead of time so uh if you were up for renewal say march april may time you could be looking now because some lenders let you go and get six months in advance and if anything happens in the meantime you've got that rate uh but if rates get any lower you can potentially switch over to something that's going to be lower feels like quite a good time uh at a moment georgie i would say uh given that rates are coming down at the it's a spiritly it's a spirit I think it's good news.

12:09Georgie Frost: And obviously on the flip side of that is the savings element of this. And there'll be a legion of savers out there that will be hoping the rates don't come down too much more. Because we have had a couple of years of actually good savings rates. The sting in the tail of that, though, of course, is we're at inflation of 3.8%. And it's making sure that your savings are beating inflation. And lots of people's savings aren't beating inflation because they're just parking it huge sums in big banks, offering absolute pittance where you can get plus four percent in easy access in cash rises and fixed rates elsewhere um and that will be the kind of the sting on the towel for savers but you know i think people are winding up to the bigger banks i like to think and are looking around and chasing rates and making sure that you know as long as the bank offers the bank that you're putting the money in offers a financial services compensation scheme protection of 85 £5 ,000, which is set to go up in the next couple of weeks, which I'll talk about shortly, you're golden and you should be earning a better rate.

13:10Georgie Frost: So it looks like mortgage rates are coming down fairly nicely. I don't think there's going to be much more from here. It feels like a lot of what's going to go on is priced in and savings rates are kind of holding up, if I'm being honest. You're still looking at plus 4 % for the very best buys. So it's not too bad. It's not too bad out It's not too bad. I guess one of the questions I'm actually seeing quite a lot is people who are coming off very, very soon, Simon, their fixed deals. And because everybody's talking about our cuts coming down the line and, you know, maybe there's two next year.

13:47Shall I hang on? Shall I move on to an SVR and just just sort of wait it out for the perfect time?

13:53Simon Lambert: Well, as somebody who just waved goodbye to their beautiful friend, a 1.4 % five-year fixed rate mortgage and moved on to a new rate, which is just below 4%, I can talk about this with some recent experience. Now, it all depends on your personal circumstances. The one thing I would say is that moving on to an SVR is very expensive. So our mortgage payments went up by roughly between four and 500 pounds, right? If we had gone on to the SVR, it would have been much more than that because the SVR was 6.99%. So that's a huge jump. So SVRs are very expensive. And it doesn't take many months of being sat on the standard variable rate for you to massively outweigh any savings that you're going to make from managing to achieve a mortgage rate that's cheaper over a period of time.

14:56You know, you might manage to say you sit on your hands and mortgage rates fall by a quarter of a percent.

15:03Simon Lambert: Right. So you get a rate that's 0.25 percent lower than it would be now. And you manage to do that in six months time. by the time you go through those six months paying the extra money on the standard variable rate compared to the maybe you know four percent that you could fix that now you will have outweighed the benefits of you know getting the cheaper rate so you need to factor that in secondly you also need to factor in how much money would moving to a cheaper deal getting a cheaper deal like if rates to come down by a quarter of a percent or even half a percent you know how much would that actually save you every month and that's going to depend on the size of your mortgage and it's going to depend on the length of your mortgage so in our case i've got quite a big mortgage but we are closer to the end of it than the start so actually it doesn't make as big a difference as you would think to us because more of the money that we pay every month is going towards repaying the mortgage we're well onto that downward trajectory past the halfway point i'm not going to say you can see the end in sight but it's not you know it's not a million miles away right if you're nearer to the start of your mortgage then you will find that potentially getting that lower rate makes a bigger difference but then again it's going to depend on the size of your mortgage as well because if you've got a relatively small mortgage and this will actually very much depend on where people live won't it because i live in the commuter belt of london southeast of the uk that's why i've got a big mortgage right but if you if you lived up north right you might have a relatively small mortgage and so you might find that actually the monetary amount isn't that much although that's relative to your earnings and everything like that if the monetary amount is 50 quid it's a lot easier to find 50 quid than it is to find 200 quid i would go online i would go to thisismoney.co.uk forward slash mortgage hyphen finder i would use our mortgage partner lnc's tool which will basically show you the rates that you could apply for based on your own personal circumstances and also if you want to play around with the numbers you can go to thisismoney.co.uk forward slash mortgage hyphen calculator where we've got a calculator where you can chuck the numbers in and play around to your heart's content fabulous thank you simon well While mortgage rates may be going down, house prices are continuing to march upwards, reaching a fresh record high in October.

17:29That's according to Halifax. The average price of properties rose 0.6 % to just under£300 ,000 after a 0.3 % fall in September. Meanwhile, Lee, on your website, you've got some research from Savills. They've been looking at where in the country house prices are forecast to rise the most. But firstly, why are house prices on the up except in London? And regular listeners will know I've just received a Zoopla update on my property, which has gone down by a few thousand pounds. So I was a bit surprised to see this. I mean, obviously, that's just an estimate on house prices in the area, etc. I'm not suggesting it's an absolutely accurate valuation.

18:10But yeah, that was a surprise.

18:13Georgie Frost: So take it with a huge pinch of salt, Georgie. It's only worth what someone's willing to buy. Are Zoopla buying your house off you? They're not buying their house off you, don't you? Really interesting development around our way, actually. Yesterday, it got a handwritten letter in the post. I was like, is this a scam or not? I fear towards it. Jehovah's Witness? No, no, no. I fear towards it. It's not a scam. It's actually a couple saying that they are looking to buy in the area and to give them a call if the house is still up for sale or whatnot. Because, again, regular listeners probably know that I've sold the house, but can't find anything to buy.

18:46Georgie Frost: uh which it was just quite like okay this is this is a market like people are trying to buy houses and actually we'll start with the halifax uh the halifax figures so uh highest on record they're saying two hundred ninety nine thousand eight hundred sixty two pounds i think we can call that 300 grand um that is up 1.9 percent annually so kind of goes against the kind of narrative that everything's struggling but i think london as you pointed out georgie is struggling uh compared to everywhere else and we'll talk about that in the Savills figures but why why are house prices rising that's what you asked now Amanda Brydon uh head of mortgages at Halifax says that actually people still have a strong appetite to buy and move home she said demand from buyers has held up when it coming into the autumn despite a degree of uncertainty in the market with the number of new mortgages being approved recently hitting its highest level so far this year the market has proven resilient over recent months as many buyers opt for smaller deposits and longer terms to help make the numbers work with house prices rising more slowly than incomes for almost three years now we expect the trend of gradually improving affordability to continue so i think that hits the nail on the head the reason why i've read that out is i think it's an affordability thing we've seen quite a lot of moves uh this year from uh lenders i think under a bit of pressure from the government to loosen up lending rules essentially uh smaller deposits for example and people are stretching mortgages out far more than ever before and 25 to 30 years was probably the norm a decade ago we're seeing 35 40 years people are getting onto the housing market by any ways necessary and i think for that reason price is still going up and also we're not we're still not building houses as quickly as labor wanted uh when it came into power that one and a half million figure looks way off at the moment and it's just a lack of suitable homes for certain people to buy so there's that part savills talking about taking things with a huge pinch of salt i always find it quite interesting when some of these big estate agencies predict five years five years of house price growth georgie how do you do that i mean what happens between now and 2030 and then just going yeah it's gonna do that just to point out sort of behind the scenes sort of thing here and this is no disrespect to savills and we find these sorts of things is very interesting and they do have very intelligent people looking at it but just to say there is an element of sort of PR here let's be honest I mean they've got a very good story out of this yeah I mean look these are numbers that people want to know about I think that's actually what the nub of this is is that if you are buying a house you know there's always that kind of notion that house prices double every 10 years and house prices always go up and that's not always the case as we've seen uh in the past and I think sometimes people do get a bit nervy and And, you know, they worry they're going to buy a massive asset that might depreciate in value and might religiously look at Zopla price estimations that come through on their email every month saying their house price has gone down.

21:49Georgie Frost: But in the samples of predicting the next five years, house management rise by 22.2 % on average. It varies across the country. so while one part actually two regions are set for nearly 29 growth another set for 14 so it's Yorkshire and Humber and northeast that are predicted to be the strongest at 28.8 rises each London's at the bottom of the pack 13.6 then it's the southeast at 17 and then the east of England at 19.3 i think the big reason for that is you've got to remember how much the price differences are between these regions already so you know it's kind of almost like the chasm is sort of closing somewhat and there's just more growth to be had it seems in those pockets of northern england which potentially haven't seen house price growth that other areas have seen especially in that pandemic boom but actually looking back on the savils reports here so following the 2008 crash house prices reached uh rock bottom in march 2009 before rising 17.4 over the next five years end in 2014 since then house price rises have averaged around 23.5 growth every five years based on land registry figures 32 increase recorded between 2012 and 2017 and there was a 16.5 rise between 2010 and 2015 and it's quite interesting looking at it over a five-year period we talk about investing over a five-year period don't we as a minimum investment you know should you treat property like that well it's something that you live in and it's not something that you're necessarily treating as an investment but nonetheless i think it is interesting to kind of figure that out over those kind of five-year cycles and and how it goes and look as you say intelligent people work on these sets of data georgie and it's just a barometer of the mood music as of today um and they do um kind of mention i'm going to use the second mentioned in the budget here um that any changes to property taxes in the budget could have an effect um house prices expect to finish this year just one percent higher than they started well that goes against odds of what halifax have just put out in their house price index and then rising two percent in 20 uh 26 and then it forecasts bigger growth from there so 2027 four percent 2028 five percent 2029 5.5 percent and then back to four percent in 2030 presumably thinking potentially about the election um and what that might do but we're going way too in the future i know lee oh yeah 2025 lee you cannot yeah 2030 lee it's a mugs game georgie who knows who knows and it's very dependent on your property your area and all of that kind of jazz but just as a kind of a nice easy snapshot and easy to get your head around figures you know it's interesting

24:40Simon Lambert: don't forget to factor in inflation over the last five years inflation has been 28 the house price gains all of a sudden don't look so impressive unless of obviously you flip that around and go well the good news is that over the last five years homes have theoretically got a little bit cheaper the thing is though i always think that inflation is a bad thing to measure house prices against i think you should measure uh house prices against wages right because that's the thing that most people need in order to buy a house like most houses are bought by people who are going to you know pay for them with income from their work so index it to wages and actually the picture for wages is is pretty good over the last five years compared to house prices and then you need to look at those forecasts that savills is making and savills is wonderfully precise 22.2 % over five years.

25:40Simon Lambert: You need to factor in that if inflation averages 2 % over the next five years, then you should take 10.5 % off it. Whether you think inflation really will average 2 % over the next five years is another matter. But if it averages 3%, for example, then you can take 16 % off. That's it for part one.

26:08Simon Lambert: I'm joined now by Rob Morgan of Charles Stanley Direct for our weekly investing explained feature. Rob, a question from a listener here. I have a stocks and shares ISA in which I hold just one fund, Vanguard Life Strategy 100 % Equity. How exposed am I to the US and Magnificent Seven and how could I diversify away from them a bit if I wanted to? hi simon yes so firstly to explain the fund itself vanguard life strategy 100 equity is a global equity fund which invests around the world and it's passively managed in the sense that it holds a range of vanguard tracker funds that follow different markets to populate the portfolio and people often think of it as simply a global tracker but there is actually a twist to it in that rather than weighting each global market by size it does contain some home bias towards the UK.

26:59So the UK component is about quarter of the fund, which is considerably higher than the UK's weight in major global share indices, where it's about 4%. And in recent years, that's been an impediment to performance as the US market, powered by the big artificial intelligence winners, such as NVIDIA and Alphabet, have raced ahead. But that inbuilt UK bias arguably offers was improved diversification into what is a higher dividend and cheaper market in the UK. So to answer this question specifically, the Magnificent Seven exposure in a standard global tracker fund, weighted purely by market capitalisation, is now over 25%.

27:41But in the Vanguard Life Strategy Fund, where the US weighting is about 50%, the Magnificent Seven component is about 18%, something like that. So still significant, but not quite as pronounced. So if you are worried about how the global equity market is dominated by a handful of very large US companies and essentially lopsided and not sufficiently diversified, then the Vanguard Life Strategy Funds do skew you a little bit away from that. To further diversify, you could consider some additional funds in areas less represented in the Vanguard Fund. So Asia, Europe, emerging markets, for instance, and that would spread out the drivers of performance that you have.

28:19or you could take more of a one-stop shop approach of buying a global fund that takes a different investment strategy for instance that's focused on value stocks so cheaper companies that have less hope and expectation built into them. Rob, thank you very much. Thank you. Welcome back. Lee has been looking at the figures. I mean just generally the figures that's what he does it's his job really but these are specific figures and it's all about how much we're saving because he's discovered that only him, no one else's, all your brainly, your face is like, what are you talking about? Lee's discovered that we've collectively squirred away a massive£100 billion since August 2024, a week after, incidentally, Labour came to power.

29:02A consequence, no doubt, of economic uncertainties, political uncertainties, fears over cuts to cash-isers and, of course, some better rates. yes savers are upping their game absolutely right but there is still and lee mentioned it a little bit earlier but the figure is phenomenal here 32 billion i understand sylvia morris your savings expert has has reported recently that just sitting in accounts earning one percent or less it's been a while since we've talked about these insult accounts isn't it lee oh it's sickening georgie

29:38Georgie Frost: it's sickening my blood boil it's the sort of thing that gets me out of bed in the morning i think if i could just get 0.01 of that money moved today to somewhere else we'll be doing a good job on the podcast wouldn't we um yeah i went on a on a bit of a what the what the kids would say a deep dive a deep dive georgie uh on some bank of england figures it involved me going through some spreadsheets and cursing at a calculator an old school calculator that i had on my desk and you do the fat finger and you know you have to start again you know oh no um did you hang on a minute did you really have a calculator on your desk or were you using the calculator on your phone using a calculator on the desk simon i'm not a calculator on the phone kind of guy

30:19Simon Lambert: no but remind us of what your teacher once said to you oh yeah what my maths teacher that uh once

30:25Georgie Frost: told the whole entire class that you'll never be able to fit a calculator in your pocket so you must learn maths and percentages and sums at the top of your head and then a couple wow calculators arrived on the phone of course i'm only 38 it makes me sound ancient uh but uh mobile phones were very much in their infancy when i was in secondary school and it just it does make me laugh thinking of that line that you'll never have a calculator in your pocket um given everything that is now on your phone in your pocket um find that especially finances anyway i got the old school calculator out my trusty gray calculator that lives on my desk at this is money and i do love thumping on that calculator and i've got some figures to look at and i thought let's have a look um because there was some data out last week from the bank of england suggesting that an extra 7.5 billion pounds headed into savings accounts in september and that made my ears prick up a little bit because september is often a sluggish month for saving you know it's really between the start of the cash ice a year and the end of the cash ice years like slap bang in the middle of all of that which is where people tend to scribble away the most amount of cash at the start and um very end of the cash ice season so i thought let's go and have a look let's go and see what's going on here um and what's gone on since labour going to power so i crunched the figures since august 2024 and just short of 100 billion pounds has gone into savings accounts according to the bank of england data so i thought well let's compare that to the same amount of time on the run-up to the election and the figure that i got to was 73.2 billion pounds so some 27 billion pounds difference the crucial thing about that though is that figure the savings rates that were on offer uh during that 73 billion was when savings were at their peak so that's when rates were at their peak so you think that more money would have gone in because rates were better but instead it suggests that more people are sorting away cash into savers accounts um potentially because they don't like what's going on and they're worried about keeping their money elsewhere the other thing that was in this bank of england report georgie that i thought was quite interesting that the effective interest rate paid on individuals new time deposits with banks and building societies was 3.82 percent in september up from 3.79 percent in august that does suggest that savers are up in their game because rates have been coming down ever so slightly in in the world of savings but people seem to be rate chasing harder so people do seem to be wising up but that 32 billion sitting in one percent or less yeah it is it's a sickening thing um i think what a big part of it is down to is people parking money with their bank at arm's reach from their current account they like the thought of there um and safe and easy but you know it's getting eroded massively in real time by inflation it's funny isn't it the government talking about trying to get everybody to invest and cutting cash iso limits and all those sorts of things and you think be lovely if we could just get people saving properly and by which i mean chasing around for better rates i don't it's strange isn't it i wonder if there's there is this attitude of just leave your cash is it loyalty simon what why are we happy just to leave our money sat there in these insult accounts we don't really like banks very much either so why are we giving them

33:52Simon Lambert: our money and not getting anything in return because it's easy and i think a lot of people when they think about putting money aside and saving some cash is they literally just think of it in terms of putting some money aside and they think well i'm going to need that money soon um and so they just shove it into another account it's really tempting i mean i do that sometimes you're just like i can't move it around my savings just shove it in another account and you just shove it into some crappy savings account with your bank because you can just see it with your bank in in the app or online or whatever and then it's it's done and you forget about it and all of of a sudden you've spent more months than you would care to remember earning absolutely nothing on your savings and if it's not a huge amount of money in monetary terms it's not that much you know maybe like you know for example there's lots of people out there who even if they put all of their savings into the best possible easy access rate they could find would only earn the price of a pint over the course of the year you know it's there's lots of people out there who don't have that much in savings or there's people out there who wouldn't even manage to get who've got more who've got bigger pots you know they've got a rainy day pot perhaps then they'd be lucky if they got the cost of like two meals out from their savings interest or something but if you don't do this your savings are being eaten by inflation and it is a good idea to move them to the best possible rate and it's a good idea to think about is if you're listening to this podcast right you're already financially engaged so you've cleared the first hurdle that means most people don't bother to put their savings into an account that actually pays them any interest so having done that clear the next one find yourself an easy access account i would recommend an easy access cash isa i would recommend a flexible easy access cash isa with no limits on withdrawals so the rate doesn't drop however many withdrawals you make in the year you can take money out you can put it back in in the same year without it using up more of your isa allowance so you can use it as a really great fully flexible tax-free savings pot and then you move your money into that and then when you want to take your money out you take it back out now a lot of these you know really good app-based ones now you can connect to your bank account so basically you go in there you go into your savings app you say i'd like to add some money and it basically goes off to your bank account, takes money out of your bank account, adds it in.

36:28Simon Lambert: All you need to do is your thumbprint on your phone or something like that, seamless. And when you want to take the money out, you reverse the process. It's incredibly easy and it's an absolute game changer for making sure that you don't have money sitting around in rubbish little easy access accounts. And I also think this is where these the accounts that offer ways of kind of portioning your savings around you can label them as having different pots or different names or whatever and there's lots of different apps that do this nowadays that's where it's a real winner and if there is one thing i would say to the big banks who who should really up their game on the services that they are providing to savers um and yeah i don't want to say this at the expense of you know encouraging them to eat into the smaller banks markets because the smaller banks doing a great job with some of this stuff is you should really up your game on this ability to have different pots label your payments things like that you know my banking i've got two main bank accounts right one is with first direct uh one is with starting three actually one one's with nationwide one's with starting right now the difference between like the first direct which was considered to be like the tech bank you You know, it's the online bank and Starling in terms of being able to label payments and stuff like that is astonishing.

37:51Simon Lambert: When I move money around in my first direct account, I literally have no idea what I've done with it. Like you can put a thing on the transaction, but it doesn't show up if you're paying money to yourself and things like that. And between different accounts, it's chalk and cheese. And I think in this day and age, banks should really up their game. But you know what? Don't wait for your bank to up its game. Go find a better one right now. And if you do one thing this weekend, it is take your savings out of a crappy account that's paying you an insult interest rate and move it into a better one.

38:23Simon Lambert: You can do it in like 15 minutes. And let us know if you have. We're your accountability buddies. And that's what they call it, isn't it? Lee, quickly, what's the FSCS?

38:34Georgie Frost: Yeah, so the FSCS is the protection that saviors get when money is put into banks. So each bank has a banking license and a certain amount of money,£85 ,000 at the moment, is safe in the bank in case the bank fouls. Now, there was at the start of the year a consultation that began to lift the limit from£85 ,000 to£110 ,000 per banking license because of inflation over the last five years. And that is roughly what it's likely to be at. So we asked the FSCS a couple of weeks ago whether this was still on track. to happen and whether december would see a change in this and they said yes it hasn't been given the total green light now but banks are fully aware of the changes that will be coming and for most banks the fscs said it will happen on the same day so on monday the 1st of december we should see a new higher fscs limit which should mean an extra 25 grand per bank will be safe your money will be safe in that bank if they're signed up to the fscs that is which most most big banks are but it's crucial anywhere that you park your money that is that is part of fscs lovely all right then elsewhere speed cameras everybody's favorite and they are everywhere but the most lucrative what are they you ask they are a breed a new breed that can spy on how fast you drive through traffic lights.

40:03That's according to Money Mail. Now, they did 12 months of a study. They covered 7 ,000 cameras, and the team found that this cash cow snared 24 ,311 victims, which works out at almost 70 motorists a day. Simon, that's a lot, isn't it?

40:22Simon Lambert: I say victims, but you shouldn't be speeding. No, you should not be speeding. No. Just to be clear, you should not be speeding, and the cameras are there for a reason there is a margin of error the margin of error is generally 10 plus two miles an hour but you cannot rely on that absolutely being the case right it might be that an individual um you know camera is set to a different uh different margin of error to that right so why are these so sneaky well firstly they do have to they are painted yellow okay most speed cameras in this country are painted yellow okay um you're unlikely to find many that aren't so you should see them and there will be a sign warning you that there are speed cameras around because you do get signs warning you that there are speed cameras around it's not as good as the French system, whereby on the motorway, they have a sign up warning you that there's a speed camera, but they have to have a sign up for every individual speed camera.

41:28Simon Lambert: So basically, you drive along, you spot the speed camera, and then you know it's gone. Okay, not advocating speeding before or after spotting the speed camera. I'm just saying what happens. But they are not painted yellow. In fact, they are quite difficult to spot. It's a good game on a long distance french journey but these ones have been described as sneaky because they're set up at traffic lights and what they do is they monitor people running the lights but they also monitor people's speed and people can speed up to get through the lights now they may speed up to get through the lights for all of the wrong reasons they might be what's known as an amber gambler right they see it go amber they slam their foot down and rock it through the lights right okay yeah now the problem with amber gambling is that quite often um you shift into being a red light menace right because the lights can change um but also people will do this sometimes if they if the light's still on green and they know they think oh god it's going to go and i don't want to get stuck at this junction and some junctions can be a bit tricky and can be quite big and there may be a reason that you need to blip the throttle to get through and actually blipping the throttle to get through if you're in a 30 mile an hour zone or actually as is more common nowadays in some places a 20 mile an hour zone you don't need to go that much faster to suddenly find yourself past the margin of error and then you might be getting a letter in the post from your friendly local neighbourhood police force to say excuse me sir or madam you have been speeding and here is a fine and here is some points but some of these cameras make an absolute fortune what i would say about cameras that make an absolute fortune whether they are speed cameras whether they are other traffic cameras whether they are yellow box cameras whether they are cameras for you know bits of road where you're not allowed to go on one side but you can go on the other side is if they are making that much money there is something wrong with the road the junction signposting etc because they are catching out so many people that what is happening is the signposting the junction the road layout or whatever it is isn't working properly and it's all very well to you know so we shouldn't shouldn't break it shouldn't do whatever right okay and then you pay the fine but these things are there for a reason they're there for safety for road safety so councils and police forces should actually be looking at this stuff and in these instances where they are making so much money they should be going okay there's something wrong here and And the problem when there being something wrong here is not just that members of the public are incurring lots of fines and points on their licence.

44:32Simon Lambert: The problem is, is that someone is going to get hurt or worse due to the problem with the road. So instead of just cashing in on this, we should be correcting the problem with the road. Absolutely fair point there. Absolutely fair point. Because, Lee, this Money Mail investigation did look, as I said, about 7000 cameras and it would try to work out where in the country. So if we're to look at this and say where in the country they're making the most money, we can't automatically think people are just rubbish drivers there.

44:59Georgie Frost: No, exactly. I think, do you know what? When Toby Warren, who wrote this story, told me about these cameras, these speed on green, I'd never heard of them, actually, Georgie. And there's a couple of real trap ones, I would say, around my area in which if I drive into Southend, there's honestly about 50 sets of traffic lights I can get caught in. and the red light ones are the ones I hate the most because as a driver it kind of makes you feel a bit on edge as you come up to the lights because if they go amber obviously you've got to stop and if you know what it's like you have someone right up your backside and it's kind of like oh you've got to make that decision and I really don't like it and I didn't realize that now they have speed cameras on some of these uh red light cameras I found it really fascinating kind of like oh it's like another thing for drivers but of course if you're speeding you know you're speeding and you know you're going to get fine but you're right i don't think you can read much into like people in leicester are probably you know no worse a driver than someone else in another town it's just where a lot of these cameras and things are positioned another thought i had about this as well the regular speed cameras that we're all used to and you've got the lines in the road we know in our local area where those are and it's very likely you're gonna fall victim to it because you know where they are so it changes your habits and it kind of like oh i'm obviously gonna make sure i'm not going a smidge over 30 as i go past these um so what happens when they when they kind of stop making money like surely there becomes a point where it's like somebody's to sit there and make absolutely nothing um but i i don't think you can read too much into whether these are positioned and where they're located Georgie in terms of you being a bad or a worse set of drivers I think it's more yeah just it's it's one of those things I think that people go it's horrible driving these days it's horrible you've got to do you've got to watch out for this that people erratic yeah I think um and it sucked a lot of the joy out of driving uh I think I mean I've only been driving for about a decade but I think if you spoke to someone that was driving 30 years ago they would have said it was much better when there were fewer rules but it's much safer on the roads that's the thing the safety aspect is you can only you can only go by yeah

47:16Simon Lambert: and our roads are far safer as a general rule in life people will tell you anything was much better just before you that is true that's true should have been here an hour ago mate it's true it's true um might be a daft question though um where does the money go and the reason that I ask that is because the sad thing is, as Simon, you pointed out, that it would be very sensible for councils and for police to look at these hotspots as they might be dangerous. And this is the point of them. They shouldn't be for getting money. They should be for cutting down accidents on the road and encouraging us to be safe drivers.

48:00However, I fear with cash-strap councils and the like and i assume that's where the money goes it's almost like they'd be fact factoring these into their budgets wouldn't they actually most of the money goes into something

48:13Simon Lambert: called the consolidated fund which is a government fund that it can just use for general spending some of it might go back into the roads through grants um via the department for transport but some of it might not some of it might end up anywhere governments they don't like hypothecating as it's called taxes uh and saying well we're going to do this and we're going to spend that on that i actually think people would have less of an issue with some of this stuff if if it was hypothecated and it just went into fixing potholes um there would actually also be some economic benefit from that because fixing potholes is literally one of the most economically beneficial things you can do because people you pay to fix the potholes have a tendency to go out and spend the money right um and it's it's a bit like the keynesian dig a hole and then fill it in thing except what we've done in this country is we've just created loads of holes and they're not bothered to fill them in but local authorities some camera stuff you know not necessarily speed cameras um but some of the other cameras yellow box junctions all that kind of stuff parking fines for example councils get that money now councils will tell you that they use the parking revenue only for you know the kind of like budget for roads and transport things like that but actually that just means they don't have to even if they did that even if that were true i'm not saying they're lying but even if that were true and your council told you well we're only using the parking revenue to improve the roads and you know everything that you can stretch the definition of improving uh roads town centers etc quite far and it means you don't have to spend money from elsewhere now in defense of councils uh councils have got a real problem with their funding because councils are spending unbelievable amounts of money on stuff that maybe should just be funded through general taxation such as care costs and so on um as we all know the council funding system is a mess the funding system for many things in this country is a mess the government is taking money from um speed cameras and putting it into the consolidated fund and using it to spend on other stuff because we insist on running this what I have described before as a budget airline tax system where we've got this kind of mythical low tax scenario yet all the extras that we add on actually cost us quite a lot of money.

50:29Nice way of putting it Simon. Just a quickie Lee for those of us touch wood who haven't been penalised speeding. Firstly what do you get? I mean I've heard about these speed these speed awareness courses they don't sound fun um but also can you contest any of these or what would you do if you you think it's not right very hard to contest

50:50Georgie Frost: Georgie you know very very high tech cameras very very very hard uh to appeal it um very few mitigating circumstances most of the time you do if it's a first offense get the chance to do a speed awareness course usually costs 100 quid and you have to sit through and learn how to be a better driver it depends though because if you were going way too fast there's no option of that and often uh you can end up with even more points or even a bigger fine the number one thing is just to drive sensibly drive lawfully and you're going to be fine we've got the right side of the law like us three yeah i mean i could do with a with a course in being a better driver i I mean, do you have to speed to go on these courses or can you just pay£100 and learn to be a better driver?

51:37Or does it not work that way?

51:39Georgie Frost: You could take an advanced driver course if you want, Georgie. I'm not that bad.

51:47Simon Lambert: I've done a speed awareness course in recent memory. You know, look, credit to the people doing them. They're pretty good. They tell you stuff that you don't know. They do, you know, apparently work. People do slow down after them. And actually, they think that the reason why they offer them is because they do think that they actually work better than just the first three points. And, you know, the people running them have and they're online now. You know, they've got to run a course online with a load of people who probably don't really want to be there and don't want to engage and don't want to be interested.

52:23Simon Lambert: So I take my hat off to the people doing them. The guy who did mine, you know, did a really good job and actually, you know, got people engaging with it. So and if that's what you can do and you can spend some time explaining to people, you know, why speed limits are important, how they work, why some of the things that you think are actually completely wrong and also why it's a good idea not to speed. And also the real message that gets through to people is that literally speeding doesn't really get you anywhere any quicker. It's astonishing. Like you'd have to go a really long distance, probably just on a motorway and then solidly speed by 10 to 20 miles an hour to actually make a major distance to your time.

53:09Quite, quite, Simon. And finally, the question that we're all asking, fake or natural? Yes, the turf war that's reportedly dividing opinion among British homeowners. Grass or polyethylene. I think that's what it is. And what would be the impact on your house price? Now, Simon, this is actually something I've been thinking about because I have a couple of dogs. And I don't know if you know about female dogs, but they do tend to create grass burn marks. Now, I don't know what they do to polyethylene, because if they do that to grass, I can't even imagine what they do to artificial grass, but our next-door neighbour's got artificial grass, and it always looks pretty good.

53:49Ours just looks like an absolute mess. It's tempting. Should I do it?

53:55Simon Lambert: No. Oh, right. Don't do it. Keep the grass. It's much better for the environment. It's much better for nature. I can see why it's tempting for people. The mud, the look, the dogs, the kids, the etc. And we've spoken to some people for this article who absolutely love their artificial grass. but i would say don't do it however you're not alone in thinking this but about 0.15 percent of domestic gardens in britain or seven and a half million square meters now comprise artificial lawns according to the royal horticultural society seven and a half million square meters is a lot but only 0.15 percent of domestic gardens is not so i don't know like don't feel too bad about it if you do do it but it's funny i didn't even know this was a thing i mean obviously i'm used to playing on astroturf when i was at school and all that sort of thing but i didn't know until i moved into this house i mean how naive is that then why would i know why would i think about it like someone who has an astroturf garden or whatever it is yes better for the environment or better for nature etc to have um grass but then obviously a lot of people have concrete don't they but what will it do to your house price and if we were to sort of think natural grass artificial grass And let's throw in concrete.

55:12Why not? Obviously, if you've got a really big garden, you don't want a car park in the back of your house. But, you know, for a reasonable size, two up, two down. What would be the effect on house prices, do you think?

55:25Simon Lambert: Right. So Jason Harris-Cohen, Managing Director of Open Property Group, told us that the quality of an artificial lawn can affect a property's value by as much as 5%. He said a poorly fitted or obviously synthetic lawn can detract from value as buyers may factor in the cost of a replacement. But he added that what buyers are drawn to depends on location and demographics. City buyers often prefer low maintenance structured outdoor spaces, whereas rural or family buyers tend to value greenery and space. Now, quality is the key here. okay put anything you do whether whether you put down artificial grass whether you put down a patio i wouldn't concrete your garden completely unless unless you turned it into a skate park and then i might be convinced but uh you know or put down some stones or whatever you do if you do it badly it's going to detract from your house price when you sell because people are going to factor in i'm gonna have to spend money sorting that out um and so they will then want to negotiate some money off five percent sounds like an awful lot though um i mean if someone said to me i'll pay five percent less because i need to replace the astro i'd be like mate i'll tell you how much it costs to turf it and you can have that off um because it ain't five percent of the house's value but you know it it puts people off and what you don't want to do if you're trying to your home has put people off but the cost of premium artificial grass ranges from 45 pound to 80 pound per square meter um typical labor cost for installation about 300 600 pound a day larger gardens could take three days or more to complete uh and you could also consider like other like porous materials how do they do it do you have to cut up your grass and get rid of it and then stick it down or do you just stick it down over it and i keep thinking about the dogs peeing on artificial grass is there like something that they can go down or do you have to like wash it uh you need to well if you've got pets and things you need to rinse it properly um so you need to be out every time you've had a wee wee no no no no just regularly because if you just leave it there it's gonna it's gonna cause problems imagine me chasing the dogs around with this that would be fun but not no you don't in the morning yeah you don't have to do that um you got to rinse it uh you got to look after it you got to lay it properly as well that's the thing is what someone will do is they will come around so say they were going to take up your grass to take up your grass level it you're going to need to put some hardcore down to create a base layer underneath it and then they'll put down the artificial lawn and the i think they put an underlay underneath the artificial lawn as well a bit like carpet but i'm not entirely certain um but yeah so you need to get it done properly otherwise you you know if you just basically dug up your own grass and then put some artificial grass down first the real grass is going to start trying to continuing to grow or weeds and secondly it's going to end up all lumpy and bumpy and it's just going to be absolutely terrible you won't like it nobody else would like it and nobody will be happy quite all right then simon stat of the week stat of the week three i believe three is the number of times that we mentioned the budget in this podcast that means that we have come in under budget by two mentions of the budget we have hit our own fiscal rules yeah there you go unbelievable uh and the other stuff the other stat of the week is one trillion dollars yeah the these bad guys the money just keeps going up and up and up doesn't it not saying elon musk is a bad guy just using the kind of yeah uh he's worth every penny simon isn't he just just using the austin powers comparison and i hope he said it in the one trillion dollars way when he when he asked for this originally but the tesla ceo and world's richest man has won a shareholder vote guaranteeing him stock worth one trillion dollars if he hits certain performance targets over the next decade they are tough targets there was shareholders chanting musk musk musk elon elon elon uh as this was voted through you can take your own view on how this one's going to unfold and whether it's going to end up good or bad tumbleweed there simon from me no comment right you can keep up to date thank you very much with all the latest breaking money news just go to thisismoney.co.uk or download the app if you have any comments or questions for the team or anything you'd like him to look into any views you have on one trillion dollars so email us at podcast this is money.co.uk send us in your questions we will try to get them answered for you uh and tell us about anything interesting and if you like our podcast why not rate us wherever you found us it helps other people find us too