Should we axe inheritance tax on family homes?

0:02Welcome to This Is Money podcast sponsored by Trading 212. Download the Trading 212 app today and open a cash ISA with promo code TIM to get the 12-month bonus promo rate of 4.8%. Terms apply. I'm Georgie Frost and joining me today is Simon Lambert. And coming up, the Tories want to make big changes to inheritance tax. What are they and how much could your family save? Meanwhile, new figures show the extent to which lifetime ISA savers are being stung just to access their own money. Will the government's first-time buyer ISA replacement be any better? Plus, no will, no excuses. October is free wills month.

0:38We tell you how to get yours for nothing. And after its bizarre woke rebrand featuring ads with no cars, Jaguar has unveiled a car. It's 120 ,000 electric gamble, but will it pay off? Don't forget to stay up to date with all the latest breaking money news. Just go to thisismoney.co.uk or download the app. But first, tens of thousands of families could escape inheritance tax and many more have their bills slashed under proposals announced by the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, promised that family homes would be excluded from the calculations and couples would get a further million pounds allowance.

1:14But it is a long road, is it not, from closing speeches at party conferences to actually getting to implement those plans. But be that as it may, let's explore what could possibly change, but also the things that you can do now to protect your wealth under the current rules. So Simon, welcome. Simon, what did Kimi Badenoch announce? How would it differ from what we have today? Well, as you said, it's a long way from closing speeches at party conferences to actually enacting a policy. However, Kemi Badnok has hit the right note here, I would say, amongst a lot of people, certainly amongst a lot of our readers, and certainly amongst a lot of people who wouldn't even necessarily face inheritance tax.

2:09Because I saw quite a bit of commentary afterwards and interviews afterwards. And the point was quite rightly made that actually most people don't pay inheritance tax. At the moment, it's about one in 20 estates. When pensions are pulled into the inheritance tax net from next April, it's going to rise to about one in 10. But that still leaves most people not paying. However, for the people who do end up paying, it leads to a very sizable bill. So the average inheritance tax bill for those who pay inheritance tax is£231 ,000. That's a pretty big hit to a family on someone's estate and goes quite a long way to explaining why people dislike it so much.

3:01The other reason I would argue why people dislike inheritance tax so much, other than the principle that people have built up this wealth and they should be able to pass it on to their families, that's just a principle people tend to agree with in general is the 40 % rate. It's very high. 40 % is nearly half in people's minds and that means that they really don't like the concept of it. So you've got this tax that not that many families pay, a minority of families pay, but is widely hated.

3:35Simon Lambert: I have argued for a long time that that is a recipe for doing something about it. However, what we've generally done about it in the past is made it worse. And Rachel Reeves, previous chancellor, decided to do that. Pensions are not currently within the inheritance tax net, unspent pension pots, but from next April, they will be. And that is going to push a whole chunk of people who are just saving for retirement into it if they are unfortunate enough to die early and before they have run down their pension pot. so she announced that your family home will now be completely exempt from inheritance tax that you will be able to pass your family home on now it's not clear what qualifies this as the family home do you have to have been there for a certain amount of time is it the same as the current residence nil rate band rules which mean you can only pass your home to a direct descendant which is a child or a grandchild will they just do the same thing for that, but just put family home in its entirety rather than this£175 ,000 extra allowance.

4:39We don't know that. And also that she would raise the allowance for a couple to a million pounds. So what that's doing is saying you're not going to lose out from us doing that own home thing, because at the moment you can currently pass on£325 ,000 free of inheritance tax as an individual. that's your nil rate band and then on top of that you can offset up to 175 000 pounds of the value of your own home if you pass it to a direct descendant child grandchild stepchild foster child adopted child they all count but you can't give it to your niece or your nephew now this creates an unfair situation for people who are a not married because if you are married you can pass assets on to your spouse free of inheritance tax they don't fall within the inheritance tax net so if you have a married couple and they have a home that's worth more than inheritance tax allowance the husband could die pass it on to the wife no problems if you are not married then it could be potentially that if you try to pass your half of your house onto your wife or you know the property that you live in they may have to sell it in order to pay the inheritance tax bill so it's unfair on people who aren't married it's unfair on people who don't have children because they can't pass on their wealth in the same way.

5:55So it caught the eye, it caught the attention, it was well received. However, what I would say is there was quite a few things Kemi could have done on inheritance tax. I've got a short list I made here. She could have cut the rate from 40 % to say 20%. I've argued this is probably the best thing we could do. 20%, not too bad, 40%, nearly half. She could have lifted the allowances on how much you can either leave free of inheritance tax or how much you can give away early because those allowances for money that you can give away early have been stuck in the deep freeze since the 1980s. They're one of the worst examples of fiscal drag within the tax system.

6:40She could have said, I will reverse the move to pull pension pots into inheritance tax. She could have just gone, I'm going to remove the own home allowance. I'm going to combine the allowances. I'm going to give everybody a bigger allowance. These are all things that would be sensible moves. She could have just said, I'm going to get rid of inheritance tax. But, you know, the argument for her saying that she's not going to do that is that we can't afford to do that. What she chose to do, though, was make an already complicated system more complicated. Add to the bit that many people are highly critical of, which is this extra own home allowance thing.

7:17And they said that when George Osborne introduced this, he should have just made it like raise the allowance rather than adding in this extra bit of complexity. So that to me was a little bit of a head scratcher. And it has led to lots of claims from people that

7:33Simon Lambert: it will massively discourage people from downsizing. And in fact, actually, the best thing you should do if you live in a big house, but also have lots of investable assets is now buy a bigger house, the biggest possible house worth the most amount of money that you can, because then it under the Tories, you could pass it down free of tax. So Simon, the thing is to buy yourself a very big house, because of course, if they come in, they'll scrap the mansion tax that is coming down the line, all pie in the sky at the moment. But you know, the beauty of being in opposition is you can sort of say what you like, can't you?

8:05But I have to say, from a personal perspective, as someone who's unmarried and without kids, I've always felt that that additional home thing is just a little bit galling. But be that as it may, these are all proposals. What can you do to protect your wealth from the taxman under the rules at the moment? Because I keep reading the biggest issue of people who are going to financial advisors, which makes sense, given probably the age range and wealth, etc. Is this unused pension pots going into the inheritance tax net? So Simon, what can you do? Yes. And I wrote about inheritance tax um the other week for the first installment in our new six-part protect your money newsletter series where it's a you know a series on what not not on the speculation around the budget but on the things that we know are actually happening and what you can do the sensible financial planning that you can do and i spoke to a number of people for it one of the people i spoke to was michelle holgate of rbc you know she does a lot of financial planning calls and she said that she is getting asked about inheritance tax constantly.

9:14And this reflects something that I'm being told by, you know, all the people in financial planning, all the financial advisors I speak to, is it is just relentless questions about inheritance tax, inheritance tax and pensions. And the reason for this is because the pension thing has really sharpened people's minds. I don't actually genuinely believe that many people were using their pension to pass on wealth tax free. I think maybe there were some wealthy people doing it. I think most people rely on their pension to live on. It's not even genuinely tax-free because if you pass on an unspent pension pot after the age of 75, the beneficiary has to pay income tax.

9:57So that pot's going to be taxed at 20%, 40%, or 45%. And if you leave a meaningful sum, because that's added to their other income, is definitely going to fall at least into 40%, potentially into 45%. And actually, the real sting in the tail from the measures that Rachel Rees has brought in, something the government hasn't acted on yet, and I would really like to see the government act on, is the double taxation issue. Because if you die after the age of 75, and the ONS has confirmed that the median age at which people die is over 75, so that's most people, then not only will your unspent pension pot face inheritance tax, but then your beneficiaries will face income tax when they take the money out.

10:39So you're looking at a tax rate of about 62%, you know, for the kind of bit that gets caught by 40 % inheritance tax, the bit that gets caught by 40 % income tax. The easiest way to deal with this is to spend your money or to give it away. because if you know that you are definitely going to have an inheritance tax liability and as i said

11:04Simon Lambert: most people don't but there are lots of people who do okay so say you live in a 500 000 pound house and between the two of you you've got 500 000 pounds in your pension pots that's it you're done you're at you're you're at you're at the limit anything you've got on top of that is going to get taxed at 40 percent your house is probably going to go up in value your pension pots are hopefully going to go up in value although you might start running them down in retirement but you're facing that kind of thing so basically you go right I can spend my money and enjoy my money while I'm here and the thing to think about with that is if you definitely have an inheritance tax liability everything you spend is 40 percent off because the tax man is only going to take 40 percent of it at some point in the future so as financial advisors I know you tell their clients fly business class, take the holiday, pay for the family holiday, go out to dinner.

11:58Simon Lambert: It's all 40 % off. So you can think like that. You know, don't go completely nuts and blow it all. But you know, do think about it, enjoy your money, spend it. The second one is to give it away early. Now, in order to stop people just giving away all their assets on their deathbed, there are rules that limit how much you can give away each year. Every year as an individual, you can give away a total of£3 ,000 free of inheritance tax. Yes,£3 ,000. And actually, things that you buy people can theoretically get caught out by this. There is a scenario where you buy your 18-year-old child a second-hand small run-around car that costs£5 ,000 and you gift it to them and you have actually just created an inheritance tax liability.

12:55Simon Lambert: And this is completely bonkers. That£3 ,000 limit has been stuck at£3 ,000 since the mid-1980s. You can also give unlimited gifts of 250 pounds per individual each year so i could give you 250 pounds and i can give helen 250 pounds but i can't give you two lots of 250 pounds and i can't give helen two lots of 250 pounds this is not a way to just give your money away to the same person in 250 pound chunks and and the 3 000 is like the overall limit so i can't give you 3 000 and helen 3 000 is I can give£3 ,000 or you can have£1 ,500 each or any other division of it. Once you go over that, it's liable for inheritance tax.

13:43Simon Lambert: There's some special exemptions for weddings and things like that. Again,£5 ,000. Anybody check the price of a wedding recently? Now, this is obviously not a limit on what you can do. You can give away more than that if you want. It will just fall within the inheritance tax net unless you survive for seven years. Within that seven-year period, the tax that would be charged on it if you were unfortunate enough to die steps down and then after seven years it should theoretically be totally free of inheritance tax so i can give you three thousand pounds and i can give helen three thousand pounds but i'm gonna need to live for another seven years otherwise the tax man's coming after one of you for a bit of money just a quick one on that.

14:26How on earth one would HMRC figure this out, like prove it? I mean, do they get to go through your accounts? But also, I just feel for executors. What a job.

14:38Simon Lambert: Okay, so I would say two things here. Second question first. Inheritance tax illustrates why you should keep really good financial records. And if you are someone who is likely to get caught by inheritance tax. So your estate is going to tip over that 1 million and you are doing something about it, i.e. trying to give your money away early. You must keep a record of that because it's going to do your executors so much of a favor. And I know that a lot of people listening to this podcast are not going to be in that position, but they might be in the position of getting that money from their parents or their grandparents right now.

15:17If they give you money, you need to say to then you need to write this down. Write down what you've done, write down what your intention was, write down how much you gave me and when you did it. Because somebody's going to need that at some point.

15:31Simon Lambert: After the seven years, in theory, you don't need any records. So if I'd given you£6 ,000 eight years ago, that's eight years ago and that's out of it. So it doesn't matter. In theory, you don't need any records, but it'd be really handy if that record existed. So we could go, right that's fine don't need to worry about that how would they know well in a sense they wouldn't you know this could fall under the bracket of everyday tax dodging that we all know goes on all over the place but the taxman is using more and more um access to digital financial records um just look at what you can do with ai now you know the the taxman's also heard of ai the tax man can also use it um so it's become a lot easier to catch people out you know to go you said that this person who you're the executor for hadn't given any gifts in the last seven years before they died but i see this 20 000 pounds that went from their bank account to their daughter's bank account how do you explain that one you know and there's going to be honest mistakes there's going to be simple stuff there's going to be people who didn't realize that by paying for a big holiday or buying their teenager a car.

16:47Simon Lambert: They were creating an inheritance tax liability. But it's a lot harder to just get away with it than it would have been in the past. Obviously, I was not suggesting there that one explores ways in which to get around that. But one final question on this, Simon, what's the gifting out of surplus income that seems to confuse a lot of people? Okay, so this is a little known exemption, although a much better known exemption now than it was. And podcast listeners will have heard about this before. that can help you sidestep inheritance tax on gifts. It's commonly known as gifting out of surplus income.

17:21Simon Lambert: It's officially referred to by the catchy term of normal expenditure out of income. But what it does, crucially, is it allows money to be passed on without falling under the seven-year rule. The gifts must meet some pretty tight criteria. And this is an example where you definitely need to be keeping records. so they have to be out of surplus income so out of your income rather than your capital so it leaves you with enough income to maintain your normal standard of living so if you're in a position where at the end of the each month you've got more money or you've got a bit left over you've got some spare you've got excess income and you could be giving that away you can also withdraw money from pension pension withdrawals count as income what you can't do is just take cash out of your ISA or sell some investments, then give them away.

18:14That doesn't count as income. That's capital.

18:16Simon Lambert: There also has to be a pattern of giving, which is why it's called normal expenditure. The pattern there is a really, really gray area because people think of, you know, regular gifts pattern has to be every month. It doesn't. It could be every year, could be every six months. what you need to do is you need to establish that pattern obviously there's a great question if you if you only do it if you do it every year and you only do it once then you die or is there a pattern and this is where it's quite important to write down you know some notes on your intention as well as what you're doing and also i would say strongly consider getting some financial advice and michelle gave a really good tip here she said i often suggest to clients that they complete the IHT 403 form prior to giving away gifts from regular income to show what their income and expenditure was to show that it's habitual and that they're meeting those rules.

19:15Simon Lambert: This is a bit ghoulish, I suppose, isn't it? You're filling in an inheritance tax form that's designed to be filled in after you die, but you're doing it while you're alive. You're not doing it from beyond the grave. You're doing it from before the grave in order to show your inheritance tax intentions. But I suppose if you're wanting to do this, then you're very aware of why you're doing this. This is something that I want to make sure will not come and bite us after I'm gone in terms of inheritance tax. But I'd also suggest anyone that's got sort of money out of excess income probably can afford to get a bit of financial advice and an accountant.

19:53Simon Lambert: Look, if you're in the position where you're going to get caught out by this, I go back to the point that I made that the average inheritance tax bill for people who do pay inheritance tax is£231 ,000. You're definitely at the level where it might be a good idea to pay a professional to do some planning for you and also talk through things with you. It's really important with all this stuff that you talk to your family about it and what you want to do and how you want to do it. Because it's not just about the money. It's an emotive thing. It's about potentially being able to enjoy that money now while you're still alive.

20:28Simon Lambert: You know, at the simplest level, that's that you help your kids get on the property ladder. You get to go see their new flat. You get to go around there or you help them after they've had children or you help them move up the ladder. All kinds of these things. You get to enjoy that time with the family on the big family holiday. It's like these are the things you're doing it for. You're not doing it for the money. Like, screw the money. And that's actually why people hate inheritance tax so much. It's not the money, even though it's a lot of money. it is what it represents and so just think about this from the point of view of what does this represent and how could i help out or if you're in the position like i'm saying like a lot of our listeners will be where they're the potential recipients have the conversation with your parents have the conversation with your grandparents especially if they're the kind of people who sound off about how much they hate inheritance tax have the conversation say what can we do about this what would you be happy doing you know how could it help and all that kind of stuff.

21:26Simon Lambert: I mean, a great example is grandparents should be trying to use the surplus income thing to be paying into investment accounts for kids so that when they hit 18, it could cover their university fees and they don't have to take on a student loan. You can invest a relatively small amount a month if you start early. And the difference that would make is absolutely immense. I would say that's a really good use of it. All right, then sticking with sort of government plans, as it were, this is the current government as of today. So they had this idea about this first time buyer ISA because, well, there were lots of problems with the lifetime ISA.

22:09That's just gone for consultation. I understand the consultations over now. We still don't know the details of it. But let's hope, I think, for all those people who have been, how do we put this, screwed over by the lifetime ISA, and I'll throw myself into that bucket. Let's hope some of those issues are ironed out because we got some research this week about how much people have been paying in penalties for accessing their money from the lifetime isa. Now look, it sounded like a great deal and for many people it was. You save for your first home or retirement and the government tops up your savings by 25 % to a grand.

22:47So fantastic. But if like me, you bought at a time in your life or in a location where you actually exceeded the house price limit, which is 450 ,000, or you needed that money for something else, then you got penalised. You lost not just the bonus, but some of your own savings as well. Now, new figures show 45 ,000 savers were penalised more than once in a single year and some are losing thousands of pounds. So will the government learn the mistakes of the LISA, which is on its way out when they introduce their first time buyer, ISA. Just very briefly, Simon, explain how the lifetime ISA works.

23:25Simon Lambert: Right. So to open a lifetime ISA, you need to be under 40 and then you can pay into it and you can pay into it after the age of 40. But you can't pay into it after the age of 50. But you can't get the money until you're 60. in a sense it's got a bit of a similarity to pensions because as with a pension you can't access that money but there is a kicker in that you could access it to buy your first home but you can actually take the money out if you pay a penalty as you mentioned there now the benefit of paying money into a lifetime isa is that for every four pounds you save the government will chip in one pound and that gives you up to a one thousand pound a year bonus on the maximum four thousand pound a year that you can pay in.

24:09So this is similar to the basic rate uplift on the money that you pay into a pension. And the idea for this came about because George Osborne wanted to try to solve that problem of young people not knowing whether to save for a pension or a home. So he spent hours, weeks, years designing a watertight product that could really help.

24:35Simon Lambert: or something was drawn up on the back of a fag packet. I don't know which one it was, but I know that sometimes I've felt it's a little bit closer to the second one than it was to the first one. Because they are very different things, aren't they? Buying a home and saving for a future, your future. It's a really awkward product, right? Arguably, okay, if you are saving for retirement, you should pay into a pension. Certainly a workplace pension so you can get the benefits from your employer. But even if it's not into a workplace pension, into a SIP, for example, because you get the basic rate uplift and actually you can get more uplift you know you can pay up to 60 000 pounds or your maximum of your total income if whichever is lower into a pension each year whereas with the isa it's limited to four thousand pounds and also as a higher rate taxpayer if you're 40 taxpayer or 45 taxpayer you can claim back the extra tax relief so pension wins there pension also wins on when you can access the money currently 55 going up to 57 but even 57 isn't 60 so you know pension wins there too the place where interestingly the lifetime isa wins is because it's an isa when you take the money out it is tax-free and that could be you know a real benefit although as i said you can only put four thousand pounds a year in and you can only do that until you reach 50 so you can't get that much benefit out of it so for a retirement product It's just meh as far as I'm concerned.

26:00Use a pension. And then as a helping you get on the property ladder product, yes, it has too many catches. They should have moved up the maximum value of the property that you can buy and everything like that.

26:10Simon Lambert: I don't think it's a good product. But if I were a first time buyer who would potentially qualify for this, I would put my money into one because ultimately it's really hard saving for a house deposit. And if you can get an extra 25 % uplift on the money that you put in, even if it's only of thousand pounds a year you aren't going to get that kind of instant return anywhere else so do it um but be aware of the catches the problem is is that lots of people have paid money in and then they've been caught out by the fact that when they take money out they're penalized and this is to try to stop people taking money out because your money's not locked in there you can actually take it out and this is where we have seen all of these people face these penalties and ultimately is catching people out, presumably when they are in some form of financial stress, because otherwise they wouldn't take the money out and pay the penalty.

27:00Simon Lambert: And it does illustrate how a chunk of people have been caught out by this. Because there was a time, wasn't there, during COVID, where actually that penalty was dropped to allow people to access their money from their lifetime ISA in an emergency. So it does suggest, you know, if you've taken out a lifetime ISA, you're probably quite aware of the rules around it. Well, you'd hope you would be. So these are people who are, as you say, probably in some sort of financial distress, needing the money. But also for my issue, if this had gone up with inflation, you mentioned fiscal drag earlier, the house price limit would be around$550 ,000,$600 ,000.

27:39But it was$450 ,000. It stayed there since 2017. And first time buyers are getting older. You know, you might have kids that you don't want to live in a box office, particularly if you live in a very expensive area. So I mentioned there about the first time buyer ISA because the LISA had so many issues, as you mentioned there. Will this be the answer? Because the LISA was replacing the help to buy ISA. I believe the help to buy ISA was a sort of an extension of even a first time buyer ISA back in the day. So this is loads of iterations of a similar principle that keep getting scrapped. Something else keeps coming in.

28:15We keep finding problems with them. Are you hopeful that the first time buy rice will be any better? Or do you just think it's probably time just to sort of think about something else to help young people on the ladder?

28:29Simon Lambert: That's a difficult one, isn't it? I mean, ultimately, if you give people money, it's inflationary for house prices. But what do you do about the fact that people can't afford those houses? Ideally, you need to make the houses cheaper. And houses are getting cheaper compared to wages. It's just they're so expensive. and they were so expensive that they're not getting cheaper fast enough for people to buy them. And you can say you're going to build lots more homes, but unless you actually have a concrete plan to build those homes instead of a sort of aspiration and just blame the planning system, then you're not going to achieve building more homes.

28:59Simon Lambert: So we're stuck a bit here. What I'd like to see is the government learn from the mistakes of the past. And if they do bring in this new product, which I think they are pretty much going to, that it gets rid of the bits that were problematic and caused all the issues. For example, this new one is expected to remove the option of using funds for retirement, but it's only going to add the bonus when you're ready to buy a home rather than paying out each month. But that means that you're not going to accrue interest or growth on that bonus that you would otherwise do, which can in the lifetime ISA.

29:35Simon Lambert: but in return for that it's talking about removing the cash withdrawal penalties so all right then simon now it's time for your stock market story of the week what's caught your eye this week simon okay the stock market story of the week the one that caught my eye tesco predicts less boozy christmas as weight loss drugs and health drive hit demand for alcohol Britain's biggest supermarket which is absolutely flying at the moment has said that it expects to have a good Christmas it thinks people are going to splash out this Christmas and try and enjoy Christmas but they are going to buy less booze and drink less booze half of it due to the fat jabs and some of it also down to the fact that people are drinking less alcohol for health reasons so they're probably going to buy a lot more low alcohol or no alcoholic drinks and less booze To tell you that, it's interesting because I read a story actually, I think it was about a few weeks ago, because one, GLP ones, I'm talking about it more and more, especially in regards investing and living longer and all of those sorts of things.

30:43But what I hadn't recognised was actually not only does it suppress your appetite for food, it also suppresses your desire for drinking alcohol. I didn't, I didn't, is that a well-known thing?

30:55Simon Lambert: um i don't know i don't know how well known it is but i mean you know with these drugs it's considered that they they suppress all kinds of addictive behavior basically um so it's not just eating it's not just overeating it's it's alcohol it's like that it's believed it could help people you know treat people with drug addiction and other problems as well so it's worth thinking about how this and also you know the increased awareness around health and and there is definitely more of a drive you know among i would say younger people it's not really just young people all people to drink a bit less do a bit more exercise eat a bit less junk and everything how that feeds through into you know the businesses of major companies because it's not just tesco here like look at the diageos of this world for example that the self-drinks brands but a lot of them are managing to you know really target those non-alcoholic or low alcoholic drinks the mock cocktails, the non-alcoholic beers, nobody's really cracked wine yet.

31:56Simon Lambert: And the one thing I would say again on the kind of stock market story of the week angle of this is that Tesco shares, as I said, Tesco has been flying. Tesco shares are back above five pounds. They're currently trading at five pounds and seven P as we talk. It's been a long, long way back to get up here, you know, after it's kind of glory days they had, and then it fell off a cliff, It pays a dividend of 2.86 % and the shares are up 14.5 % this year. And if you want to find out more, visit our sponsor Trading212, download the app and you can buy Tesco shares there fee free. Thank you, Simon. Long term listeners to the show will know that for the first five years, I bullied Simon.

32:37I'm not going to lie, Simon. I think it veered into bullying here, into doing arguably the most important piece of financial admin. Might have even been longer than five years now, I think about it, that a father of two young daughters could do. And that is, write a damn will, Simon. But thankfully he did. He buckled under the pressure. But if you are where Simon was, I don't know, seven years ago, still putting it off, October is free wills month, which means you could finally get it all sorted out without having to pay a penny. Firstly, Simon, for the procrastinators out there, why is writing a will so important for so many people?

33:11Because it's not just money, isn't it? I mentioned there about your kids.

33:15Simon Lambert: It's, yeah, it states what you want to happen to your estate when you pass away. So your estate is your savings, your investments, your property, your possessions and any other assets. And without a will, you don't get a choice. There are the rules of intestacy that decide where that money will go. But the basics of a will is who you are, what it covers, details of any spouse, who you want to be your executors. So these are the people who are responsible for carrying out your wishes and sorting out your finances, doing probate. who you'd like to be guardians for your children if they're under the age of 18 if relevant and you know where you want your assets to go and also one of the things i discovered when i wrote mine what do you do in the scenario where you die before your children reach the age of 18 and there's something terrible happens to you and your partner in that and there's that awful tragic situation what do you do then or even if that's after the age of 18 do you want to put something in place that prevents them from getting their hands on all of that money at a very very young age absolutely right so tell me about free wills month free wills month is what it says on the tin right you can go to the site free wills month right and there you will fight be able to find uh participating solicitors and charities and what the idea behind this is basically that charities help you get a will written for free and it's not obligatory but they ask that you might consider them in your will and leave them some money and bequests and wills are a major you know fundraiser for charities and can really really help out and there are some organizations that do this all year round for example um the alzheimer's society who we're working with at the moment um to try to you know really promote acting on dementia beating dementia helping families who you know helping to care for people and everything like that they'll help you they'll help you out anytime of year but the free wills month is you know it's the idea it's like right this month get your will done you need to be over the age of 55 in order to take part but yeah you go on there find out where to get it done and get it done but what i would say is if you are under the age of 55 and you don't have a will get a will yeah they're not that expensive though are they if it's quite simple affairs and you can you can use a number of different people to write a will.

35:36Simon Lambert: You can use a will writer, you can use a solicitor, you can use an online will service, or you can even write one yourself. It must be witnessed while you are present by two people over the age of 18 who are of sound mind and have no personal interest in the will and are not related to you. But you could write one yourself on a piece of paper and get it witnessed. Whether you get the wording right is another matter. I would also be careful about what kind of cut price will service you sign up to again for that but there are some really good ones out there i know for example that farewell is very good and if you have relatively simple financial situation then this is a really easy way to get it done if you have a more complicated financial situation for example you're one of those people we were talking about before who are going to fall into inheritance tax or you have a more complicated family situation or you want to do something more than just like I leave everything to my spouse and then and if they're dead I leave it all to the kids kind of thing the simple stuff if you want to do anything more complicated then I would recommend talking to a solicitor don't do what I've done which given the fact that I was talking about bullying you Simon but in my defense I don't have kids so I don't think it's quite as important my situation is very simple I actually don't mind if the law of intestacy kicks in because, you know, I love my family, so take the money, whatever.

36:59However, I did do, and I used Fairwill, and it was very reasonably priced, except I did it in April, and I still haven't signed it. So it is not legal. You've just reminded me, I do love this podcast because it makes me think of all the financial admin I need to do. That is coming after the show.

37:17Simon Lambert: The classic mistake there is forgetting to get the will signed. The other one that people make is they do all the right stuff and then they don't tell anybody where their will is. Yes, exactly. And actually, again, on the matter of record keeping, this is the Be Organized podcast this week. You know, write it down somewhere where people are going to find it. Because you might tell someone and they might not be there anymore. This happened to my family. My grandmother, my nana, she died at the age of 90, just before her 96th birthday, I think it was. Or just for her 95th birthday. I can't remember exactly which one it was.

37:53I should be able to remember that. and her executor was my dad.

37:58Simon Lambert: Unfortunately, my dad had died a year before my Nana, which was something that my Nana never expected to happen when she wrote her will. And then when it came to looking for my Nana's will, we just couldn't work out where it was. My mum said to me, she's like, do you have any idea where your Nana's will is? I was like, no. She looked everywhere, couldn't find it. We were on the verge of phoning around all the solicitors in the town that she lived in on the basis that we reckoned she was most likely to have made one with a solicitor in the town that she lived in, when fortunately my mum managed to find it and it was all sorted.

38:31Simon Lambert: But, you know, it nearly happened to us where there was a perfectly valid will and we were like, where is it? Yeah. So sign it, let people know where it is. Right. Finally, this is not a to-do list thing. Well, I mean, you can if you want to spend£120 ,000 on a new car. But after much derision for its controversial woke rebrand, Jaguar is back with its new era electric car, which is more than its adverts had back in 2024. A car, that is. Just a lot of models in colourful outfits and slogans that no one understood, like delete ordinary, create exuberant, anyone, and live vivid. Profound, Simon, profound.

39:14Well, have they? Have they achieved create exuberant with their type 01? This Is Money went to take a look. And I have to say, Simon, when I was reading this article and I looked at the pictures and the videos and stuff, it looked like I had typed into ChatGPT and said, create an image of a car that sort of looks like a Jaguar. You know, when you look at it and you think this just doesn't quite look real. But anyway, I'm not in the market for a£120 ,000 electric with no back window Jaguar. So who am I to comment? But before you tell me about the car just remind me of the live vivid because as i said the the controversial woke rebrand not i didn't use the word woke that's what it was called at the time why was it so controversial

40:01Simon Lambert: what happened to jaguar at the time yeah at this point i'd obviously like to apologize to our listeners uh on my behalf and on rob harlow motion editors behalf for having the word woke to describe a car as rob quite rightly said how can a car be woke but it wasn't it's it's it's to do with the rebrand, which was basically derided as that by no greater cultural critic than US President Donald Trump, who dubbed the whole rebrand seriously woke, not just woke, seriously woke, and a total disaster that had left Jaguar in absolute turmoil. Elon Musk didn't like it either. Nigel Farage didn't like it either.

40:42Simon Lambert: I believe Jaguar isn't aiming at any of those people being its target market. But who is its target market though? I would have thought it'd be sort of older men. So I can understand why the men that came out with the criticisms were older, rich men. Am I wrong? This is the difficult one. It's going after a younger affluent market. But that needs to be a seriously affluent market in order to drop 120 grand on a car. It's going to be more than that once you add the extras. An electric car. Now, that market does exist, but it's pretty niche. And what is so controversial is that this is effectively Jaguar strategy.

41:20Jaguar is repositioning itself.

41:23Simon Lambert: It is moving from being a mass market, but not particularly big, premium luxury, but like affordable luxury carmaker. previously it made the xf saloon which is a big five-seater saloon car fantastic cars it made the xe which was the smaller saloon it made the f pace which was an suv because everybody has to make an suv and it made the f type which was its sports car and jaguar is synonymous with either sports cars or sporting saloons pace and grace you know cars that handle well have a degree of luxury they're quite expensive but they're not the most expensive cars out there on the road and they're sold to the mass affluent kind of market that's not who it's going after anymore and it stopped selling cars completely so it didn't just go right we're going to bring in a new car we're going to sell these old cars and then when we bring in the new car we're going to stop selling one of these old cars and replace it with the new car which is how you normally do things it stopped selling cars completely it stopped making them and it stopped selling them and it has shifted from you know being a company that made largely petrol and diesel engine cars to one that is now solely electric and it's gone very very bold with the design this is a four seater it's incredibly long 17 foot long it's heavy electric cars are heavy anyway cars nowadays are heavy but it's two and a half tons but it's also only 1.4 meters high about as tall as an 11 year old which is pretty pretty low so rob had been to see it rob had had a sneak preview of it he's driven a pre-production version he said the design is unbelievable on it but there's so much craftsmanship has gone into this you know he said it looks good it looks better like in real life than it does in the pictures does it stand up to like you know the jaguar standards set by things like the e-type i mean that's a matter of personal preference but he said the craftsmanship that's gone into it is absolutely incredible and it is you know an incredible car but it is also a very very expensive car targeting a pretty niche market so this is basically it's going in above your bmws and your mercedes but below your bentleys right but practically i mean in terms of charging and all that is it sort of standard what you'd expect sorry i'm so boring i know no technology is fantastic it'll charge quickly it's got a real world range of about 400 miles which you know isn't as far as you can drive in a petrol or diesel car but it's pretty good if it's a genuine 400 miles most people aren't going to have an issue with that it's fast it can go from a standing start to 62 miles an hour in just 3.2 seconds but jaguars also really keen to talk about how quickly it can accelerate you know so the kind of overtaking maneuver and everything like that it's got a little bit of jaguerness to it i do think it does have a little bit of jag to it but it is also very blocky very bulky it's not very subtle i very much look forward to seeing one on the road seeing what it looks like but i don't think that we're going to be seeing quite as many of these on the road as we do see existing jaguars jaguar was always my mum's perfect car she drove a bergen de volvo estate um so you know it was a bit different from that this reminds me more of the kind of elon musk what's it called the tesla space wagon or whatever it's called uh than it does the cyber truck cyber truck whatever the tesla space wagon that's the next one the cyber truck the cyber truck than it does of a classic jag but anyway look let's see how it goes that you've got a poll there what do your readers think because they are the ones that matter okay the winner was 55 i prefer jaguar's traditional petrol power cars but it's 18 who said stunning it's a bold new direction for jaguar 15 who said impressive technology but the design isn't for me i love the fact that it was we didn't put in there the price isn't for me we put in there to design isn't for me and far too expensive for what it offers was 12 percent i wish jaguar all of the best of luck with this car i love jags i've got a jag it's not an expensive jag it's a 2012 plate jaguar xf it's worth about three grand but it's still a fantastic car um my dad had a couple of jags like i love a jag i want jaguar to do well so i wish them the best of luck with this car even if i'm probably never gonna buy one i mean that's fine you don't need to.

46:01You can still wish them good luck. Simon, start of the week.

46:05Simon Lambert: £2 ,900. That is how much the cost of living squeeze over the past five years has left working families worse off, according to the Resolution Foundation. And that is the impact that they have suffered compared to what would have happened if inflation had stayed at 2%, which is the Bank of England's target. All right, Simon. Thank you very much. That is it. You can keep up to date with all the latest Breaking Money. You just go to thisismoney.co.uk or download the app. And if you have any comments or questions for the team or anything you'd like them to look into, Simon. You can email us at podcast at thisismoney.co.uk and come to thisismoney.co.uk forward slash podcast to find all podcasts past, join in the debate and read the comments.

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