Tips to sort your finances and what's going on with pubs?

0:02Lee Boyce: Welcome 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, new year, new you and all that jazz. Simon gives us his essential steps to getting your finances on a sound footing as we move forward in 2026. Also today, it's been bad news for a while for pubs. Could they get a last minute business rate reprieve though, which would mean Labour politicians can actually be allowed back into their local boozers. Better news for banks, Lloyd's share price hits its highest since the financial crash. So is the industry set for another bumpy year?

0:38Lee Boyce: Speaking of Lloyd's, it's launched its best ever current account switching bonus, while HSBC is offering a whopping£750 to entice new Premier Bank account customers. So is it time to move? And how to turn your house into a zero bills home? And importantly, how much would it cost to do so? 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, a message from our sponsors. With the new year here and your New Year's resolutions confirmed, now it's time to take control of your financial future with support from Charles Stanley Direct's Financial Coaching.

1:17Lee Boyce: Led by This Is Money regular Lisa Kaplan, financial coaching gives you access to a real expert who can help you make sense of your 2026 financial plans. Book your free 15-minute call today at charles-stanley.co.uk forward slash financial coaching. Go on, make 2026 the year you take control of your financial future. Remember, investment involves risk. Now back to the show. All right, we're talking about New Year's, whether you call it a New Year's resolution, an intention, or you just want to put yourself on a better financial footing regardless of the day or the month, Simon has kindly pulled together his seven essential steps.

1:59Lee Boyce: And Simon, I like this quote, by the way, that you said in the piece. The reality is that while I may know more now, I used to be a lot better at managing my money when I had less of it. And it got me thinking, Simon, because yes, that's true for me too. But anyway, Lee, I will get your tips as well, if that's all right so you can have some time to think about them while simon talks so simon tell us more why did you pull together your seven essential tips why not eight could you not think

2:28Simon Lambert: of eight well you've got to settle on a number haven't you that's that's true yeah yeah you don't want it to be you don't want it to be too few and you don't want it to be too many we've all been there when you started to write the my 100 tips and realized you may have bitten off more than you can chew sometimes even if you just go for 12 it's too much you go for three it's not enough you know you gotta hit a number so yeah uh look i i just thought of it was some things that i think are the foundations for your finances the basic stuff the essentials the things that mean you are then on a sound footing before you can go on and do some other stuff forgive me listeners if this sounds a bit basic but these are the things i think you just need nailed and then you can go right okay i can move on a step so before i start talking and explaining them i will give you a comment from one of our readers who said i'm sorry mr lambert but this is really a case of stating the bleeding obvious if anyone read this plan and went wow what good ideas then i'm in despair of the common sense in this country possibly the idea of a power of attorney may be something the average person hasn't thought of spoiler but really knowing where the money goes and trying to have some savings is so obvious that surely the vast majority are doing it already quite patronizing really so apologies to anybody i'm about to patronize but i'm going to patronize you now so there you go all right then so back to your point actually your original question is that I used to be a lot better at managing my money when I had less of it.

4:08Simon Lambert: This is something that I think is probably a problem for lots of people, is when you're in your 20s, you have more time on your hands. You won't feel like you have more time on your hands, to be clear, but you do have more time on your hands. You're less busy with work. You're less busy with family stuff. It's easier to be on top of your bills, your budget, all those other things that I need to do something, and then you actually do it. And this is especially true if you're one of these people who suffers from a procrastination problem. I am a high functioning procrastinator. Okay, I have a real problem with this.

4:48Simon Lambert: And the enemy of my intentions is procrastination, and also a lack of time, and the belief that I can create time, and impossibly over ambitious with the amount of things that I intend to do. so I end up with lots of things I intend to do and lots of things that I don't do so these are the things I think you need to get done I'll go through them quite quickly get a grip on your household budget I've said it before budgeting sounds immensely dull but it is the essential first step to feeling more in control of your finances and ultimately getting richer because most people I would say have a pretty good idea of exactly how much money they have coming in every month if you are an employee and you have a salary coming in every month you can probably tell someone to within about a hundred pounds what your post-tax paycheck amount is obviously if you're self-employed georgie for example it's a bit harder you might have an idea of how much you should have coming in every month but whether people are going to pay you that is another matter and also you know your work ebbs and flows but most people will know pretty much how much they've coming in how much is going out well they might have a good idea of that as well but where it actually goes is often a mystery to most people and it is i think worth sitting down at least once a year getting your bank statements you could just sit and look at them on your phone with a pen and a piece of paper you can do it however you want but sort of working out where it all goes the essential spending that that's what you need to know the stuff that you absolutely have to spend your money on then the regular discretionary spending you know the bits where you could maybe cut back a bit but you you this is stuff that you are going to be spending every month don't don't be under any illusions that you're not going to eat or ever go out again and then the proper kind of discretionary stuff on top of that i would say then you know what's coming in what's going out and how much you can save or invest checking your bills once you've done your budgeting you then know how much you're spending on things like broadband tv energy insurance and stuff and you can look at whether you can save money on them you know fixing your energy bills switching insurance mobile phone contracts are a prime example of things you could be overpaying for and some other stuff you might just be paying for and not using so have a look at that sorting debts we talk about saving we talk about investing but really before you do any of that you need to get on top of debts if you have them and if you have high interest debts then you need to pay them off as soon as you possibly can you probably can't pay them off immediately which is why you have high interest debts if you're just choosing to have high interest debts that you could pay off immediately don't do that that's not a good move but this could be something like shifting it onto a 0 % balance transfer card it could be something like consolidating into a personal loan it could be some other way of clearing that debt set yourself a time period make it achievable commit to it automate it where you can it requires perseverance it is a long game it could take more than a year but it should be a priority a rainy day fund even just having a thousand pounds in a rainy day fund makes a huge difference between if someone something bad happens whether they end up falling into financial difficulty that lasts for years or they don't so we talk about needing three to six months in of um you know spending in a rainy day fund but that's your essential spending it's from post-tax income it's not three to six months of your pre-tax wages which to most people will sound like a mentally large amount um if you haven't got an emergency pot don't just go stick your head in the stand start saving one even if you start small just having some of that there will help you saving into a pension if you're employed you should have been auto enrolled into a pension if you didn't auto enroll into that if you opted out for example or you've been employed since before that then get yourself auto enrolled make sure that you are in the most generous pension scheme that your workplace potentially offers because this is a tip for people you may not have been auto enrolled into the good scheme that your company offers you might have just been auto enrolled into the standard auto enrollment scheme because i don't think they are allowed to auto enroll you into the better scheme you have to opt to do that so check that you're in it um and check that you're paying as much into your pension as you can to make the most from your employer's contributions if you're self-employed it's on you you need to save into a pension yourself open a sip do it don't put it off get a will again procrastination georgie's smiling here this is something i didn't do for way longer than i should have done it if you have children financial dependence long-term partner you need a will otherwise if you die the intestacy rules decide where your money and your assets go and that might not be where you want it to go and you might leave those people i just mentioned somewhat in the lurch uh again i i had kids for quite a few years before i did my will uh once i'd finally done it it was great because now i've got a will and it's sorted so do that and then finally lasting power of attorney the thing that the spoiler alert was about lasting power of attorney is something that we think of old people needing and it's the classic kind of you get someone in their 60s 70s 80s to do it because if they're incapacitated it allows someone else to act for them either financially or on health matters and there's two different types of lasting power of attorney one for money and property one for health matters this is a obviously a financial podcast so we're going to focus on the financial one but the health one's important too but this lets you appoint a trusted person to take control of your affairs if you're unable to do so so that could be through illness accident or another event that incapacitates you now i think everyone should have one of these certainly everyone who was on the list before that i mentioned about wills if you've got a financial dependent a long-term partner children then you need a lasting power of attorney because you think about it you've got a will in case you die like to help those people out but you're probably it's probably statistically more likely if you're younger that you could end up in a terrible accident that incapacitates you than actually kills you and is your family going to be able to get at the money that they need or make the financial decisions they need deal with the mortgage deal with something to do with the property if something really bad happens to you and you're lying in that hospital bed if not if not if everything isn't in joint names and your partner's able to access that you need a lasting power of attorney you can do this yourself at gov.uk forward slash power hyphen of hyphen attorney and there's guides to all of this stuff there's links in my column to all of this stuff on the website so just go to thisismoney.co.uk look up the column and you'll basically find the helpful advice that will enable you to act on these seven steps and my final point on these seven steps is right you could theoretically knock these all off in a month like as in either doing them or getting started on them clearly you can't clear your debts in a month or build a rainy day fund in a month but you could get started on it so do it before the end of January.

12:22Simon Lambert: Thank you very much, Simon.

12:24Lee Boyce: I can see from the person's perspective that bar the power of attorney, that was a bit of a surprise for me, but I agree with you a hundred percent. A lot of those things are, you know, especially listeners to this show will be very aware of what to do. The problem is lots of us don't do it. This is where I absolutely disagree with the gentleman. And I do think it is a lot harder when we're older. We have less time. We have more responsibilities. It's not just us, but also certainly I didn't have as much money in my 20s. So I had to think about it a lot more. And then you get lifestyle creep when you're older.

12:58Lee Boyce: And we've spoken about that before. So the thing that I would add, and I've been jotting down, Simon, and this is something that slightly annoys me about finance, is that it's almost this one size fits all. If anyone has a problem with money, it's clearly because they're in debt. It's not. I mean, it might be that you're incredibly tight and it's ruining your chance of having any fun in life. There's lots of different reasons why people have an issue with money. So the first thing I've said is write lists. And then I wrote a list. I'm a big list writer. Like when we spoke earlier, do we have resolutions or do we have intentions?

13:30Lee Boyce: Well, it depends on the type of person you are and what works for you. So figure out what works for you. Be positive. I'm a big fan of things like downloading banking apps. Having notifications come up on your phone when you spend money just engages your brain a little bit more with your with your bank and with your finances. Set up direct debits. Know yourself. If you're someone who's pretty lazy, who procrastinates, make it easy. Cut out the friction for yourself. And I've also written here, think about death. Famously, my other half at Christmas gave me a present. It was a book that said, now it's your problem where I can fill in all the things about my death that I want to do.

14:08Lee Boyce: I mean, that's how much I talk about it, as you know, and as people to the podcast know because I was badgering you for feels like years Simon to get a will so that's what I would do basically and then I would read I would listen I would watch I would immerse myself in finance and the greatest thing I could ever say to people is have perspective think about where you were last year think about where you were the year before if you've moved forward great let it motivate you if you're not where you are change it anyway Lee what are your tips well where am I

14:38Georgie Frost: going to get any tips in from you two's absolute kind of like mega budget i mean yeah i don't know what else i can add to that i mean a few things i would say is you know as simon touched on you've just got to get on with it and one thing that i've definitely found helps uh you know for our household budgeting is having a january audit where it's boring wife hates me for it but we sit down for a little while we look at how investment pots have grown how savings pots have grown what's left on the mortgage uh i call it the sort of like finances mot in the house just to see where we're at and making sure we know we're on top of of what's where um i just find that quite quite a useful experience and the other thing about budgeting is and you won't be shocked to hear hear that and you touched on it there about you know keeping on touch with with notifications i don't have those notifications on my phone because the last thing i want is more notifications on my phone about anything uh so i do budget quite strongly with cash uh always have done probably always will do uh and there was some data out recently suggesting that cash use is is holding firm uh last year and actually it pinpointed essex and east angular which made me laugh quite a bit um as places where where cash use is still quite strong and i do i still withdraw a couple hundred pounds on payday i stick it in my wallet and it's for my kind of like knowing that i'm not just like mindlessly tapping uh but of course it gets more and more difficult each year because not everywhere accepts cash uh and especially for things like buying a coffee it's quite typically especially the big chains that just don't accept cash anymore yeah i find that helps and then and then a couple of other things i think again my wife hates me for this

16:20Lee Boyce: but i'm just going to tell you anyway um never change this is changing into more like money

16:26Georgie Frost: saving but um the the most important thing in the kitchen is the scales i weigh out everything that i cook so pasta rice everything so there's zero waste and i don't overeat um and i've reckon that i couldn't put a number on it but i reckon that saves us quite a lot of money over the course of the of the year and you know my last tip is going to be if you are looking to build that 1000 pound pot and you're struggling to find the kind of money to be able to do that buy buy and sell your way into making it make it a little money making hobby try and make 100 pounds a month by going into a charity shop finding something and flipping it uh for some cash or a car boot sale or whatever your poison of choice is it's actually easier than you think and it becomes quite addictive and it's quite a quite a good way to build up a pot of cash please write an article

17:14Lee Boyce: please do some sort of scientific research about how much you think you have saved you can just do over a month then we can extrapolate it like every good uh research article does yeah i have two more points to this one lee when you're doing your calculations often i overcook so that i save it for the next day therefore i do not have to use the same amount of energy you see i still yeah i

17:38Georgie Frost: still measure that for the next day as well all right okay right rice for a portion for that night and a portion for the next night. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Otherwise, you're wasting money turning on the gas again. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

17:49Lee Boyce: Big oversight there by me. I should have known that you would know that. Forgive me, Lee. The other thing that I've... Going back to the point I made about some people are overspenders, some people are underspenders. Whatever you spend your money on, think about what gives you value. That's all I'll say.

18:05Simon Lambert: I think that's really important because you don't want to have a completely joyless life where you're trying not to spend any money whatsoever. Or you could do that if you wanted to. But for most people, that isn't what they want to do. Personally, that's not what I want to do. But just make sure what you spend your money on counts. That's the important thing to me, is getting the best for the money that I'm spending.

18:24Lee Boyce: Let's put this to one side for now. Any ideas? Let us know. Now, could the government be about to perform another U-turn? Pub owners are warning that a steep rising costs that are coming their way in April, with several changes all landing at once, for many locals could be the final straw. Now, the biggest issue is changes to business rates. It seems that ministers agree. And so the Treasury is reportedly putting together a pub specific package to help out. But isn't the whole system right for change? So before we dig into the details of the pubs, what are business rates and what's changing? Right.

19:04Simon Lambert: So business rates are essentially the property tax that businesses pay. It's what they pay instead of council tax. And there's two elements to it. There is the rateable value of their property. And then there is a multiplier. The rateable value of the property is decided by the valuations office and it's revised every so often. And then based on that rateable value and the type of business they are, they have a multiplier, which is measured in pence, and you times that by the rateable value. So under the current system, there is two sets of businesses premises effectively. The multiplier depends on whether you are judged to be a small business or not.

19:53Simon Lambert: and the level for being a small business is below 51 000 pounds above that you pay the standard rate of business rates but also under the new system there's going to be higher business rates for businesses with a rateable value of more than 500 000 pounds these define the two multipliers so you've got the small business multiplier which is currently 49p and the standard multiplier which is 55.5 p that's for the above 500 000 properties and you take your rateable value which for example for my local pub i looked this up yesterday you can actually look this up yourself uh for the april 2023 rateable value was 29 000 pounds so they would take 29 000 pounds and they times it by the small business multiplier which is 49p that's changing and what is going to happen instead is that there are going to be different multipliers based on the type of business you are so there's going to be a retail hospitality multiplier which if you qualify for that you have a lower multiplier again it's still going to be done on the rateable value which is there's going to be a higher one above 51 000 pounds and a lower one below 51 000 pounds um and you're also going to have like much larger rateable values above 500 000 pounds um so that's but what's also happened is there's been a change in the valuations on properties so they've been revised from april 2026 and that's based on what the property would rent for uh april 2024 whereas the one they're using at the moment is based on what the property would rent for in April 2021.

21:38Simon Lambert: Now, obviously, retail businesses, hospitality businesses, rented for much lower amounts in the middle of the pandemic than they did in 2024. So those rateable values have all gone up. So the problem that's happened is in the budget, the Chancellor announced this new business rate scheme, which involved lower multipliers for businesses. And it sounded like good news. And there was this big package that they brought out to support them. And they made this big song to dance about it but what also happened was there was a revaluation that means the rateable values has gone up by a lot and what that ultimately means is that pubs for example are going to end up paying a lot more it's capped in the first year a maximum of 15 but then in the second year it could be 48 on average it's going to be 48 more and in the third year pubs are going to be paying on average 75 % more in business rates.

22:34Lee Boyce: Wow, Simon, that is huge. And I understand that at the end of March, they had that COVID relief package, didn't they, of 40%. And that is ending. It started at 75%, I think, straight after the pandemic, and that is disappearing.

22:51Simon Lambert: So that's the other really important thing to note. Pubs have been benefiting from this 40 % discount on their total rates bill and actually until april the start of this tax year that was actually 75 so they're going to see a massive jump from where they were to where they will be at the same time as all of their other costs have gone up and it i've i ran the numbers actually for my local pub okay which it's april 2023 rateable value was 29 000 pounds uh it's april 2026 rateable value will be 38 500 pounds so when you take into account the fact that the 29 000 was the multiplier was 49.9 p that would have given business annual business rates of 14 471 pounds but they have been getting a 40 discount on that so that takes it down to 8 683 under the new system their bill would be 14 707 pounds so that would be 6024 pounds more so when landlords are saying we're getting totally screwed by this those are the numbers

24:04Lee Boyce: that's why they're saying it and also lee it's been i mean generally it's it's a bit of a rough time for for pubs of course they had the national insurance rates go up last year energy bills are still high costs are still high generally consumer habits are changing apparently gen z are all drinking green juices now it's a tough time the price of a pint as you mentioned the other day

24:28Georgie Frost: is well over a fiver yeah it's a tough time for pubs georgia i really do fear i fear for the hospitality industry in general uh rising costs all coming from all over the shop and actually i wrote about this uh just before christmas i went and visited the town that i grew up in hadn't been there for quite a long time had quite a few pubs there half of them are closed down which was quite a sad sight to see a couple of them have been turned into flats one of them apparently had been turned into a sort of bed sit a sort of halfway house it was quite quite depressing to see but you're right you know shifting habits people don't typically depend on where you are and who you are aren't going to the pub as much and it's making it difficult and it is a little bit feels a little bit like survival of the fittest and this is just like another nail being into them there were some figures that were being banded about before christmas about what these changes were going to do you know to the pub industry and basically suggesting that bills for the average pub was going we're going to be going up 65 percent um i mean that's an incredible amount to kind of stomach um with all of the pressures that you've just mentioned um i hope one thing that could another route that could be brewing off the back of all of this though is the fact that this sounds like what they're doing is going to be pub specific but you ask any small or local business yeah you know they're also in a similar boat um you know and is it fair that we're just focusing on one bit of the industry because perhaps you know some labor mps and counselors were a bit upset that they couldn't get into the pub over christmas because they weren't welcome there um i think we've all seen those stickers that went up basically banned them from the pub and it just feels like one of those things where i think that some backbenchers and and other people probably warned about potential changes and what you know pubs do for the local community and what a hospitality industry means for this country and they are just being clobbered by higher bills and then you know households are not to tie for the same brush but you know struggling to make ends meet and you're right we've had some mixed retail kind of results this week associated british foods which is primark owner was warning that you know people aren't spending as much greg's warning that people weren't spending as much tesco boss sainsbury's boss saying people are tightening their belts you know it's kind of difficult to keep these pubs going and it feels like it could have been avoided and now here we are another u-turn and this one's a very quick u-turn after the budget i mean rachel reeves said that she almost didn't realise that this is what would happen to pubs because it was a bit of a devil in the detail.

27:10Georgie Frost: Who is doing their numbers?

27:12Lee Boyce: But Lee, I mean, you mentioned it there. It's not just pubs yet. This looks to be a pub specific package and you've got plenty of small businesses and we haven't even mentioned online and Amazon. They'll be looking over there and thinking,

27:22Georgie Frost: hang on a minute, tax them, not us. Like I said, there was a quote here from Andrew Goodacre, who's the chief executive of the British Independent Retailers Association. And he said, it's an absolute scandal if it's just pubs. Small retailers face exactly the same challenges. If they just want shops to waste away and die, they are working towards it. I mean, that is a pretty punchy, powerful statement.

27:48Lee Boyce: And even the pubs, it is, and even the pubs-specific package, some of the suggestions are just extending the COVID relief by a little bit longer. Look, Simon, I asked it before. Or is it time the whole system was ripe for change?

28:03Simon Lambert: Yes, it is. And broadly speaking, that's what a lot of people were saying. And Labour did actually put in their manifesto that they were going to reform the business rate system and make it better for people. And Rachel Reeves stood up in the budget and said that that was what she was doing, that she was helping small business and in particular that she was helping hospitality. The issue is, is that it then emerged very soon after the budget, you know, as in that late to that day, the day after that this wasn't the case at all. And that whilst she was giving with one hand in a way, she was taking away with the other.

28:39now hospitality businesses did get a 5p discount um on the business rate so but they were expecting

28:48Simon Lambert: to potentially get as much as 20p so there was an expectation that they would be dealt a better hand but the problem is as i said you then had this re-rating of their rateable values combined with as you pointed out the removal of the covid era discounts which had already been cut substantially and the problem is is under normal circumstances you know maybe they could take this one on the chin because they have put a support package in place they have capped out hit them in year one but it's going to hit them really hard in year two it's going to hit them very hard in year three but these businesses are already massively suffering from very high costs they you know wages are a larger part of their costs than other businesses and they have more people on the minimum wage so the rise in minimum wage is a problem employer national insurance is a problem but then they're also dealing with you know food inflation i've got other taxes as well that they're they're dealing with and other costs that they're dealing with they've got other inflation going on you can only charge people so much more you know for food or beer the customers before they stop coming but energy costs is something that they've been dealing with for the last five years like energy costs have doubled and the problem is is that although this feels like a relatively swift u-turn by this government you know by its standards of leaving stuff to fester such as you know winter fuel payments etc actually they left it way too long you know we were writing about this the day after okay you know big shout out to one of our business reporters That's Emily Hawkins, who's been on this from day one.

30:32Simon Lambert: Right. OK. And they've left it. You know, what are we for? How long are we from the budget now? Six weeks? You know, it's got to the point where pubs are banning Labour MPs and talking about going on a strike, a pub strike in January. Hey, I mean, that's really going to resonate. But it's an example of something we talked about in the end of year podcast is the not listening. they didn't listen before the budget it looks like this was rushed it looks like it wasn't done properly and you get away with doing that once you can't get away with continually doing that and this is not the first time it's looked like something has been rushed and not thought out properly but then you've got to listen and the problem is is they just didn't listen they just went no no we gave you a good we gave you a good deal they just stuck to the party line and the party line wasn't the case it wasn't true they hadn't given them a bit a good deal there was genuinely a problem they could have nipped this in the bud in the week after the budget and then it wouldn't have been anywhere near as damaging as it has been and the damage isn't just what's been done with the uncertainty and the problem and everything over the last six weeks the damage is also when you've got pubs closing down as you do at the moment because people are saying it's not worth me doing it anymore and this is not entirely the government's fault and the fault of inflation some of this is down to the big pub companies and the way pubs operate in this country and the way big pub companies are unwilling to budge on what they're charging their own tenants and the people leasing their pubs and therefore they're not taking into account the fact that the market has changed and that people are making way for thin margins and some of these people who are making way for thin margins or losing money are saying i'm walking away from this but the big problem is is what this is damaging is the chance of somebody else stepping in and taking on that pub because if you were a wannabe landlord or a successful landlord at the moment you know a publican who's and you wouldn't think do you know what that pub's come up in my local area i'm going to try and take that one on because i reckon i could do well there you just go i am not signing up to any more of this and that That, I think, is the real problem that we've got going on here.

32:47Simon Lambert: And, yeah, they've totally missed the opportunity to help out a sector. The whole thing has backfired really badly. And then, as Lee pointed out, it's now spreading. You've got retail going, well, hang on a minute. What about us? I mean, some of the hardest hit by this is hotels. We're not talking about hotels at the moment, but hotels apparently are going to get absolutely hammered on the business rates. And yes, so I think we do need to, you know, totally overhaul the system. There's even people saying, well, maybe pubs just shouldn't pay business rates. Now, that sounds quite dramatic, but maybe we do need to think of something like totally radical.

33:25Simon Lambert: I think what we need to do is we need to think about what we want and where we want to get to and what we value. And are independent retailers important? Are independent restaurants important? Are pubs important? Are independent businesses important? Do we want to back small business and not just fall into this sort of, you know, corporate hegemonomy of like everything being the same kind of thing? And if we do, then maybe we do need to come up with some policies that do give small independent businesses genuinely a much better deal and a leg up because they are going up against corporations that make billions of pounds a year.

34:13Simon Lambert: That's it for part one.

34:19Simon Lambert: i'm joined now by rob morgan for our weekly investing explained feature a man so dedicated to helping you understand your finances that he is recording from a camper van because he has no power no wi-fi or anything at his home and has decamped somewhere else rob welcome to the podcast Thanks so much, Simon. We've got a question here from a listener. I would like to start investing this year. How much do I need to get started? And what is an easy way to do it? There are a great many investment options, and that can seem really confusing,

34:57Lee Boyce: but it doesn't have to be complex. Using an investment platform, such as Charles Stanley Direct, I would highlight two simple options to get started. Firstly, a global tracker fund or global ETF or exchange traded fund. And these invest your money across the globe in different share markets. A big portion of that is the US because of its size, but you do get the instant diversification of investing in lots and lots of different companies in a single investment. The second simple option is a multi-asset fund, which as the name suggests, invest across different asset types, not just shares. Depending on the fund, there could be bonds, which tend to offer something different to the share markets, as well as other areas such such as property assets or alternative investments such as gold.

35:40Lee Boyce: And the idea with these funds is that you're not taking as much risk as a pure share market fund, such as Global Tracker, as each component performs differently, so you get a smoother ride. However, multi-asset funds do vary in terms of how much risk they take, so you need to be careful to select the right one for your needs.

35:58Simon Lambert: Rob, thank you very much. Thank you, Simon.

36:01Lee Boyce: Welcome back. So, bad news to British pubs, bad news to small businesses, But good news for UK banks. This week, shares in Lloyds rose past 100 pence for the first time since the 2008 global financial crisis. Barclays saw their shares up more than 80 % in the last year, while NatWest Group hit a 52-week high for their shares. Now, analysts at investment bank Jefferies believe valuations for UK bank shares have considerable scope, Simon, to rise further in 2026. do we all rush out and buy, buy, buy? Firstly, the overall picture of the UK banking shares and sector.

36:37Simon Lambert: I mean, I would say rush out and buy, buy, buy, if I wasn't someone who's been sitting on some Lloyd's shares since Jesus was a boy, waiting for them to go up. I was looking up the last time I wrote about holding onto them, and it was 2019. And that was after I'd written about holding onto them in 2014. And I'd written about holding onto them before then. And I've been thinking they could hit 100p for a long time. If I'd have put my money I put into Lloyd's shares somewhere else, I would have made that gain a long time ago, to be perfectly honest. I hold Lloyd's shares because I was a Halifax member when it demutualized.

37:14Simon Lambert: And I was just old enough to get free shares in Halifax when it went from being a building society to a bank. And then I had HBOS shares, and then HBOS collapsed in the financial crisis, had a rushed arranged marriage with Lloyd's there was a massively discounted rights issue I thought well you know what these bank shares can't get any cheaper I might as well buy some more so I bought some more and then there was another massively discounted rights issue so I bought a few more that I was allowed to buy and then I sat on them thinking these bank shares can't possibly get any cheaper and they possibly did get cheaper at times I've been not paid to wait because the dividend was cancelled after the financial crisis i've been paid to wait because the dividend came back i've been not paid to wait because the dividend was cancelled during covid i've been paid to wait again and finally this week i got there my lloyd's shares hit 100p do you know what i should have done with them sold them straight away i don't care how high they go i should have just got rid of them good riddance to just not bad rubbish but just stuff that you've held on to for too long yeah anyway they're still sat there because unfortunately they're old like paper shares and so they're not in a share dealing account so selling them would be too much of an effort and also as i explained earlier i'm a massive procrastinator so ask me

38:35Lee Boyce: again in 10 years we'll see where we are yeah we'll see so what are jeffries saying yeah so

38:40Georgie Frost: investment bank jeffries is saying that uk bank shares have considerable scope to rise further in 2026 uh it put out some research earlier this week um basically saying that bank stocks made up a big part of the footsie's uh rally last year so footsie 100 uh went up a fair amount last year um and the banking sector britain's banking sector counted for 40 percent of the rise um amongst the the rises in that hsbc which is very asia focused but it was up 318 points we had Barclays and Lois we were just talking about also rising. Barclays was up 80 % in the last year. NatWest shares hit a 52 week high on Tuesday.

39:25Georgie Frost: They've been rising, bank shares have been rising and I think there's quite a lot of people that are probably in a similar boat to Simon have held on to bank shares or bought bank shares after a financial crisis thinking they can't get any cheaper than this and have been long waiting for banks to rise again and go higher and then cash out. But as Simon points out, he probably would have been in a better place putting the money somewhere else. But when you've got old paper shares like that, there's a lot of effort to go and cash them in. But one of the big reasons why banks are soaring and doing well is higher interest rates.

40:01Georgie Frost: They are key and they're able to charge more in lines while they've been keeping savings rates low and it's boosted profit sharply. we've spoken about this numerous times and written about this numerous times that the amount that they're making uh is is vast um so jeffrey's has upped its price target uh on some of these banks so for barkley's is upped its price target 19 to 560p lloyd's by 13 to 119p and that west by 14 to 720p um and there's some other smaller banks around um that it's got buy recommendations on as well paragon bank osb group um they're targeting much higher returns than what they were previously forecasting and the weighting that these banks now have on the ftse 100 has has risen uh compared to where it was at before so the weighting at the start of 2025 so the percentage the banks made up of the FTSE 100 is 13.1 percent at the start of 2026 it's at 17.3 percent showing you know just how well that they how well they're doing so basically what you're saying is interest rates mean they can charge us more when we borrow for them and they've not giving us as

41:17Lee Boyce: much in savings rate brilliant brilliant yeah the gap between the two is where they're making a lot

41:22Georgie Frost: of their money Georgie is and you know some of the banks are obviously better than others you You only have to sweep around and look at what the savings rates are on offer at banks and compare them to what they're offering for mortgage borrowers, including first-time buyers. And if you're in a fortunate position of having 40 % equity or more, the gap is big. And I make billions of pounds from that. And that's why we always hammer home the message of it's a two-pointed argument, really. two-pronged argument is you move your money to earn more interest for yourself but also move move your money so you're not just letting big banks cream massive products because why should we

42:03Lee Boyce: absolutely right um well actually why should we simon is there any link to uk banks doing well

42:09Simon Lambert: and the uk economy doing well there is quite a strong link between the uk economy and uk banks They're very connected to the consumer economy, but it depends which bank you're talking about. Lloyd's and NatWest, much more directly connected to the consumer economy. Some of the smaller banks as well. Some of the mega banks like Barclays and HSBC are much more globally focused and investment banking plays a major part there. The thing to think about with bank shares as well is also that sentiment has changed or is changing on them. banks have been unloved since the financial crisis banks have look very different to how they did after the financial crisis and they look very different to how they did before the financial crisis both in terms of their balance sheets their finances but also the way that they make money so they don't make the kind of money they made in the mad years before the financial crisis but they're also much more robust businesses and over the past year investors have started to look banks much more favorably um certainly uh in the uk but also in the us the question is is that something that's run its course or is that something that's going to continue now arguably probably your average investor is pretty anti-bank but if they keep seeing bank shares going up they might become more pro-bank and more interested in bank shares i certainly know from the past that investors were at one point very very interested in bank shares and that was when bank shares were going up a lot it's funny how people get interested in shares that are going up a lot isn't it at that point you're starting to trade sentiment not fundamentals so you need to be a little bit careful about what you're doing but that could potentially mean that the

43:57Lee Boyce: tailwind behind bank shares does continue all right then lee i'm going to stick with banks for a short while because we know banks have plenty of cash because they're splashing it about to get us to join them there's some hefty switching bonuses being offered lloyd's hsbc tell us about them

44:14Georgie Frost: yeah i'll quickly rattle through this so lloyd's has come out with a 250 pound current account switching offer that runs until early february you'll need to use the official current account switching service through the apple online to get this um it's for its club lloyd's account club lloyd's has a five pound monthly fee uh but it's refunded each month you pay in two thousand pounds or more the idea of that being that you're going to use this as your main account that you get your salary paid into and not just switch a secondary account to it and milk that 250 quid the switching bonus the account has no fees on debit cards brand abroad and it comes with either disney subscription cinema tickets coffee club and gourmet society membership or an annual magazine subscription um the 250 quid switch also includes its um silver and platinum club lloyds uh silver is 11 pound 50 a month platinum is 22 pound 50 a month both of those are reduced by five pounds a month if that two thousand pounds is paid in essentially silver is the same as club lloyds it's five pound offer except you get european family travel insurance aa breakdown cover and mobile phone insurance platinum is the same but with worldwide travel insurance it does offer some good rates it's a mortgage rates that club lloyds are offering at the moment amongst the best so if you are a club lloyds customer you will have access to them it also has a very good regular saver which is 6.25 the reason why it's good uh is the fact that you could put up to 400 quid a month in it which is quite generous for a regular saver it also offers interest on balances between one four grand uh which is one and a half percent but it's dropping to 0.75 at the end of march and for balances between four and five grand get three percent it's a better deal uh you know a better cash carrot than what's on offer from elsewhere santander i've got 200 quid offer a nationwide first direct offering 175 pounds i think the reason lloyd has gone 250 on this is that we're a bit of bank switching fatigue i think that people are you know 150 quid ain't cutting it anymore 175 quid kind of cutting it a little bit 200 pounds that sounds good 250 quid well yeah okay now we're getting into real chunky amounts of money and the payments meant to come within 30 days of switching the reason that banks do this is of course they want your custom they want to cross sell you other products they want to make money from you um go back to the conversation we just had five minutes ago um the other the other one is interesting uh actually and i think we touched on this maybe in the summer there's been a bit of a battle for wealthier customers between banks um so i always think of banking and current accounts in sort of three tiers right you've got you usual regular folk like us um 95 of the population probably 90 95 of the population with just your run of the mill current accounts that you can go and open then there's a little slither above that another tier which are these premier bank accounts that some of the big boys offer and then you've got your top tier 0.1 percent of people you know your coots and that kind of thing you've got to be a millionaire to get this is a kind of middle ground that i'm about to talk about here so hsbc is offering 750 pounds uh to become a premier bank customer now to be a premier bank customer you need to have at least a hundred thousand pounds into in an account either in savings or an investment that's a big big amount of money so you'll get 250 000 pounds if you're earning 100 000 pounds or more in the salary according to hsbc in this deal and you'll get another 500 quid if you transfer 100 000 pounds or more into a savings account or an investment account that's a big big leap um when you think about the savings rates that are on offer at hsbc because it's premier savings rates you might think well this is going to unlock some absolutely incredible savings rates it does not the premier savings rates are absolute trash so do not move thinking you're going to get a better savings rate because you're a premier customer absolutely rubbish um you can get an online bonus saver with hsbc at three and a half percent but you don't actually need to be a premier customer to get that um so it's a massive decision to make but lloyd's launched a premier account last year barkis has got one if you are someone that you know does have a hundred thousand pounds or more it is worth having a look around at these uh bank accounts because they do offer you other little perks and bits and bobs as well so for the hsbc one for example you get worldwide uh family travel insurance could be well worth it you know if you are someone that travels abroad quite a lot other than that i would have a real serious think about that the hsbc premier savings interest rate 1.8 on balances of a hundred thousand pounds plus That's, I mean...

48:54Georgie Frost: You're not a fan of that, Lee? That does not feel very premier to me, Georgie Frost. That does not feel very premium product. No, that feels like a trap. That feels like nonsense. You aren't treating me as a kind of premier customer. As a premier person. Yeah, offering me rubbish like that, if I'm being honest.

49:13Simon Lambert: I would ask myself the question, why does HSBC want to give me£750 for opening a bank account? is it because hsbc has suddenly developed a new year streak of altruism or is it because hsbc thinks it can make more than 750 pounds off of me i think it's probably option b i'm not saying that this isn't a good deal i think that you could potentially make this a good deal for yourself because ultimately they'll give you 750 pounds but you need to structure this in a way that it is a good deal for you not for hsbc so you need to make sure that you make the most of it and you use all the bells and whistles that you possibly can and you will benefit from it and then you incur minimal costs elsewhere now one of the reasons why hsbc wants to pay 750 pounds is because it can then try and sell you other stuff as well it might not just be making money out of you on the bank account probably isn't but it can try and sell you its other products i would advise everyone to shop around for the best possible products from any possible provider whenever they're doing anything.

50:17Simon Lambert: If you do that, then maybe the HSBC deal is a really good one. And the same goes for any of these bank account offers where they're offering to pay you money to join. I would ask myself the question, why are they doing this? And then make it work for me, not for them. All right.

50:32Lee Boyce: Finally, as temperatures drop, energy bills set to rise as we desperately try to keep warm. But not for tens of thousands of people who live in so-called zero bills homes. These households are so well equipped with energy efficiency measures, they don't need to pay a penny for gas or electricity, even in extreme weather. It sounds ideal, doesn't it? Pay a penny for gas and electricity. How do you create a zero bill home? And I suppose importantly, how much will it cost you to do so? So therefore, how long will it take you to recoup that money and start actually kind of paying zero bills?

51:08Georgie Frost: okay zero bills house the latest buzz term i would say that's been floating around and been everywhere and there was this whole rumor about if you've got a traditional gas boiler you're going to be charged a new levy um under ed miller band apparently you know they've denied this but you can see how something like this could unfold um it's all in a push to try and get more households to have heat pumps solar panels and battery storage in order to basically be in control more in control of your bill so obviously it was not that long ago when the energy crisis erupted we saw our energy bills go through the absolute roof and a lot was kind of made of britain's energy security and how you know where our gas is coming from our reliance on gas and how our energy is produced uh and you know are we do we have enough resources to keep all the lights on is essentially what it comes down to so what the government wants to do and i don't think this is a bad idea whatsoever really is encourage more uh uptake especially on something like solar panels um but again solar panels is expensive and a really expensive element to that is battery storage and having battery storage is a pretty crucial element of having solar panels in order to completely benefit and keep them as efficient as possible now we crunched the figures on this homes come in all shapes and sizes of course but as a rule of thumb we discovered that households that install install a heat pump solar panels and battery have to wait around about 20 years before they're better off due to astronomical upfront costs now that's a real rule of thumb it will be different uh for different homes um and a lot of it will depend on whether you qualify for certain grants and there's talk around new grants inbound for you know us being able to improve the energy efficiency of our home one of the big companies that are leading this trend is octopus energy um it's spoken a lot about zero bills and it's zero bills tariff which launched in 2022 under the scheme customers living in homes equipped with green technology are guaranteed to face no energy bills for a minimum of five years if you qualify for that and it's aiming to deliver a hundred thousand zero bills homes by 2030 however a lot of our housing stock is old it's poorly insulated and it's going to be very difficult to adapt those types of home into one that's going to be zero bills more modern homes you've got a better chance and new builds are being built in a way in which rightly we are thinking about how energy efficient they are and keep trying to keep bills down as small as possible so we're not in the same situation in which we are facing three four thousand pound annual bills a spike in bills that came very quickly and hit people very hard um and i think that's a not a bad thing uh to do but you start looking at the figures on some of this um you know gas gas boilers are popular for a reason you know they work well um they the central heating aspects of it you know on the whole works well for most homes but it's how we get the gas and where where it comes from that the issue is and then you look at the figures around installing a heat pump and i think a lot of people are against heat pumps they're worried about the noise they're worried about the size they're worried about the upheaval it might quality of heating i've heard the quality of heating all of these things and a heat pump typically costs 11 grand uh but you can get a seven and a half thousand pound rebate via the government's boiler upgrade scheme taking the cost of that three and a half grand solar panels and batteries set you back£8 ,123 on average again that varies if you are interested in doing it the first port of call I would make is your energy supplier to find out whether they can help you do this help you achieve this what helps on offer and a lot of them are helpful in doing this and kind of unlocking your home's potential to make it more energy efficient.

55:22Georgie Frost: I think it's unrealistic to think that all the homes in Britain can become zero-bills homes. I think it's just an impossible task. But the more we can do to reduce that outlay, the better. And surely, as time goes on, technology improves, the cost of certain equipment and this technology reduces. And again, I know Octopus has been a massive advocate in this area uh you know attempting to create things that make it easier and cheaper for us to to do this around the home but you know for example before you plow into solar panels you know i would ask neighbors who've got solar panels how do they work how much are they saving you etc etc look at where they could potentially go best on your house obviously a south facing garden uh probably the ideal place to put your solar panels but i would just speak to people that have experience in it and see if they can get you to talk you into it rather than just going from a viewpoint of i ain't doing that that sounds expensive you know etc etc i would have a real kind of chat with people that are in the know that have had this done how it works and whether it's a worthwhile endeavor and i'd watch this space because i think the government is is kind of working towards um you know more grants and getting the ball rolling into the head in hands moments more grants um get ready for a bombardment of flyers through the letterbox from solar panel installers etc but it's an interesting it's an interesting concept georgia and i think that you know as i say anything that we can do to reduce our energy bills if that means a 20 reduction on your bills or 50 reduction on your bills and it and it calculates with the outlay um working out how many years that's going to pay for itself it puts you in a quite good position

57:18Lee Boyce: to make a decision whether it's worth it or not yeah it just seems to be that you probably won't reap the benefits if it takes quite so long however we might get to a stage where eventually the houses that you buy will start paying for themselves. You never know. Simon, start of the week.

57:37Simon Lambert: One million pounds. That is the amount that Ryanair boss Michael O 'Leary says senior politicians should be paid in order to solve, I quote, a fundamental problem with the talent in politics. uh in the in an interview with the ft the ryan air boss said i think we need to reward our politicians much better but that's political suicide to say so so he said it instead so that politicians don't have to do it he said if you're a prime minister or a cabinet minister you should be paid one million pounds a year interesting thought no politically it's not going to work

58:25Lee Boyce: But I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea to pay them all. The only problem is it would sort of imply that every person that gets paid a million pounds plus does a really good job. And I'll be honest with you, Simon, we've discussed on this podcast plenty of people who don't.

58:39Simon Lambert: I mean, the actual cost of this on an annual basis compared to the amount of money that we spend as a country would be minimal. So you could make it that they didn't accrue any of their very good pension off the back of their million pound a year. I mean you know how many people we're talking about here 12 is it you know you wouldn't need to go long more than 12 would you maybe the cabinet might be bigger than that I don't know but um you know you could pay like the top 10 or 12 people million pound a year be only 10 or 12 million pound a year I mean that's a lot of money to you or me it's not a lot of money to a country that spends in the billions regularly yeah is it you know actually the cost of it would be relatively minimal who knows i mean it could be like maybe they're like you know it could be like football managers they're there for a fixed contract actually don't make them really you just spend loads of money sacking them wouldn't we sorry exactly i'm going to retract the last statement i made which is terrible idea completely stupid and and then we'd fall into a position where we were poaching france's defense minister or germany's housing minister or something like that yeah scrap that for the end of the season he's running venezuela georgie he's running no no you saw that same meme all right don't make you like football managers but maybe do pay them

59:59Lee Boyce: a million pounds a year all right that is it you can keep up today with all the latest breaking money news just go to this is money.co.uk or download the app and if you have any comments or questions team anything you'd like them to look into simon you can email us at podcast at

1:00:14Simon Lambert: thisismoney.co.uk and you can come to thisismoney.co.uk forward slash podcasts find all podcasts past and join in the debate and read the comments and if you like our podcast why not rate

1:00:25Lee Boyce: us wherever you found us it helps other people find us too