What does the Middle East conflict mean for your money?

0:02Lee Boyce: Welcome to This Is Money podcast sponsored by Trading 212. I'm Georgie Frost and joining me and Lee Boyce today is Helen Crane. And coming up, how the Iranian conflict will affect your finances, from investments, energy bills and mortgages to prices at the pumps and at your local supermarket. Also today, growth downgraded, unemployment rising, borrowing falling. But with events across the Middle East, will the outlook delivered in this week's spring statement already be out of date? and some lighter news. Thankfully, as the cash ice race heats up, Lee will give us the best deals around. Don't forget you start up today with all the latest breaking money news.

0:37Lee Boyce: Just go to thisismoney.co.uk or download the app. But first, there are fears that the conflict in Iran could cause a new cost of living crisis. The events might be taking place thousands of miles away, but they've led to a surge in energy prices that could fuel higher inflation and raise interest rates impacting our mortgages. The advice for investors, though, is to keep calm and carry on. Lee, Helen, welcome. It goes without saying, obviously, that war is horrific and it always feels a little bit crass to talk about mortgages, for example, when people are dying and the world feels a very scary place.

1:11Lee Boyce: But this finance podcast and this is an event that is likely to impact in lots of different ways, including Helen getting back from wherever she's been. We'll get onto that in a minute but lee fears of a new cost of living crisis overblown uh georgia i think you

1:29Georgie Frost: were bang on the money there you know we're here in britain you know we largely feel relatively safe i think probably a lot of us have that kind of feeling in the pit of their stomach no this is something like this is unfolding that you can't help shake off um and of course it's worrying times um you know we can't we can't get away from from the obvious now the cost of living spike that could be the result of this i think the one thing i would say is i feel like people are a lot more prepared uh this time around because of the spikes that we had in russia and ukraine i think a lot more people are wised up to the kind of inflation spikes that can happen and how fragile an economy can be so you know something like gas prices going up uh oil tankers are getting stuck in you know straight sort of bodies of water that they can't get through start pushing up oil prices all of that will filter through potentially quite quickly what that will mean is a higher inflation reading and what that will mean is less likelihood of the bank of england acting and cutting rates so we have had a number of base rate cuts um over the last 18 or so months we're down at 3.75 percent on monday morning uh when i got to my desk it was something like it was between 85 and 88 chance and that the bank of england was going to cut rates on the 19th of march that's where we were at that very very likely that interest rates were going to be cut fast forward to the close of play on tuesday that had fallen to 30 percent um so the likelihood now of a rate cut coming in the middle of this month is slimmer and what that means is mortgage rates for example yeah feels a bit crass talking about mortgage rates but it's things that you know impact our finances here in Britain are likely to be going the other direction now rather than falling and what falling mortgage rates have done in the last 12 months for example it's helped more people onto the property ladder the the property market has been moving somewhat and we've seen a couple of lenders this week start to nudge rates up swap rates are going higher but again I think we're a little bit more prepared so we're I think maybe perhaps a few years ago we We might have just buried our head in the sand and gone, perhaps feels like a tomorrow problem.

3:40Georgie Frost: Or, you know, it doesn't really matter. Like, it will just iron out. We had such a short, sharp shock of bill rises, mortgage bill rises, energy bill rises. I think a lot of people at the start of this week would have gone, oh, I better fix my energy. Or go and see what, you know, if you're in the process of buying a house or moving a house or needing a mortgage or remortgaging, quickly go and lock in a fix now.

4:05Lee Boyce: Is there still time for all of those things?

4:08Georgie Frost: Yes and no. Energy bills wise, probably not. It's very likely that at the time we record this, a lot of fixed tariffs have been pulled and there's lots of sneaky traps that are being set by energy firms in terms of exit fees, which makes it a little bit more complicated. But they obviously also, you know, they are businesses. They're not charities at the end of the day, energy companies. So, you know, they have to also act in their own interests and put in kind of, you know, stops to make sure that they're not going to go bust or because the way that it kind of works, the energy market and the way that energy is bought, they have to be careful not to offer too many low cost fixed tariffs in a time where we've seen the price of gas, for example, this week has absolutely skyrocketed again, like it did in the Russia-Ukraine conflict when that erupted.

4:59Georgie Frost: they have to be extremely careful now the one little chink of light of energy bills is that we do have the off gem uh price cap which has already been set for april so between april and july it's already set at a certain level it's actually going to fall so that will give us some certainty until july well you know that's the kind of we're in a sort of warmer months then it's not as critical as it will be towards the end of the year and if you're outside of a fix It could be the bad old days of what we saw before. Mortgage rate wise, it's been less frantic. You know, at the end of the day, everyone needs energy and they need, you know, they're going to pay an energy bill.

5:42Georgie Frost: Mortgages, not everyone has a mortgage. You know, lots of people rent, lots of people mortgage free. And it's a specific set of circumstances when you obviously need a mortgage, buying a house, remortgaging or porting your mortgage or those kind of things or being a first time buyer. It's very likely that if you're in the process of that, you've already locked in something. If you're along the process, it's if your house purchase, for example, gets delayed and it ticks over that six month mark and you've got to go back through the process again and get a new rate. You might be at the mercy of slightly higher rates.

6:15Georgie Frost: But at the moment, as I said, when we were recording this podcast, what rates are nudging higher, but they're not gone up in a shock way like gas prices have. so you like to think that fingers crossed um it won't be as bad and again i think people learn learn a quite a big lesson from previous conflicts potentially fixing for longer having more stability of knowing how much their monthly out outgoings are going to be for their mortgage other people have probably sat around a little bit in recent months because it looks so likely that bank of England base road was going to be coming down and mortgage rates were coming down and actually most of all just like sit on your hands for a bit and then you know something like this erupts and you know everything's back up in the air again so you know it's it's difficult on the energy front but the mortgages front you might be a little bit it's still a bit hard to say and then in terms of petrol prices you know let's get another one I mean we can't forget those bad old days where I mean, they did hit 191 a litre in 2022, and there were queues around the block for people to get petrol.

7:21Lee Boyce: I was in Spain at the time, and it was playing on Spanish national news in a kind of a bit,

7:28Georgie Frost: ah, look at those Brits fighting over petrol in the forecourts. Fuck goodness, what is happening? You know, I'm very much in the mindset, you know, as a journalist, you have to be really careful, don't you? Because you don't want to whip up a frenzy. You don't want to kind of panic people. You don't want people to go off and act uncharacteristically, you know, because, you know, that panic is setting in. You know, the cost of oil has gone up. It's gone up from an average of about$60 to$65 a barrel at the start of this year. And again, you know, this could all change by the time you listen to this podcast.

8:03Georgie Frost: But, you know, we're talking sort of mid 80s. And what that means is petrol prices have been and will be nudging higher in the coming weeks. Actually, we were at a kind of low, you know, for a good three, four year low up to recently hovering around 130. You know, it's probably going to fast be looking at 140, 145, something like that, potentially, if the cost keeps on going up. But who knows? It's such a fast moving thing that's happening. You know, the UK, Russia conflict that kind of erupted in 2022, the pandemic in 2020, you know, different kind of scenario. but it still has that kind of vibe of those things are not that long ago um and we've all kind of kind of got used to a bit of bonkers and the stuff going on around the world that's completely out of our control um and all that we can do is control you know in terms of a financial uh viewpoint and what we can control um and if it is the petrol prices start rising really high again And what can you do?

9:06Georgie Frost: It's not like we can, there's much we can do about it,

9:09Lee Boyce: except try not to panic. Yeah, quite. Well, we'll talk about not panicking. We'll get on to investing in a second. But we are delighted to have Helen here, who's been sort of caught up. So basically, this all picked off over the weekend, last weekend. And I flew out to Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress, the big event all about sort of connectivity and mobile phones and AI and all that jazz. and obviously a lot of people couldn't turn up because lots of flights, particularly from a place like Dubai, were grounded. Helen, you have flown in, especially for the podcast, is that right? You spoke to some people, got a few things moving and just managed to get here in time.

9:47Lee Boyce: Is that what the case was?

9:49Helen Crane: Exactly, Georgie. I've expedited my journey back to the UK. Thank you. No, I mean, I've got to apologise, I think, because there's a high chance I might be chatting some absolute nonsense.

10:00Lee Boyce: um so 48 hours apart for the course for this podcast Ellen don't worry exactly

10:06Helen Crane: so where are we I have to keep having to get my head around what day it is and where I am so 48 hours ago I was in Brisbane in Australia so I've been there for about three weeks on holidays or visiting family traveling around um I was supposed to come back to the UK on Sunday afternoon afternoon australian time but woke up on sunday morning um phones or popping off all this obviously horrible news as you said um again you know the the important thing is i'm i'm safe i'm fine obviously a lot of people in in many worse situations but yeah woke up on sunday morning flight wasn't going so i was spaced to transfer at doha in qatar which obviously is it wasn't wasn't going to happen.

10:53Helen Crane: So I phoned the airline and they said, oh, we'll put you on a flight same time tomorrow, which the fact that I accepted that now seems really silly. But when someone's telling you, oh, yeah, we've got another flight in four hours, you're like, oh, great. Sounds good. Like, well, we'll just hang around till then then. So we did. And then obviously that didn't go either. And we sort of quite quickly realised after that that there weren't any flights going via the Middle East for probably quite some time. So we had to change our plans and essentially fly the other way around the world. So I've been, in the last 24 hours, I have been sitting at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

11:32Helen Crane: Oh, cool. And I'm now at home in South London. I feel like I've just been, I've been all around the world.

11:40Lee Boyce: Literally. You've literally navigated the globe. Oh, goodness me. so you must be feeling splendid right now

11:47Helen Crane: I've had maybe about four hours sleep in that time so I'm feeling exceptional

11:54Lee Boyce: honestly hats off hats off to you for doing it but actually it does bring up some key points around travel at the moment one is travel insurance are you covered in events like this and also if you do have a holiday booked let's say to Dubai what should you be doing now you're presumably not cancelling it yourself if you want your money back. What's the advice?

12:17Helen Crane: That's the thing, you know, it's been really tricky. I've been looking through my travel insurance policy this afternoon and, you know, often things like war and, you know, these kind of terrible disasters like we're going through right now aren't covered because there's a clause saying, you know, this is essentially out of our control. This is a completely unprecedented event. And, you know, we don't cover that as an insurer. That's often the case, but not always the case. So it's definitely worth looking through the small print of the policy you have. So I had a look at mine. And in the list of exclusions, it says war on civil unrest.

12:57Helen Crane: But the condition is that they won't cover you in the case that I'm going to read out directly here in the case that you are direct actively involved in any war, invasion, act to foreign enemy, hostility, civil war, riot, rebellion, revolution, uprising or similar event. But you being actively involved... What, as in you being a militant? Well, exactly.

13:19Lee Boyce: Sorry, genuinely, that's the way that reads to me. Exactly.

13:24Helen Crane: Well, I don't feel like I've been actively involved. So am I covered? Vattered. It sounds like I should be,

13:32Lee Boyce: but I'm quite certain that when I call the insurer,

13:35Helen Crane: they will probably say, you know, this is force majeure, as they like to call it. You know, you aren't, you know, I can assure them I was not, I am not a militant. So, you know, I think it kind of highlights the wording can be so tricky in these policies. And actually, even if I wasn't ruled out by that, another thing that often catches people out is if you have a connecting flight. So obviously going to Australia, my flight was in two halves. and I was also looking in the small print of the policy um it basically says that if the flight that you first missed doesn't land in the UK then that's essentially not covered so I don't know what that would mean would I be able to get money back in conversation for the second half of the flight but not the first half it's all just really confusing and I think people when they book an insurance policy don't have any idea that you know if they have a connecting flight it might not be covered it's the sort of thing that people just don't expect at all you know I think most people would assume if you book a reasonably comprehensive insurance policy you know pay a sort of fair amount for it that it just covers you if something like this goes wrong but actually so often that isn't the case um so I was with a friend for part of the holiday he um yeah came for like the last week or so with us and he hadn't booked travel insurance like me and my boyfriend had because he'd been on a holiday recently where he got his phone stolen and he you know just kind of assumed oh you know something bad's happened to my holiday I spent 40 or 50 quid on insurance policy they'll cover that right and they obviously didn't and he's oh I'm actually just not going to book travel insurance anymore because I thought that when something bad happened to be on holiday they'd cover it and they didn't so I just don't now and I can kind of see yeah because you know I got robbed in Seville I didn't just have one

15:34Lee Boyce: travel insurance I'd forgot I'd already got one I had two right neither worked for me so yeah I can completely I mean obviously and I'll still continue to hopefully just buy one a year but I can't guarantee that but yeah I've so much sympathy to that and I mean look we me and my friend are in

15:52Helen Crane: the same situation you know I booked a relatively decent travel insurance policy I'm probably going to get nothing he didn't book any travel insurance he's also going to get nothing I mean I should say that I think what we will get is Qatar Airways who our flight was with will pay us back the cost of the return flight that the flight back that we didn't take we haven't had the money yet but they've they've said they will pay us back for that but obviously the flights that we had to rebooked to get home are much more expensive than the ones that we initially uh initially booked so yeah we I think we'll still end up quite a bit out of pocket but as as it sounds I think that

16:33Lee Boyce: might be the only thing that we do get back I'd say Helen I did a podcast recently where I had flown overnight from Canada arrived in the UK at 6am and recorded the podcast at 6pm having not slept since 2pm yesterday. And I mean, you're speaking better than I am now and I'm well slept and not that troubled. So congratulations. You did incredibly well there. Lee, let's talk about investing. You mentioned there about keeping calm and carrying on. I guess the same advice is for investors.

17:06Georgie Frost: Well, you guys are weak. I survive for about three or four hours sleep a night. I mean, your children... I get you all hours. I never make any sense. I mean, it's fine. It's all fine. Yeah, in terms of investing, I think, again, it's that kind of mentality of feeling like you've got to do something, feeling like you need to act, feeling like you want to get ahead of the markets. And you can see why. Markets have been a sea of red this week. Monday, Tuesday, for example, FTSE 100 was down. Billions of pounds wiped off markets. And then Wednesday stabilized a little bit. And actually, FTSE 100 was back up.

17:45Georgie Frost: quite a heavily defensive market and then Thursday all came tumbling back down again it's still you know over that 10 ,000 mark at time of recording but it was on Friday last Friday it was absolutely hustling great guns to 11 ,000 we based the whole podcast on it which shows you how quickly things can date not quickly it didn't date quite as quickly as the spring statement but it wasn't far off and the idea is that we've invested in again i think the long-term message has got home to a lot of people i think a lot of people understand the message of kind of keep calm carry on investing is a long-term thing there's peaks there's troughs you know we've seen financial crises we've seen conflict we've seen a pandemic and ultimately uh things recover and we keep going on and actually we had a piece this week written by richard watkins who is a um financial planner and i thought it was really interesting uh you know in terms of he's saying that he's been a financial advisor for 40 years and that the lessons that markets teach time and time again is that panic standing was almost always the wrong instinct and the evidence of more than a century of booms crashes and crises is overwhelming it might take time but those who hold them i have come out of a head who ahead of those who took fright and ran um which i think is really interesting he points out some things here world war one before his time but at its outset shares fell 30 percent uh by 1915 they were up 88 percent the FTSE 100 was barely three years old when it faced its big crisis uh week monday in october 1987 the year of my birth uh it fell 10.8 percent and then a further 12.2 % the following morning.

19:32Georgie Frost: It was the biggest market decline since the Wall Street crash in 1929. And it was a hellish time. You know, fortunes evaporated in hours. But it recovered its value a little over two years. The dot-com boom and bust 2000-2003 took way longer, seven years for the 5 ,100 to have gained previous highs. And the other key message from all of this is diversify. make sure you've got your risk spread, make sure you've got a good, you know, not just investments as well. I think having a good portfolio of assets in terms of savings accounts that you can lean on, investing in all sorts of different things.

20:15Georgie Frost: Don't just chase the craze of the moment. You know, the craze of the moment, of course, being AI, you know, I wouldn't just go heavily in AI and have nothing else. You know, you've got to have a good balance. Hopefully a lot of people have done that again because they've lived through the financial crisis or they lived through the pandemic or they saw what happened in the uh russia uk crisis let's not forget either i mean it was only last april uh liberation day uh we saw the worst two-day market performance in 40 years um and the the recovery was so swift i mean it was unbelievable by june two months later markets have reached record highs.

20:55Georgie Frost: So it's a really incredible thing. And here's a key piece of advice here. I think it's a really good piece. It's saying the key to successful investment is don't follow the herd, have a plan. And I think that's really vital advice. My thought process is, it didn't even cross my mind. At the start of this week, the first thing on my mind was I should fix my energy bill. That was the first thing I thought of Monday, sort of seeing how things were unfolding. you know so much gas and oil in that region you know it was my first thought process my second thought process is i'm porting my mortgage over buying a house i haven't fixed because mortgage rates are coming down i need to get an appointment immediately with my uh building society to lock in a rate to make sure things don't go haywire it was all from learning lessons from before or I haven't even thought about my investments.

21:49Georgie Frost: They are well diversified. I'm happy with the risk that's in them. Will markets recover this year? Well, Tobillus markets have been up so much in recent years that even if they fall a little bit further, I still won't be panicking. But I know it's different for different people. You might be investing for different reasons, But really, it does paint the picture of why you should be in it for the long haul. Thank you, Lee.

22:18Lee Boyce: Right, well, against the backdrop of all this conflict in the Middle East, the Chancellor delivered her spring statement this week. It's basically a yearly update on how the country's finances are getting on and what the economic outlook looks like. Rachel Reeves claimed her growth plan was working, taking credit for falling inflation and lower interest rates, but the OBR downgraded growth expectations for the year. It also warned the UK could face a significant hit from the war in Iran, which we've just been talking about. So in that case, do we just sort of take this with a bit of a pinch of salt then?

22:52Lee Boyce: I mean, economic forecasts, you know I'm not a big fan anyway, but in the context of everything that's been going on in the last week, it all seems a bit...

22:59Georgie Frost: Well, I have sympathy with Rachel Reeves here because she stood up on Tuesday and we all sit around the office just thinking, well all of these forecasts and all of this OBR information is already out of date I mean it's already out of date and you're looking through it and it is quite clearly out of date when I'm looking at things like um you know where is base rate going ahead and you know this dedicting a couple of uh cuts I'm looking at data that's fast moving from that day suggesting that there's no chance really of that no there is still a slim chance but not as nailed on as what it was so yeah i'm not a big key i'm not keen on these forecasts and obviously they've been really in the spotlight and especially when it was all leaked ahead of the budget uh in november you know they've been really really on in the spotlight a couple of things to point um out in this spring statement gdp growth for the year was downgraded weaker than expected gdp and then expected to pick up in the medium term unemployment to rise further than was forecast in november 2025 remember this is all pre-conflict but it was that was one of the things that was picked out again the inflation i mean it was expected to fall uh it was it was an average of 3.4 percent last year and it was predicted to be an average of uh 2.3 percent uh this year and then two percent from 2027 onwards you might as well just put that through the shredder uh i would say because the the headline rate of inflation has been driven low by uh falling food and energy prices but as just discussed yeah that looks highly unlikely and we haven't really spoken much about supermarket prices but there was a piece of data out this week again ahead of this conflict uh that is supermarket grocery inflation uh was above four percent and it was the first rise for four months and that was before uh all of this was kicking off and you know any higher energy costs you know do have a knock-on effect um and lots of things have a knock-on effect to the you know real granular detail like the cost of fertilizer you know that's going up things get more expensive to grow and you know etc etc so you know that inflation report is just completely out of the window.

25:22Georgie Frost: My favourite thing that I picked out from the OPR, of course there's a house price forecast in there, Georgie. Of course there's a house. Obviously, obviously. Typical house price will rise by£44 ,322 by 2031. That's the prediction in there. Average cost of a home is set to rise between now and the financial year 2030-31 by 16.4 % over that time.

25:46Lee Boyce: Rather a specific figure, isn't it, Lee?

25:48Georgie Frost: Yeah, rather specific. And it would mean a typical house. According to the OBR, I'd be up from£270 ,000 to touching£315 ,000. It wouldn't be a forecast. And it wouldn't be this is money if we didn't gain a little bit of house price madness. What will a potential conflict do to that with mortgage rates going up? Probably, again, can put that one through the shredder. So you can see why, you know, the spring statement. We were all geared up for it. I remember at the tail end of last week, what was the spring statement next week? Oh, it's going to be a busy day. And Tuesday, Georgie was scheduled to...

26:22Georgie Frost: Yeah, I'd forgotten about it. Yeah, well, we kind of forgotten about it. And then we realised that people were searching for it on the website on Friday. And it's like, maybe we should write a story about this. People have obviously remembered ahead of us remembering. And Tuesday was the perfect storm in This Is Money HQ. I'll give you a little kind of insider look here. I mean, devoid of Helen Crane, for one. I mean, she was meant to be there in the office. And there she was in Brisbane, signing herself. But we had the three things, the spring statement, and then we had the money mouse section in the paper on a Wednesday, which I'll give you a kind of little insider knowledge here.

27:05Georgie Frost: It's a lot of work and eight pages of print in on a Wednesday every week. On top of that, an ISA supplement, eight pages of ISAs. going on Wednesday. So feet didn't touch the ground, but a spring statement came and we kind of watched it.

27:23Lee Boyce: Was it a spectacular spectacle?

27:25Georgie Frost: It wasn't. No, because we were all sitting there going, as I said before, unfortunately, this is just all our day. Not the Chancellor's fault, not the OBR's fault. That's just the way the cookie crumbled. If it was a spring statement the week before, you know, maybe it would have lasted for an extra week. Or maybe if Rachel Reeves said, actually, do you know what? There's no point of doing the spring statement today. Let's wait a month and let the dust settle of everything that's going on and see where we're at. But, you know, that's the point.

27:54Lee Boyce: Still the next time, though. This is the point. I don't like these predictions. I'm sure they're very useful, et cetera, et cetera. But I just I don't really see that they're that useful because, let's be honest, as we said right at the start, we keep seeing these major events which keep throwing spanners into the works. So as much sympathy, you know, whenever you're doing a business plan, let's say you can't just say well stuff's happened yes you know the plan doesn't work anymore you

28:19Georgie Frost: need to build flexibility into it no but also i don't think you could i don't think you could have certain scenarios now laid out so it's like you know let's also do a spring state obr report in case there's a conflict breaks out of the middle literally every business surely when

28:33Lee Boyce: they're doing their sort of plans builds in these sorts of scenario planning so the obr should have

28:40Georgie Frost: a catastrophe kind of document. So they can kind of emergency if something kicks off. Okay, I see where you're coming from, Georgie.

28:48Lee Boyce: I wouldn't call it emergency. I just would call it another day in the office, sadly.

28:52Georgie Frost: You can see why we didn't go to town with the spring statement because people don't really want to read all of the out-of-date information that lies within. And I guess what our attention will turn to now is how long this conflict lasts is obviously up in the air we don't know you know it's completely you know impossible to predict what happens from one week to the next that's for sure but what that will mean for rachel reeves is uh spending plans and a fiscal headroom and all of those bars terminologies that's we kind of want to like just not listen anymore yeah um Will that result in higher taxes?

29:37Georgie Frost: Unfortunately, sorry, I'm not saying the B word because that's a long way away, a good eight months away. But, you know, that's inevitably, depending on how furious this conflict is and how long it goes on for, what it does to inflation

29:54Lee Boyce: and what it does to the whole knock-on effects

29:57Georgie Frost: that it has to the UK economy, it's inevitably going to be the question that I'm probably asking ahead of time. But I would expect it to start hearing murmurs as well.

30:10Lee Boyce: Yeah, for sure. Don't worry, Helen, I'm not going to talk to you about the specifics of the spring statement or anything like that. I wouldn't be that cruel. But I was reading analysis of the ABR report. And while it suggested that tax levels in the UK are not, quote, unusually high compared to other advanced economies, it did acknowledge that above average marginal tax rates may be impacting, quote, incentives to work, save and invest. I don't think you need to read the spring statement or the OBR report to know that there is a theme here around the high tax and this incentive to work, save and invest.

30:47Helen Crane: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, this is something that's been going on for quite some time. You know, every time there is another announcement like this from the government, another budget, another policy announcement, we end up talking about these frozen income tax thresholds, things like the frozen child tax credit threshold. And I do think it just makes people feel like they're being squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and, you know, not necessarily getting much back from the government, I guess. And, you know, I do think people are thinking, oh, you know, is it really worth getting a pay rise when so much of that is going to just go back to the government?

31:26Helen Crane: I do think that's true. And, you know, as you said, wars famously quite expensive. We're probably going to have to increase defence spending. That's going to probably push up income tax even more, I would think, in the long term. It's not very good vibes, is it? to put it in a simply it doesn't make people feel like they want to sort of earn more and I don't know start businesses and invest in things it just it's a bit of a what's the word I'm running out of words at this point in Georgia with so little sleep but it's not it doesn't make people feel good about you know spending and that kind of thing.

32:09Lee Boyce: final thing on this one i said at the start of this section lee that uh the chancellor took some credit for falling inflation and lower interest rates but really i mean just explain to us how much credit can a government really take for those things yeah we've had this argument in

32:31Georgie Frost: the past haven't we and i can't really this is not an argument this is just a general question it's okay so it's a so argument we're not having a conflict on this talk we are we are having a a nice discussion um i can't remember what was the way of inflation when uh when mitchell reeves labor took over i can't remember it but it was it wasn't far away from the target was it but you know we have had this argument in the past i mean i i think that it's i think she's it's gonna take some credit i think it's a bit harsh to sort of say you know it's not any measures that have been taken whatsoever because i think that's a bit unfair but i also think that kind of has been a lot of like self-congratulating and a lot of trumpet blowing um about getting back on track into and the inflation has been tamed somewhat um and you know that does have a a knock-on effect on what the uh monetary policy committee you know decide to do on a month-to-month basis when it comes to voting for a rate cut or to hold um but you can't take a huge amount of credit because you've got to remember that spiraling uh inflation rate that incredibly high inflation rate was completely again out of the government's control really because of cost of energy uh which brought all of that to light the cost of your supermarket shop food inflation absolutely went through the roof so inevitably it was about trying to bring that under control um and it kind of it's very hard for government really to do much about some of that big big stuff um so in short tiny bit of credit but not a huge amount of credit no apparently cbi inflation was two

34:22Lee Boyce: in the last four months before Labour took office and it was 2.2 % in the first month after the change in government. There we go.

34:29Georgie Frost: Do you know when you started there and mouthing on target? It was such a long time ago, but it's not a long time ago. But I do have this weird muscle memory. His specialist subject will be inflationary. My specialist subject will be what our readers have cared about more than anything this week and that is Best Buy Cash Ice or Red.

34:50Lee Boyce: This has been way higher than anything else that we've published this week. Well, Lee, how does that compare to normal? Because, I mean, there's a reason you get excited at this time of year, Lee. So I imagine you're not the only one getting excited. So it's always been. But why so much this year, do you reckon?

35:06Georgie Frost: Well, I was going to say, actually, on the 2nd of March, so on Monday, we had a cash-eister story, and we also had the story of the premium bonds draw, because it's a big magnet for readers on the first, it's usually the first of the month, but the first Monday of this month was the March draw. The amount of people that come and read the website for the premium bond draw numbers to find out if they've won or not is absolutely huge. And it was far surpassing anything else that we were writing about, about the conflict. You'd think people would come back after the weekend and they'd want to know.

35:45Georgie Frost: And that and the cashier story. yeah i mean it's it's definitely a year i think georgie where it's going to be even bigger and i know i feel like i'm blowing my own trumpet here or i sounded like a broken record at least but since the start of uh last year and all that speculation was coming in about uh ice and limit cuts and i was saying i think this is going to be the year uh people are going to cash stuff their isa um and the figures absolutely have proved that true and there were some figures this week from Lloyds it's suggesting there's more than a trillion pounds now held in ISIS and in the last final that this financial year they're predicting that 85 billion is going to go into cash ISIS versus something like I haven't got the figures to hand but about 30 billion into investing shows you the massive difference and shows you how many people have decided to veer towards putting it in cash I reckon it's going to be quite similar story this year Georgie because if you're under 65 from April 2027 your ISO limit is going to go down to 12 ,000 pounds for cash and I think people were saying it's one last chance to kind of cash stuff rightly or wrongly I haven't changed course again I just think blend of investing and saving is best for my age and for my risk appetite but it just depends on where you're at in life and and your own risk appetite so I think yeah people are mega interested and actually the other thing that's of interest we are in a pretty much exactly a month away from the end of this tax year and there has been uh it really kind of like tit for tat kind of getting to the top of the this is money best buy tables and actually i'm not gonna i'm not gonna give specific rates because things are moving so far

37:27Lee Boyce: financial services companies are they little ones who who there is is a theme with it yeah there is

37:32Georgie Frost: there is a theme so the theme for easy access has been largely driven by investment houses so a bit like if you think about your current account and the current account switching battle lots of people lots of banks want you to become a current account customer because they can then cross sell you loans mortgages investments credit cards whatever it is and they'll take a small hit on that by paying you a bribe to get you in right because they're hoping that you're going to stay there for the long haul and they'll be able to make some money off of you and make that money back essentially that money that they've paid for you to switch there's a bit of that going on in terms of easy access cash ices it's like getting you into the getting you in the shop window having a look go to what's a nice cashier rate and then getting in and then trying to get you into investing with them so there's been a lot of that going on there's been a lot of cash back offers um up to quite huge amounts of money to move uh your isa over to some of these companies uh hargreaves one of them trading 212 um we've got um eToro there's quite a few of these companies that have really really really gone for it you know that might not be your bag at all um and there are plenty of other easy access cash isis in our tables that are bigger names um banks more importantly um and building societies that are in there that are paying plus four percent on an easy access ISIS.

38:57Georgie Frost: So I would say this really is the year to, this month is really like, get your head in the game for ISIS because this is the penultimate year to use as much of your£20 ,000 limit as a cash if you want to. As I say, I don't need that much between investing and cash. But it just depends where you are in life. But obviously a lot of people have wised up to the magic of ISIS because a trillion pounds being put in ISIS collectively as a country is showing how far we've come as savers in this country. I think when I started this job 16 years ago this month, there's so much data around how poor we were at saving compared to other countries.

39:45Georgie Frost: I think a lot of that has changed and I think ISIS has been such a clear product. it's been so easy to understand and the conservatives really ran with it with ramping up all the allowances that people have really taken them to heart and we always talk about the eyes of millionaires i mean there's at least 5 000 of them but there's likely to be probably more like 10 000 of them um that have been very strategic in in building up what they've done um and then on the flip side of that so the other pattern i would say is that we're starting to see quite a few decent fixed rates coming out as well there was one this week from investec one year fix at 4.2 percent the only only thing about that account is that it doesn't allow transfers in which is quite a crucial element so these these ises aren't all built the same so you want to check if they accept transfers in is is one of the one of the key aspects the other thing

40:39Lee Boyce: that is quite rarely because that seems such a strange thing not to allow yeah it is these days

40:45Georgie Frost: it wasn't uh 10 years ago in fact it was it was quite commonplace to not accept uh full transfers in it depends on the uh kind of what the bank or what the provider is aiming for so if it's looking for a massive injection of balances it will accept transfers in if it's looking to kind of limit how much is coming in and it just needs a certain amount uh quite often they will put those kind of transferring restrictions onto it so they don't want massive pots of cash um so so that's what i mean you've got to go and check it out and check out all the t's and c's and the last parting shot on the isis that i'm going to give you georgie is something i think is going to potentially catch people out and is well worth noting for this time next year because from april april 2027 you're not going to be able to switch uh stocks and shares isa uh back into cash isa so you're going to want to sit down and have a think about what that means um and how you want to play that um it might mean absolutely nothing at all to you but it might mean if you're especially i'm thinking about older listeners potentially that are you should become a little bit more risk averse as you get a bit older and you're kind of you know what they call lifestyling which i just think yeah absolutely horrible term but it's it's thinking about what's your plan with that and it isn't a bury your head in the sand kind of scenario you're going to want to know what your what your top top plan is for that and actually georgie do you know what i'm going to cheat a little bit here and it'd be upset with me that's my tip of the week oh you've pre-empted

42:19Lee Boyce: the tip of the week well do you know what i'm going to do that now because helen helen what's your tip of the week i've got to think another one for helen if he was his tip of the week simon's is stat of the week helen's mode of the week i was gonna go positive like helen's praise of the

42:37Georgie Frost: week or something oh yeah crane's praise yeah crane's praise do you know what though yeah well

42:43Helen Crane: i have a praise of the week do you know who i will praise i will praise the people who worked in the hotel i was staying in in brisbane they were so nice to us when we kept turning up at the desk every morning saying oh sorry i think we actually need to stay for another night like we thought we were going to fight, we were so certain we were going to get a flight home via the Middle East. And every day they were saying

43:05Lee Boyce: oh don't worry, it's absolutely

43:07Helen Crane: fine, we'll sort you something. I feel like I just wanted to cry at some point.

43:13Lee Boyce: What was the hotel?

43:14Helen Crane: Do you know what, it wasn't even a big brand so there's probably not even any point in naming them.

43:21Lee Boyce: Give them a shout out.

43:23Georgie Frost: Hannah's so tired, she's forgotten the name of the hotel.

43:26Lee Boyce: I haven't.

43:27Helen Crane: I want my emails, I can find it.

43:30Georgie Frost: I haven't forgotten it's in my email and what she hasn't told you is that the last night they actually stayed in the broom closet because there was no ruggers and plays out

43:40Helen Crane: one's like nativity story stuff it was called C-L-L-I-X Central Brisbane and they were very very nice if anyone is on the east coast of Australia do stay there because they were lovely clicks maybe clicks clicks yeah we'll go with clicks that's right i like slicks

44:03Lee Boyce: we'll go with clicks either way right sorry about that you can tell everybody's a little bit tired now right that is it that is it i've couldn't remember what your tip was what was your tip

44:13Georgie Frost: the tip was sorry i'm just trying to catch my breath but hearing you two trying to say that That was just making me laugh. My tip of the week was to re-evaluate your ISAs ahead of stocks and shares, not being able to be switched into cash ISAs from April 2027.

44:30Lee Boyce: You've got some time to do that. It's not really the tip of this week, is it, Lee?

44:33Georgie Frost: No, it is. No, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Because if you get to this time next year, I'm telling you, it's the type of thing, Georgie, that people leave to the last minute. So I think you're ahead of the curve. What is Pogchester's about? True. All right.

44:49Lee Boyce: Take it back. All right, that is it. Thank you, Helen. Thank you, Lee. Thank you for listening. You can keep up to date with all the latest breaking money news. Just go to thisismoney.co.uk or you can download the app. And if you have any comments or questions to the team or anything you'd like them to look into, Helen, I'm only joking. Lee?

45:05Georgie Frost: You can email us at podcast at thisismoney.co.uk. You can put a comment in the reader comments. And you can also comment on things like Spotify and YouTube where you can find this podcast. and we'd love to hear from you. And if you do have any serious money questions about what's going on, please do get in touch and we'll try and help as much as we can. Brilliant, thank you.

45:27Lee Boyce: And if you like our podcast, why not rate us wherever you found us? It helps other people find us too.