Pod Insights The Martin Lewis Podcast Question Time: Is my energy bill wrong? Do credit cards repay 0% debt first? Is your AI investment a scam? About this episode In our Question Time podcast, Martin Lewis gives you answers on anything and everything, including: why is my energy bill so high, and how do I check if it’s right? If I’ve got 0% debt and normal debt on a credit card, which do they clear first? I’ve just seen you advertising ‘Quantum AI’ with a guaranteed £25,000 return! Is it true? (Spoiler: no, it’s a scam). If you’ve earned cashback, but returned the product, what happens? Can you tell me the best account for under 11s? Plus, beam me up, Martin, what’s your favourite sci-fi?
If you want to ask Martin a question, you now can! His Question Time podcast lets you ask Martin absolutely anything and everything (within reason!) – so if you’ve always wanted to know if he’s got a favourite flower, if he’s a proper romantic, or have a very complicated question about your personal finances, email it to [email protected] mailto:[email protected] .
Transcript 7,740 words · 10 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
0:06 Speaker 01 Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a berry chantilly cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.
0:33 Speaker 02 Sometimes we all need an extra helping hand, especially with the tricky business problem you've been putting off. Claude is an AI for just that. It's a collaborator that understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, not for you. And Claude isn't just for quick questions. Hand it a whole task like turning a folder or scattered notes into a report, and it does the work and hands back something finished that you can open and edit. Claude can now draft a doc or deck right in front of you, and Claude Design now lives right inside Claude. Describe the website or prototype you're picturing, attach your design system, and it comes back in your own design language, ready to edit right on the canvas. It works with your files and the tools you already use, like Gmail and Slack.
1:17 Speaker 02 And whether you're debugging code at midnight, building a financial model, or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at claude.ai/solve. That's claude.ai/solve. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude.ai/solve.
1:47 Martin Lewis? The anatomy of a scam on social media works like this.
1:51 Speaker 00 I'm not quite sure why, but I do have two older brothers.
1:53 Martin Lewis? Short answer, yes, you would have to pay the entire balance off in full. Well, I thought it was worth asking anyway. We're going to start from bases you'd be using at least twice what a normal house uses. You can't make a meme out of me saying I don't know the answer. Hello and welcome to the cunningly named The Martin Lewis Podcast. I do wonder what that's going to be about. And this... This is the Question Time episode, where you get to ask me your questions on absolutely anything and everything, open brackets within reason, close brackets. This week, you asked me, "Why are my energy bills so high? And how do I check if it's right? If I've got 0% debt and normal debt on a credit card, which one of those do they clear first when I make my repayments? I've just seen you advertising Quantum AI with a guaranteed £25,000 return. Is it true?
2:37 Martin Lewis? Spoiler: no, it's a scam. Please be careful." If you've earned cash back on a card, but then returned the product, what happens? What's the best savings account for an under 11? And, Martin, what's your favourite sci-fi? No spoilers.
2:54 Martin Lewis? Play the theme tune.
3:10 Martin Lewis? Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Question Time podcast, where you can ask me anything and everything you like, open brackets within reason, close brackets. And of course, joining me, who else than the curator of questions himself? Our presenter, Sir Matthew Burnham. I've gone too far with the sir. No, no, you've got the esquire at the end. No, but you can't be a sir and then esquire. Oh. Sir. Can I just have both? No, no, but the Sir Matthew, but I've pushed too hard. No, no, you haven't. I have. You're not a sir. You haven't earned it. Oh, I have. You're not even an MBE. Not yet. Do you know the order? Of course not. I'm a normal person. So, but I'm going to teach my tit for knowing the order.
3:55 Martin Lewis? Okay? Another sad fart. It is. It's mock. So, MBE, CBE, no. MBE, OBE, CBE, KBE. That's the order. So it starts at MBE, member, then. Order. No, then O is officer. They're all, then C is commander. Okay. And then K is knight. Shall we get on? How have you been?
4:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, good. How are you?
4:17 Martin Lewis? I'm good, thank you. Yes.
4:19 Speaker 04 Good.
4:19 Martin Lewis? Yes, I'm good because we're not doing pods next week. I'm having a week off. It's half-term week.
4:24 Speaker 04 Yes.
4:24 Martin Lewis? So I'm quite good. I'm semi-de-mob happy.
4:27 Speaker 04 Anything nice planned?
4:28 Martin Lewis? Just not working is what I'm going to phrase. Because I'll be honest, I don't talk about what I do at my time off.
4:33 Speaker 04 No, you don't.
4:33 Martin Lewis? I try and keep it private. So that was my not working. And most importantly for my mental health, not being on social media.
4:41 Speaker 04 I was going to ask if you go, so do you not go in at all then? When you do you lock off and then you're done?
4:45 Martin Lewis? I sign off most weekends, as people will know, when I sign off publicly. And I sign off when I go on holiday. I try not to look at it, but I sometimes do. And it's always a bad idea.
4:54 Speaker 04 Yeah.
4:54 Martin Lewis? Because then I'm then drawn into something and I can't even respond because I'm in my self-imposed silence rule. So I might even, there's one app that's particularly bad. I might even delete the app while I have my week off and then reinstall it. I think that's a sensible move. But anyway, we're not here to talk about me. We're here to answer some questions.
5:11 Speaker 04 Yes.
5:12 Martin Lewis? What do you have?
5:13 Speaker 04 I have...
5:13 Martin Lewis? Matthew Burden-Mesquire.
5:15 Speaker 04 I have an email from Charlene. She starts, "Good morning. Please, is there any way you can help my parents with their energy bill or give us advice? Although I'm middle-aged, I've never owned my own house, so I have no idea how to help them. We all live in a large house with lots of perks. However, we still think our bills are excessive. We pay roughly £1,120 a month for electricity."
5:38 Martin Lewis? A month?
5:39 Speaker 04 A month. And then another £353, sorry, for gas a month. They also have solar panels. Their bills have been extremely high for years and they've questioned this with their supplier. However, they only noticed a month with lower prices. Then they went back up to silly amounts once they changed their meters. Can you give them any suggestions on how to check things? They have a smart meter, but it doesn't always work. Is there anything you can suggest they do?"
6:08 Martin Lewis? There's a lot in there. That is a very, very large energy bill. I mean, you're almost using in a month what a typical usage is in a year. So let's just put this in perspective. Now, the little bit in there at the start, which we have to put some brackets around is, I think you said, was it, we all live in a large house with lots of perks? I don't know what perks are. Is perks a hot tub, a swimming pool, a sauna, you know, anything of that ilk which is using heating for pleasure massively puts up your costs? So that might be one of the causes for much higher energy bills. And also, it's a large house. So if we start on just a basis, we're going to start from a basis that you'd
6:51 Martin Lewis? be using at least twice what a normal house uses. Because when you're saying a large house and you're living in it, I think it means a really large house. But they could be pushing up the bill. So what do you do about this? Well, you say you have a smart meter that doesn't work. It depends what you mean by a smart meter not working. A smart meter is a meter that sends readings to the energy firm of exactly how much you've used. You will also then have an in-house meter and an in-house display which shows you how much you are using. My guess is from your phrasing, it's your in-house meter that doesn't always work. Now, I'll be honest, the first thing I would check, so you can start to understand your bills, and you could have, you know, there could be issues with your smart, I
7:33 Martin Lewis? mean, there's a lot of issues with solar panels recording or even going the wrong way. So you need to be careful that your solar panels are actually deleting your bills, because that should be reducing all this, is I would hopefully, if your in-house smart meter is working, I would be looking at how much you're using, and then I would, I would start and try and turn everything you can possibly turn off, off in the house. Everything off. So you're getting down to near as damn it, zero usage. And then I would be going through each appliance on a one by one basis to see what it's using. I would be doing the search to see what we would expect it to use. Energy prices, energy appliances tend to work in kilowatts, right? So an appliance is kilowatts. So if
8:18 Martin Lewis? you have or watts. So let's say you have an appliance that is 1500 watts. So that might be a kettle or an iron or something hot. That's 1.5 kilowatts and energy prices is based on kilowatt hours. So on the price cap, it's normally typically about 28 p. So if you had a 1.5 kilowatt appliance and you left it on for an hour, you would expect it to use 1.5 kilowatts, which would cost you about 40 pence. I'm just trying to give you an idea of how you do the sums. I hope that this is useful. But that is, that's where I would want to start is I'd be going around and looking, what is this thing that is causing us massive usage? Now, the likelihood is for it to be that expensive. It's going
9:02 Martin Lewis? to be some form, this is pure guesswork, of heat based device that is using a lot of energy and is on all the time. So it could be underfloor heating. It could be if you have any form of water heating, if you have a hot tub, it could be something like that that is just burning and is staying on very hot all the time, that's likely to be using it. If you find out what that is, that works. If if this isn't working and you're going, we're just paying a lot and that we don't seem to be using any, then you may have a problem with your meter. So that's, that's roughly where I would go. I mean, you're also using a lot of gas, to be honest. I mean, I don't, and that's probably heating as well. Look, if none of that's working, then I would be going back to my energy firm
9:46 Martin Lewis? and making a formal complaint that something must be wrong and you want to investigate that the meters are working and whether there's any form of leak going on or anything, if you can't figure it out. If you go through all that, remember with an energy firm, if you're still not happy, you can make a formal complaint to the Energy Ombudsman Service. Frankly, at this type of level, if you're finding that you're not capable of doing this yourself, I say that not pejoratively, you know, if this is just all too difficult, you might want to see if there's a local energy efficiency consultant that you could pay. I mean, let's just do these numbers. You're paying 20 grand a year, right?
10:21 Speaker 04 That's a lot.
10:21 Martin Lewis? Right. I mean, you could afford, frankly, paying someone, a consultant, four or 5,000 pounds, even if it costs that much, to come in and do this investigation for you if you can't find what it is yourself, is probably going to be worthwhile. Because, I mean, that is, that's a really, really big, you're talking really, really big house with a swimming pool and a hot tub that's permanently heated type level of energy usage. So.
10:48 Speaker 04 I'm imagining like a big stately home or something.
10:50 Martin Lewis? Well, that's what it feels like.
10:51 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah.
10:52 Martin Lewis? But, but clearly it isn't, because if you're in a stately home, then you'd be expecting more.
10:55 Speaker 04 Hmm.
10:56 Martin Lewis? Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah. Something's wrong somewhere. I hope that helps, Charlene. I hope that gets you somewhere. At least it's a place to start. But actually, you know, there comes a point with that much money, when I go back, I think you might need to pay someone to come and do an investigation for you.
11:12 Martin Lewis? Okay, so I hope I've been somewhat helpful on that. It's always frustrating, because I mean, I'm doing it, I'm doing it from above. It's all a bit misty what's going on there. So I'm guessing now, second question, sounds like a caller to me, Matt. Am I right?
11:25 Speaker 04 You're right. We've got Jamie, he's in Leeds. Hi, Jamie.
11:29 Speaker 05 Hi, how are you doing?
11:30 Speaker 04 Yeah, good.
11:31 Martin Lewis? Hello, Jamie. What is your question today?
11:34 Speaker 05 So my question relates to interest and credit card balances. And I, I understand the, let pay it off in full.
11:43 Martin Lewis? In full?
11:44 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah.
11:45 Martin Lewis? Sorry, I'm contractually obliged to myself that I have to do that every time.
11:49 Speaker 05 But my question is.
11:52 Speaker 05 Credit card balances or parts of credit card balances don't always attract the same interest rate. So for example, if you had like a balance of £2,000 that was at 0%, you know, from a balance transfer or money transfer.
12:04 Martin Lewis? Yeah.
12:05 Speaker 05 And then you spent on the card, would you need to pay the entire card off in full to avoid the interest? Or would you just need to pay the amount off that you had spent in addition to the, you know, the balance transferred amount? I'm just not sure how it works.
12:23 Martin Lewis? I'm with you. So let me give you the straight, I'll give you the short answer first and then I'll give you the long answer. Short answer, yes, you would have to pay the entire balance off in full. Right? Because that is the way it works. And this is one of the reasons when I talk about balance transfers, I have in my golden rules, don't spend or withdraw cash on the card. Or because that's a different category of spending and that complicates the rules. And because you have all those different categories at once. Now, the in full rule is basically because almost every credit card gives you its normally say a 56 day interest free on purchases. And what that means is in effect, if you spend on the card and you clear it in full, then you won't be charged interest on those purchases.
13:08 Martin Lewis? But as I've said before, you know, you've got a thousand pounds debt on a credit card, clear £999.99, you're effectively going to pay interest on the entire thousand pounds because you didn't clear a penny. That's why it's in full, not nearly in full or as much as you can. It's not as much as you can. It's in full because it has to be in full. Now, to get into the more nitty gritty of what you're asking, this is about repayment hierarchy. Now, before, I'm going to guess that it was 2009 because Richard Lloyd was a special advisor at the Treasury and he then went on to be involved in which and then he was, I worked with him on my charity and then he went on else. I'm going, I'm dating this to 2009. None of you care about that. I worked with the government at the
13:50 Martin Lewis? time, it was Brown's government, on trying to change repayment hierarchy because, and we did it. What happened before then is they would always clear the lowest interest rate first. So what that meant is if you had £500 at 25% and you had £500 at 0% and you paid your credit card off, you paid 500 quid off. They'd get rid of the 0% debt and you'd left with £500 at 24.9%. And it was effectively a way of trapping in high interest rate debt if you had different debt forms. From that point, and I'm going to guess it was 2009, but if I'm wrong on that, it doesn't matter.
14:30 Martin Lewis? From that point, it was then changed so that it's the highest interest rate debt they have to clear. Now, there's a few things before that. Minimum repayments and existing interest and various other things, complications that happen. But in general, the rule is your money should go towards paying the highest interest rate debt. So now, if you had a thousand pounds on a credit card and you had £500 at 24.9% and £500 at 0% and you paid off £500, you would only have the 0% debt left. However, he's following me so far.
15:05 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
15:06 Martin Lewis? However, the interest-free period that we talked about, the thing that drives the in-full rule is a specific thing that only happens if you clear your debt in full. Now, obviously, if you've only got 0% debt left, it wouldn't matter. But it means you'd still be paying interest for the month, but after that, it would be clear. Which is why I tend to think of credit cards as bespoke, specific tools. You get a credit card, you have it for a purpose. That purpose could be spending at 0%, it could be shifting debt to, it could be cheap spending abroad, it could be getting rewards. And occasionally, it might be good for two purposes. But you have it as a specific tool for the purpose and you only use it for that. And then you get a different credit card if you want to use a different purpose.
15:51 Martin Lewis? And that's always been my philosophy on them because of all these complexities. And that way, you can choose what you pay off. And you would always choose to pay off the highest interest rate first. I think I've answered it.
16:03 Speaker 05 Yeah, you have completely, yeah, yeah.
16:05 Martin Lewis? It was a seriously, it was a much nerdier question than you potentially thought it was, but I very much enjoyed answering it, so thank you for asking.
16:12 Speaker 05 I thought I might have, I was thinking the answer's going to be in full means in full. But I thought it was worth asking anyway.
16:18 Martin Lewis? But you can, now, just on the in-full, the key to in-full is, and some people get confused because I don't always say pay your credit card in full. I talk about paying your credit card in full when it's effectively you're using it as a reward credit card. Now, rewards, as it could be cash back, it could be points, it could be cheap spending abroad. So when you're using your credit card not to borrow, you should pay it in full because if you don't pay it in full, you'll pay interest. Clearly, if you've got a 0% card and you're using your credit card as a form of cheap borrowing, then there's no point if you've suddenly decided that you want, you're doing up your kitchen and it was cheaper to put it on a credit card at 0% than to get a 6% loan. You can't pay it off in full. You're going to pay it off by the month because
17:01 Martin Lewis? that's the whole point of getting it and you just need to make sure you clear it by the time the 0% ends. But that's particularly where you want to be very careful about not doing a different transaction on it because that transaction won't be at 0%. And that is an answer in full.
17:15 Speaker 05 Thank you very much.
17:18 Martin Lewis? Cheers for calling.
17:18 Speaker 05 Cheers, bye.
17:22 Martin Lewis? Now, I enjoyed that one. What have you got next for me, Mr Burnham, sir?
17:25 Speaker 04 I have a-
17:26 Martin Lewis? That's better, by the way. It's not Sir Matt Burnham. Mr Burnham, sir, is fine.
17:31 Speaker 04 I like Sir Matt.
17:32 Martin Lewis? But you're not.
17:32 Speaker 04 No, I know.
17:33 Martin Lewis? Mate, I hope for you, in 30, 40 years' time, that will be something that you've earned and succeeded and got yourself through. But I'm afraid you haven't earned it yet.
17:47 Speaker 04 Fair enough.
17:48 Martin Lewis? So what have you got for me?
17:49 Speaker 04 I have a question. It's a question that actually was sent into the inbox and it wasn't really a can you ask Martin this? It was a I have a question and I don't know if it's... Basically, Hamara got in touch and they asked, basically, they were scrolling through Facebook and noticed an announcement by you about using this investment platform and you just deposit £200 and you are guaranteed to gain £25,000. And they asked if that's a correct or a scam.
18:19 Martin Lewis? Scam.
18:19 Speaker 04 So very quickly, I emailed back and was like, just in case you were in doubt, it is a scam, but I thought it'd be quite good to get your take on this.
18:27 Martin Lewis? Well done, mate, and thank you very much for doing that. Yeah, I mean, I'm plagued by these at the moment. Again, it's interesting. They tend mainly to be on Meta, but there seems there's a rash of them on X at the moment, which it drives me up the wall. I don't do adverts. And while I do now do some talking about investment, nothing of this case, nothing special products. So look, the way the anatomy of a scam on social media works like this. They try and target shortcut rationales. So they use things that resonate with people. Now, the two people who tend to resonate most, and I'm not, trust me, this is not aggrandizing,
19:10 Martin Lewis? is me for trust on money and Elon Musk for being really, really rich. So we between us, we're something like 80% of all scam adverts involving finance. Myself and Elon Musk and, you know, and sometimes the combination. The next one is Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is like a souper cake for getting rich quick. Yeah. So they put Bitcoin in, I should note, it's not, you know, there's lots with Bitcoin is a whole discussion in his own right. But when they're putting Bitcoin in these adverts, you're not actually getting Bitcoin. It's just using Bitcoin, just like they're using me and Elon Musk as another, as another buzzword to go, oh, Bitcoin, Elon Musk, Martin Lewis, wow.
19:49 Martin Lewis? AI, because it sounds clever. So this was an AI one. And, and all of those added together are the anatomy of a scam. And what they want to do is they want your contact detail and then they want to get your hooks in you. And these people are very clever, psychologically adept and manipulative. They will always start you with 200 or 250 quid. You put your 250 quid in, what you will often get is you'll be given a trading platform, something you look and log into. So you can see your 250 quid. So that's real, isn't it? It's a real investment. I can see it. I know what's going on. I've got my 250 quid. Well, then what happens? You check back in a few days, my 250 quid is now worth 600, 700 quid
20:29 Martin Lewis? on this completely fake, meaningless platform. And they call you back. It's going very well. Do you want to invest a bit more? Well, yeah, actually, yeah, wow. I'm going to put, well, I didn't give us a thousand pounds. And then. They hook you in more and more and people start losing thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands in some extreme cases of pounds. And then when you want your money out, "Oh yeah, well unfortunately it's not very liquid and the rules because we're based in Switzerland or we're based in Romania, wherever they are, it's all nonsense, right, mean that you actually, I'm afraid we're going to need funds from you to release your money, so you'll need to give us an extra £10,000." And you give that and of course no money comes. It's just a scam. There's no investment. The platform is wrong. None of it is true.
21:14 Martin Lewis? The other route that scammers use, so the other thing to watch for is they do extreme clickbait. So I've had for years that I've been beaten up and there's an AI picture of me with black eyes. Oh, I've seen that one, yeah. Yeah. And I've had, I've been dead. And when that first came out, that was quite upsetting for a couple of sort of older distant family members who got in touch what's happened. Because clearly I'm not dead. And they do that to get people to click. You know, they're using dark web marketing agencies about what gets people to click through. And then you click through and then you get a fake BBC or other news story that you then read through. And somewhere in that story will be the, "This has been done by the elites as a hidden way to stop you getting this investment that he wasn't allowed to tell
21:56 Martin Lewis? you about. If you'd like to know more about it, click." And that's the way that it works. So just to finish, let's do the very plain rules. If you ever see me in an advert relating to investment or a news story relating to an investment or specifically a get rich quick investment, or anything that implies that knowledge has been hidden by the elites, it's a scam. Do not touch it. Do not go near it. Report it to the platform. But there's an even bigger rule, and I have no compunction in saying this. Social media is so rife with scams that I simply would not trust any advert, especially one with a well-known face in. I mean, anything with me in is definitely a scam. But with anyone else in, I wouldn't
22:37 Martin Lewis? trust it. And I would go and do independent research. And you need to be very careful when you click through these things that you could get somewhere that looks like, do it, go and do independent legitimate research on a recognised platform.
22:51 Martin Lewis? Right, and if it's a news story that's got a click back, then go and research it's somewhere legitimate that you know is a proper news source, because these are scammers manipulating. You know, this really is fake news. This is proper fake news, pure deliberate, no sense. And not, you know, all of this, that me dying, I think it's probably pretty fair you can understand that stories that I have died to get you to click through, I can tell you right now are not true. Now, if you have been scammed, it is difficult, but Citizens Advice has good information and good help lines that can help you.
23:28 Speaker 04 We have Joff in Enfield, he is on the line. Hi, Joff.
23:32 Speaker 00 Hello, hello, Matt in.
23:33 Martin Lewis? Yes.
23:34 Speaker 04 Yeah, very good.
23:35 Martin Lewis? Hold on, no, no, no, I'm not a fan of Matt in because that puts Matt first.
23:39 Speaker 04 It gives you all of your letters, bar one.
23:41 Martin Lewis? It could be Mar.
23:43 Speaker 00 Matthew.
23:44 Martin Lewis? Matthew. So, but we're talking names, Joff. Joff?
23:47 Speaker 00 Yes.
23:48 Martin Lewis? Is that a nickname or is that your real name? I hope that's not rude.
23:50 Speaker 00 It is. No, my real name's Jonathan, but I've always been called Joff since I can remember. I'm not quite sure why, but I do have two older brothers and I think it probably came down from them.
23:59 Martin Lewis? They probably couldn't pronounce Jonathan when you were a little one.
24:02 Speaker 00 Yeah, the curse of the three syllable name, yeah.
24:04 Martin Lewis? Exactly. Cool. Well, let's move on. Enough naming. What's your question?
24:10 Speaker 00 So, this is related to cash back on credit cards.
24:13 Martin Lewis? Yeah.
24:14 Speaker 00 So, in November, I started using the Lloyds Ultra credit card for the 1% cash back, converted all my daily spending and guess how I pay that off every month?
24:24 Martin Lewis? Info! Nice.
24:26 Speaker 00 Very good.
24:27 Martin Lewis? Nice.
24:29 Martin Lewis? See, that's good producing, Matt. You could learn from that, mate.
24:32 Speaker 04 Oh, carry on, Joff.
24:34 Speaker 00 I'm in the wrong job. In December, I purchased a piece of luggage online and a few weeks later, I hadn't heard from the retailer. So, I went back to them and just asked them what was going on and they said, "We're really sorry, we don't actually have the item in stock." Fair enough. So they said, we'll, we'll give you a refund in the next few days. That all was fine and it came through. But it just got me thinking, what happens with the cash back with that? I'm assuming you don't get the cash back, but what, what's the mechanism behind that?
25:03 Martin Lewis? So this is one of the reasons that they will be refunding you on the same card that you spent on generally. So when they refund you on that card, when there is a purchase refund, they, you effectively get a negative cash back. So if you're on the Lloyds card, you, you have a little cash back account in the app, don't you? It tells you how much cash back you've earned.
25:22 Speaker 00 Correct, yeah.
25:23 Martin Lewis? Yeah, so they will just minus the amount. So you effectively, you're going to earn a negative cash back. And that is in their terms and conditions that they do that. What you've just made me think of that I don't know the answer to, and Matt, you can't make a meme out of me saying, I don't know the answer. I know you'd be tempted, that I don't know the answer to, is in the event that you got a negative cash back refund. So it's quite, you, you get what I'm saying. It's pretty simple. You just get, you know, if you earn one pound twenty cash back, you now earn minus one pound twenty cash back. In the event that you were to never use the card again, and they're just subtracting it from your cash back account. So you wouldn't earn any future cash back. I don't know if in that circumstance, they would then come for you for the actual cash back that you owed.
26:07 Martin Lewis? So I only, because you know, it's easy to understand what happens as an ongoing cash back. Because, because terms and conditions generally say they won't take it from your account. But I don't know what they would do in those circumstances. I'm going to get researcher Rosie to check on that one and we will come back and I will try and do it in future. But I just, let's talk, I just want to talk to you about your cash back card while you're on. Because so, so for those people who are listening, I know you know this. Lloyds is probably the top all round flat pick cash back card at the moment. With it, you get one percent cash back for a year. It also gives you the near perfect exchange rate. So it's a top card for spending overseas. And you get the cash back on spending overseas, which effectively means if you go overseas, you're getting a near perfect exchange rate and one percent cash back.
26:51 Martin Lewis? You're actually getting better than the spot rate on your spending abroad. So it is a brilliant spending card for people who do not want to borrow. And I often find this is one of those messages, and I suspect for listeners of Question Time will know this, but we'll do it anyway, that I really struggle to get across to people because my view is when you spend on a credit card, the merchant, the shop that you're paying has to pay a fee to the credit card company. And effectively, when you get cash back, this is a way of subverting that as long as you pay off in full, it's a way of subverting that. So you're effectively getting the merchant fee into your account in the form of cash back. And so it's a no brainer. Is this your first cash back card? Have you been doing it a long time?
27:32 Speaker 00 No, this is the first one, actually.
27:33 Martin Lewis? And how are you finding it?
27:35 Speaker 00 Yeah, fine. I don't really think about it because it gets paid off in full by direct debit. And then you can see the amount you've earned on the app, like you said, and they pay it off and they pay it back to you in January, I think.
27:46 Martin Lewis? Yeah. And how much have you earned if it's not rude to ask? We'll always cut it out if it is.
27:51 Speaker 00 No, it's okay. I think about £48.
27:54 Martin Lewis? And so this is the no brainer for me. So you've had it from November, you've earned about 50 quid. So over a year, you're probably going to earn 140, 150 quid. And all you had to do was, and you sound like, you sound like you probably, I'm guessing you're a virtual wallet spender. Are you a phone beeper or are you a card beeper?
28:12 Speaker 00 A bit of both, mostly phone.
28:14 Martin Lewis? Okay. So all you had to do is get a card, put it in your virtual wallet and change what you're beeping and set it to your direct debit and you're making 150. What's not to like? And I find it quite frustrating that more people don't do it. Do you know what I mean? Now you're doing it, you're sort of going, I wish I'd done this before, aren't you?
28:29 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I did, I did sort of have a follow up question relating to your, what happens if you get a negative cash back?
28:36 Martin Lewis? Yeah.
28:36 Speaker 00 So if I may be, so the 1% deal ends in November and then it goes to something very, you know, inconsequential. At that point, I'm probably going to stop using it. So when they pay the cash back to me in January, I'm likely to have a zero balance. So I'll therefore end up with a positive balance in January when they pay the cash back. Is there any sort of do's and don'ts with positive money on a credit card? What to do with it? And what not to do with it?
29:05 Martin Lewis? Yeah. So actually, one of the things, this is really interesting because if you try, if you go the wrong way and you have too much positive money on a credit card, less from cash back, but it can trigger more money laundering. Yeah. So what I would suggest you do is
29:21 Martin Lewis? Just spend something on it to use up your cash back. That's by far the easiest thing. You know, go to the supermarket, use that card one more time. You won't be paying interest on it anyway, you just won't be earning cash back. Yeah, so there's no, there's no net cost to you. And, and just do that to get yourself clear would be the tip then. Okay, brilliant, thank you. Thank you so much for calling, it was really interesting. No. Cheers. Thank you very much, cheers. Bye bye.
29:46 Martin Lewis? Shall we try and squeeze one more quick question in, Matt?
29:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, I've got one from Craig. He's emailed it into [email protected] . He says, Dear Martin and Matt.
29:55 Martin Lewis? Hmm, carry on.
29:57 Speaker 04 Firstly, thank you, Martin, for all the money-saving advice over the years. The podcast is still my first port of call for money-related topics.
30:05 Martin Lewis? He didn't say that, did he? You were BBC-ifying it because you can't, there's a place that I also do that we can't mention. Carry on.
30:10 Speaker 04 We've started giving pocket money to our six-year-old daughter and want to start teaching her about savings accounts and that banks pay to keep your money. We live in a medium-sized town, but we're losing our last bank. We have a nationwide building society, but nationwide don't offer a savings account for under-elevens. Are there any kids' savings accounts which can be operated at the post office so we can physically deposit her money? Or how else can we do this?
30:34 Martin Lewis? Okay, so I need to be honest, you're limiting me by the specificity that you have to be able to pay it in at the post office. The, the best paying account that we can put lump sums in for under-sevens is Kent Re Lines Building Society at 4.18%. And you can put up to £25,000 in there. An adult would have to apply for an under-seven, but you cannot pay that in at the post office. So then the best children's savings account that you can pay in at the post office on lump sums is HSBC My Savings, which is 4% on up to £3,000. But that's only from age seven. So then the best lump sum account that you can pay in. You've got the Santander 123 Mini, but then if under 13 you've got to have that.
31:16 Martin Lewis? The other one is the Halifax Kids Saver, but that's only 2.25% that you can get and you can pay in at the post office. There is a Halifax Kids Regular Saver at 5.5%, which you can put between £10 and £100 a month in. So that's a good interest rate, but you have to put a minimum £10 in a month. So hopefully one of those will work for you. I would probably sort of stick where you are and then do this from age seven with HSBC My Savings at 4%. I'm probably sort of guessing what you're saying, but hopefully I've given you a sort of, point you off in your research of what you can do on that one.
31:52 Martin Lewis? Matt?
31:53 Speaker 04 Yeah.
31:53 Martin Lewis? I feel, are we not funny-ing this week? I sort of feel like left out without my funny.
31:58 Speaker 04 Nah, let's do a funny.
32:00 Martin Lewis? Last one. It feels right to do it at the end, yeah.
32:02 Speaker 04 We've got one from Ken. He has sent in our funny this week. He says, "The other month, Martin, you made a science fiction joke or reference which made him realise that you're probably a geek as well as a nerd."
32:15 Martin Lewis? Amen, Ken.
32:16 Speaker 04 "Neither of which is a bad thing in his book," he says. He asks, "Which is your favourite skiffy programme or film that you like to watch?" And then he defines "skiffy" as what the great lace and much missed Ian Banks called science fiction to stop it from sounding too pompous.
32:33 Martin Lewis? What a good question. Well, I do like my science fiction, though I'm also a science fantasy as well, so I'm somewhere in between the two of them. Well, programme, I mean, I grew up on the next generation Star Trek, so that has to be that, and I'm definitely Trek: Over Wars. Books, hmm, books. So I recently enjoyed the Bobbiverse, for those people who know the Bobbiverse, but I know what I should mention. What I really should mention is I actually, I actually believe, and some of this may be completely made up in my own head, but I believe I am partially responsible for the success of the book The Martian, which later went on to be a film.
33:14 Speaker 04 Why?
33:15 Martin Lewis? Well, I'm just gonna, I'm just finding a blog that I wrote on it. So, okay, this is a blog that I wrote in 2013. It was titled "The Martian: The Most Gripping Book I've Read in a Long Time", and it cost 77p.
33:30 Martin Lewis? And that's where it started. And I then write about how I'd got a Kindle book, The Martian, and I had 20% left to read. And I read, I say, "The best way to sund up," and Andy Weir's The Martian ebook is with this quote, "Don't worry, it isn't a spoiler." So that's the situation. "I'm stranded on Mars. I've no way to communicate with Hermes or Earth. Everyone thinks I'm dead. I'm in a hab designed to last 31 days. If the oxygenator breaks down, I'll suffocate. If the water reclaim breaks down, I'll die of thirst. If the hab breaches, I'll just kind of explode. If none of those things happen, I'll eventually run out of food and starve to death." So yeah, I'm a goner. Last word wasn't what was written. No, I can imagine.
34:11 Martin Lewis? So, I wrote that now. And then this is the update note from August 2016, three years later. "When I wrote this blog, The Martian was by a minor publisher. Many people downloaded the book after the blog, which boosted it up the Amazon charts." I remember seeing it go right up the Amazon charts. Can't remember, it had gone from like, being in the hundreds or thousands to being in the teens. "Soon after, it was taken off as it was due to be republished with a bigger publisher and to become a film. That film became a Hollywood blockbuster with Matt Damon, and the book is now a big deal. I like to think I had a little role to play in that for publicizing the book. I'm aware that's almost certainly not true, and I haven't checked it out properly, as well, I like to think I played by part." I definitely boosted the
34:55 Martin Lewis? book up the charts, because it was really, it was literally a 77p Kindle book that, you know, people weren't doing. And then I wrote a blog, and it really did move up the charts at the time, because I think they put the blog in my weekly email, because I just thought the book was so good. So maybe that's my bit of skiffy history. Maybe I had a part to play in The Martian. And also, another recommendation, Project Hail Mary, the book that I believe is also being made into a film, is brilliant too. Although The Martian, just what a clever concept. And that seems a good way to end that. Well, you didn't actually answer, is that your favourite one?
35:27 Martin Lewis? My favourite one tends to be the one I've read most recently. Right, okay. I don't, I'm always, you know, I love a series of books. I, because I have a stressful life, I tend to only read science, fantasy and fiction or historic novels. I don't like reading fiction that can resonate with my day, what's going on in my day to day. So it has to be a form of escapism. And actually, I find that for my mental health, I have to be in a book. And I tend to listen now, not read. I listen, I do audiobooks. But I always want to be in a book, which is why I love a trilogy or a long set of books, so that I can be in it for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks. And whichever one I'm in at the time tends to be my favourite. But I think there's a good couple of ones I mentioned. Just after we finished recording that, Matt, after we stopped, muttered,
36:11 Martin Lewis? not that anyone asked me, but I like spy novels. Matt. You're exposing me. What's your favourite spy model? You need some attention very quickly, 20 seconds. I really like the Tom Clancy ones and there's... All right, that'll do. Thanks very much for listening, everybody. That's the end of it this week. That's rude.
36:30 Martin Lewis? Tom Clancy's good too. Tom Clancy's the best. This isn't a book, we're not, this isn't book club. No, I know. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody, and thank you for your questions.
36:42 Martin Lewis? And that's it for this week's Question Time. Don't forget to subscribe so you know when we release a new episode. We tend to put out a new Question Time each Monday, alongside the podcast with Adrian on Thursdays. Aren't you lucky? Two doses of money-saving tips and tricks a week. Make sure you send in your questions. Just email [email protected] . Address them to me and Matt will receive them. Feel free to address them, Dear Martin, though. Dear Matt. Dear Martin.
37:25 Speaker 06 Martin Lewis is the founder of MoneySavingExpert.com. But of course, other consumer and price comparison websites are available. You can get in touch with Martin's podcast production team by emailing martinlewispodcast at bbc.co.uk. The offers and rates mentioned in the podcast are correct at the time of recording. However, if you are listening on demand, it's worth double checking as details can date. Remember to subscribe on BBC Sounds and leave us a review however you listen.
38:01 Speaker 02 Sometimes we all need an extra helping hand, especially with a tricky business problem you've been putting off. Claude is an AI for just that. It's the collaborator that understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, not for you. And Claude isn't just for quick questions. Hand it a whole task like turning a folder of scattered notes into a report, and it does the work and hands back something finished that you can open and edit. Claude can now draft a doc or deck right in front of you, and Claude Design now lives right inside Claude. Describe the website or prototype you're picturing, attach your design system, and it comes back in your own design language, ready to edit right on the canvas. It works with your files and the tools you already use, like Gmail and Slack.
38:45 Speaker 02 And whether you're debugging code at midnight, building a financial model, or strategising your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at claude.ai/solve. That's claude.ai/solve. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude.ai/solve.
39:11 Speaker 07 The Hubble Space Telescope was designed to peer deeper into the universe than ever before, unlocking some of its greatest secrets. But after launch, a devastating flaw emerged.
39:24 Speaker 08 A significant spherical aberration appears to be present in the optics.
39:27 Speaker 07 National disaster. Hubble launched with flawed mirror. The BBC Space Podcast 13 Minutes is telling the inside story of how NASA rescued Hubble.
39:37 Speaker 09 The future of space astronomy depends on it.
39:40 Speaker 07 From the BBC World Service, 13 Minutes: Trouble with Hubble. Listen now on BBC.com, the BBC app, or wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
Previous Free money, £100s free insurance and more - all from switching bank accounts! Next ALL energy bills to fall | Plan 2 student loans | Retirement tips Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated