Pod Insights The Martin Lewis Podcast Banned: Mobile & broadband mid-contract inflation price hikes, yet many’ll still pay more! About this episode Martin and Adrian talk about new rules that stop surprise price increases in the middle of your contract. Plus how to get the best price on your broadband and where to look for brilliant mobile deals. Plus you share your budgeting tips – and Adrian faces a special wifi Mastermind question. Email [email protected] mailto:[email protected] if you want to get in touch.
Transcript 11,642 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:51 Martin Lewis? Hello, I'm Martin Lewis and this is the cunningly-named The Martin Lewis Podcast. I do wonder what that's going to be about. Now, usually, much of it comes from a BBC Radio 5 live show with Adrian Charles, but don't worry, there's bonus money-saving tips just for you lucky, lucky podcast listeners. In today's pod, finally, the end of inflation-linked mid-contract price hikes on broadband, mobile and digital TV. Yet, there are some winners and some losers. Which are you, and how does it work? Plus, three steps to slash the cost of your mobile phone bill. Millions are paying four times over the odds. And, three steps to slash the cost of your broadband bill.
2:33 Martin Lewis? Many can halve the cost and double the speed. This week's tellers is all about your budgeting tips and critically, how do you actually stick to a budget? In my quick tips, a warning about the tax return deadline, a new top easy access savings account, and a free day pass to National Trust properties. And finally, the mastermind. Where's it best to put your router? Ooh, missus, I think we should play the theme tune.
3:12 Speaker 05 Mid-contract price hikes then. Where do we start with this?
3:16 Martin Lewis? So, until now, and it's been one of those things that people gnash their teeth about frequently and often. Every year, in April, even if you're in the middle of a contract on your mobile and broadband, people have been getting above inflation CPI, RPI, plus 3% rises on their bills.
3:34 Speaker 05 Yeah.
3:35 Martin Lewis? Now, this drives people nuts. Two years ago, that meant people were getting 17% increases in the cost of their mobile and broadband. In the last year, it's 8%. That all stopped, gone, a week ago. On new contracts, now the rules say they have to tell you in advance, in pounds and pence, what the rise will be before you sign up to the contract. And it can no longer be linked to inflation. It must be an actual cost. So, for example, Virgin Broadband is now saying, this April and next April, your cost will rise by £3.50 a month. So this is the way it now works.
4:18 Martin Lewis? Now, it's quite interesting, of course, because many people, you might be on an 18-month contract. So if you were signing up now, you'd have to be told April 2025 price rise and April 2026 price rise. It's going up. So if you're on 20, you're signing up at £25 a month, it's going to go to £28.50 in the coming April, and it's going to go to £32 next April. And that is the new regulation that has come in. It started now. Price comparison sites, when you go to them, should be detailing that information, though many of them will just be headlining the current price. Be very careful. Make sure you look and see what the price rises is going to be coming forward. Now, what's interesting for me about this is this is absolutely certainly a boon for transparency. You know what's going to happen.
5:01 Martin Lewis? You know exactly how much you're going to pay. But when this consultation was going on, what I put into the submission is we should ban any price hikes that are above inflation. We should have a cap that says if that price ends up being above inflation, it shouldn't be allowed to happen. That was not put in place. So let's look at the practical reality of this situation. I'll give you an idea. BTE PlusNet is going to be going typically, and I'll say typically, it's not every single contract, at £1.50 a month for mobile SIM only, at £2 a month for TV, up £3 a month for broadband, up £4 a month for a mobile who's also paying off a handset. And you have similar scales of rises.
5:43 Martin Lewis? You know, 3 is £2 a month for broadband, Virgin's £3.50 a month for broadband. So if you're on a cheap contract, if you're paying £20 a month and it's going up by £3.50, well, that's an 18% rise. What you would have seen inflation link this year, because inflation's lower, is a 6% rise. So for those who were paying less than around, I'll give a very rough rule of thumb. If your mobile or your broadband, if your mobile's less than around 20 quid and your broadband's less than around 30, 35 quid, you're going to pay a lot more under this new system than you would have done under the old system. If you're on a horribly hideously expensive deal, which you should probably be ditching and switching anyway because it's too much, then because it's a fixed sum...
6:25 Martin Lewis? Then, in most cases, you're probably slightly better off than you would have been under an inflation-linked rise. So the new system is certainly more transparent, but is actually enabling providers to do bigger price rises for many people than they would have done otherwise. I'm not sure that's the best solution. And certainly, those who ride the waves of the cheapest deals and are locking in on lower prices, what we've effectively enabled firms to do, because there's no limit on the price that you could rise, and this hasn't happened yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if we saw it in future, is, you know, they'll say, "We're going to give you £15 a month broadband." And then in April, it's going up to £25 a month, and the April after, it's going up to £35 a month.
7:08 Speaker 05 But all you've seen is the £15.
7:10 Martin Lewis? Well, if you're going to one of the comparison sites, or you're seeing the way that they're marketing it based on current prices. So it does improve transparency because they do have to tell you. But how this is going to play out in the long run, I wait to see. And certainly, in the short term, for those on cheaper deals, this new rule is in practice, meaning you're going to see a much bigger percentage increase in cost than you would have done under the old system. And I'm a little bit disappointed that Ofcom didn't actually think, "Well, look, transparency isn't everything. We also need to say, if you're signing up for a contract, you know, they could give you one price." And these firms, they could have just, you know, if you know you're going to go up £3.50 in April and £3.50 the next period, well, they could just charge you one consistent price the whole time, couldn't they? Because it would work out exactly the same thing.
7:53 Speaker 05 But on the comparison sites, how do you compare even? Is there a metric? It's hard to work out, isn't it?
8:00 Martin Lewis? I have to be slightly careful.
8:01 Speaker 05 I know, I know what you're going to say.
8:03 Martin Lewis? So what I would say is, the way I would do it, if I had a comparison site, is I would give you an equivalent cost which annualized the price over the time period. Which gave you a monthly price over the time period and averaged it all out. And I would find that that was the easiest way to compare. But not every comparison site is doing that.
8:20 Speaker 05 Can you avoid price hikes?
8:22 Martin Lewis? No, not if you're mid-contract. If you're out of contract, absolutely. So let's just look into, let's look into some of those different variances. I think you're asking me a Sky one, let's do that one.
8:32 Speaker 05 Okay, all right. All my, all my prices have increased this year already. Apparently Sky say they don't have to inform you if your TV price increases only your broadband. And I'm struggling to find the time to sit down and sort them all out, but I'm paying roughly £100, £150 too much across all my bills, and that's just from a quick cheque last month. That's from Jack Lind.
8:54 Martin Lewis? Okay, so first I want to deal with the Sky issue. There is one caveat to these new rules, which is firms do not have to publish their price rise. If they choose not to publish their price rise, and Sky has said it won't be publishing their price rise, it is the big exception. Then if they do announce a mid-contract price rise, you are able to leave the contract penalty-free within 30 days of being formally notified of the price rise. So what's going to happen with Sky on broadband and TV is this April, if it puts prices up, which I'm expecting it to, but I don't know, then you will be told, and within your letter it will tell you,
9:36 Martin Lewis? probably subtly at the end, but I'll be amplifying that if I possibly can, you have 30 days to leave penalty-free, so you can escape your contract. So that those, so effectively there are two systems. Most firms are going by the pounds and pence publishing in advance, and then you cannot leave your contract until the contract ends without paying the rest of the contract fee. Firms that don't publish it, like Sky, and Sky is the big one, well if it does a price rise, you are free to leave penalty-free. Now, what I would use at that occasion, if you want to stay with Sky, it would be an opportunity for haggling your price down because you're free to leave. As for the £100, £150 quid that's being paid, that is just way too much. I'm going to come on cutting the costs later on on mobile and broadband. So let's just focus on the mid-contract price rises.
10:21 Martin Lewis? So there is actually a third system that's going on. I wasn't going to talk about this, but it's probably interesting for people.
10:27 Speaker 05 Yeah.
10:27 Martin Lewis? I believe, and I haven't dotted every i and crossed every t on this, that Tesco is still doing percentage-based price rises. So unlike all the others, which are just saying broadband's going up by a fixed amount each month, Tesco, while it isn't going to say it's a percentage price hike, is giving bespoke price rises to individuals based on a set percentage rise, which is actually beneficial to those especially who are on lower and cheaper contracts with it. Because obviously 6% if you're paying £10 a month is a lot better than adding on top £1.50 a month as a fixed rise that others are going to be doing.
11:00 Speaker 05 Okay. What about some questions about existing customers? Ian on Facebook said, "I've just read my Virgin contract. It's up in June. It says it will go up in April along with inflation." Just to check that I understand, that's the old system.
11:16 Martin Lewis? Correct.
11:17 Speaker 05 So it went up one month after I started the contract. Can they do this?
11:22 Martin Lewis? Yes. So notice my initial phrasing was quite deliberate. New contracts. If you signed up before last Friday, which is when this came in.
11:35 Speaker 05 Yeah.
11:36 Martin Lewis? The rules do not apply until your next contract.
11:41 Speaker 05 So I signed up in December to a contract.
11:45 Martin Lewis? So you can have an inflation-linked pay rise this year, and if it were a two-year contract, you could have it next April as well. But the moment that contract ends, if you sign up for a new contract, or you go out of contract, so you're just on a sort of rolling, you haven't signed up for a new contract, keep-paying-it basis, from that point onwards, it moves to the new regulations. So we effectively have a transition period where anyone signing up for a new deal can't be given the inflation-linked mid-contract price hikes, but those who are already within a contract on an existing deal can be given the inflation-linked price hikes until that contract ends. Does that make sense?
12:25 Speaker 05 Yes.
12:26 Martin Lewis? Okay.
12:30 Martin Lewis? Many people are paying four times over the odds at the moment on their mobile phone bills. You can be paying as little as £3 a month for 50GB of data, unlimited UK calls and texts, free EU roaming. Now, what you really need to understand when it comes to mobile phones is over the past two or three years, for those people who are on existing contracts and on existing deals, we have seen prices rise by, I've talked about it, 18% two years ago, 8% last year, and the cost of existing deals has skyrocketed. But at the same time, the cost of new SIMs, if you're signing up for a new package, has plummeted. Just listen to that. As little as £3 a month for a 50GB
13:12 Martin Lewis? data package. Two, three years ago, you'd been paying £9 or £10 a month for the cheapest of those. Many people are paying £20, £30 a month for that level of data. So anybody who is out of contract on their mobile right now, the enormous majority of them are paying many times, not many percent, many times over the odds, and need to look at what's going on. So the first thing I would urge everybody to do is to text info, literally I-N-F-O, to 85075. So text info, it's free, to 85075.
13:53 Martin Lewis? What that does is, in most cases, you will get a reply telling you whether you are out of contract on your mobile phone. It's a scheme set up by Ofcom to make this easier. Firms have to obey it. Now, a quick note, if you're on 3, Smartie or ID mobile, it will reply asking for your date of birth because they want a validity check. That's absolutely fine. If you're on those networks, just reply and give them your date of birth to get the answer. The only time this won't work is those people who are on multiple phone contracts, typically a family contract. You know, I've got, I've got all the families' deal on one contract, then they can't give you an answer because it differs. In which case, my rough rule of thumb, if you haven't done anything for the last 18 months to two years, you are probably out of contract.
14:36 Martin Lewis? Now, when you do do that text, they used to give you a very simple answer. What they've started to do now is start to write things like... We really don't want to leave you. Your customer is very important to us. We have many great deals available in our mobile phone network. But if you're really asking... So they convolute it and they make it more difficult. What you're looking to see in your response text is that there is a £0 early termination or cancellation charge. So what it's basically saying is if you were to leave right now, we wouldn't charge you a termination fee, which they can't do if you're out of contract. And if you are out of contract, woo, woo, woo! This is the moment that we can look at can you save? So your second step for most people, assuming you don't want a new handset, is to switch
15:21 Martin Lewis? your SIM card to save. The SIM is the little chip, or sometimes a virtual chip in your back of the phone, that gives it its identity and crucially dictates what tariff that you are going to be paying. SIMs are uber-cheap right now. Your current mobile phone provider, if your phone is locked, or not that many are locked there, as many are locked now, has to unlock it for free. So just running through some deals now, worth saying, I'm going to say the same on broadband later. The cheapest deals are almost invariably on comparison sites. They are not available direct from providers. The reason for that is, in many cases, if the provider is offering it direct, it has to offer it to existing customers. So the way they work it is they keep the same tariff, right?
16:05 Martin Lewis? The same monthly charge, but then then put a marketing promotion on to offering you vouchers or discounts, which is coming from marketing spend, not tariff spend, that they put on comparison sites where people are price sensitive of going. So depending on which comparison you go on, 5GB of data a month, unlimited minutes, unlimited text, you know, there's a package from the bar available at the moment that's about £1 for the first 6 months, then £5 a month afterwards on a one-month rolling contract, so you could cancel after the first 6 months. So that's an average of £3. 50GB is available, ID Mobile that is, around £3 to £5 a month, depending which site that you're going to get it. 120GB of data a month, all these are unlimited minutes and unlimited tax in the UK.
16:47 Martin Lewis? You're going to be getting for around £5 to £8 a month, depending which comparison sites. Unlimited data around £10 or £11 a month with the cheapest. So for many people out there, I mean, unlimited data, if you're paying more than £10 a month, you can get unlimited data for £10 a month and unlimited minutes, unlimited text. Why aren't you? So get yourself onto a comparison site. Now, the thing, I'm going to preempt what people say to me about this. People say, "But Martin..." And I don't know why they put that voice on, but they just do. They always walk up to me, they frown their face and they go, "But Martin, I like my existing signal. I don't want to change network. I want to keep my signal." Are you one of those, Adrian?
17:28 Martin Lewis? Not with the voice, obviously. You'd be, "I like my existing signal. I don't want to change network."
17:33 Speaker 05 No, but I spent a lot of time in a place where it have to be on that, on the EE stroke, whatever the other thing is, and there's no Vodafone one, if you see what I mean.
17:43 Martin Lewis? Well, this is really important. There are only four networks in the UK. Vodafone, 3, O2 and EE. Every other mobile provider is a virtual network piggybacking on one of those signals. So each one of those companies will have 10, 15 different mobile networks that use their signal. Now, if you go onto the right comparison sites, you can say, "I want to only look at providers that use, in your case, EE, an EE signal, because I need an EE signal."
18:25 Martin Lewis? So many people are limiting themselves by going to the main network only and saying, "I just want EE." No, I want an EE signal. No, I want a Vodafone signal, not just Vodafone, a Vodafone signal. So show me all of those that have a Vodafone signal. And that's how you bring the price down if you want to move signal. Now, it is important to say, it may not have 5G, it may not have wifi calling or 4G calling. Don't assume you're getting the same product because it's a different provider. But the signal is generally the same signal. So what you can do if you want to cut the cost, because the main networks tend to be a bit more expensive, is look at what virtual networks are sharing the same signal as you, and that can bring the price down.
19:08 Speaker 05 Just a text comment. It's a discussion about broadband providers, for example, BT Internet. If you try to move on from them and you use the email system, they'll try to charge you to keep the same email address.
19:21 Martin Lewis? So it's a really interesting thing. Many people are held hostage by their email. I have close family who are in this position, who for years I've been urging them to get rid of their particularly ISP-linked email.
19:34 Martin Lewis? There's a right smile. There's someone out there who knows exactly who I'm talking about. So different providers have different terms. For example, Virgin Media, I believe, gives you 90 days when you leave that keeps your email open. I think BT, from memory, charges you if you want to access the email via Outlook or one of those type systems. But if you just want webmail where you log in via a browser to get it, I think you can keep it open for free. My general advice, first of all, is never use ISP internet service provider, broadband provider email. Just don't use it. Get yourself a Gmail or Yahoo, a Hotmail, or any other provider that you came to mention that is generical moves with you. Or buy a URL that gets your own name as your mail provider. Don't use it.
20:19 Speaker 05 I did this recently. It's quite easy to swap. I started a Gmail address.
20:25 Martin Lewis? Yeah.
20:25 Speaker 05 And I just, on the, okay, it was a BT address, the other one, I just put a kind of an automatic forwarding thing on it.
20:32 Martin Lewis? So what I would tend to do, especially for those people who are nervous, I would tend to plan two months before you're going to leave, right? I would open up your new email and I would start telling everybody important, send a message, my email has changed. Then only ever reply from the new email address. Never reply from your old email address. And anybody who's important who emails you after that, reply from your new email address, saying you sent it the wrong email, and then do the reply. And then, hopefully by the time you actually switch, most of the important ones, and you've changed all your banking details, and you've changed all of those things have gone across, then the webmail access that they give you will be enough. So you can just check every couple of weeks that no one slipped through the cracks. But I mean, there is a big list of
21:15 Martin Lewis? how different providers approach this. So you need to check each firm's policy if you're leaving as to whether it'll enable you to have your email open or not afterwards.
21:24 Speaker 05 Okay, let's go back to some of the mobile phone questions. How do you hold on to your number?
21:29 Martin Lewis? Easy, dead easy. You simply text PAC, which stands for Porting Authorization Code, but you don't need to know that. You just text PAC. Think of Pac-Man without the man.
21:42 Martin Lewis? To 65075. Then you'll be sent a code to send to your new provider, which will transfer your number over usually in one working day. Also, what often happens when you text PAC, I'm going to do that voice again, is you'll get a message back that goes, "We're sorry to know that you're considering leaving. We really don't think you should be leaving. We think you should stay. We noticed that you're paying more than you should be. So we would like to offer you a much, much cheaper deal than you're existingly paying. Because we know you're going to leave and we haven't been fighting for your business. But now we're suddenly actually risking the fact that you're going to leave. We're going to try and give you a better deal." Doesn't always work, but can work sometimes.
22:21 Speaker 05 Okay, red-faced of Nottingham, as they describe themselves. I'm so embarrassed. I've discovered I've been paying a direct debit for a mobile phone. I lost seven, yes, seven years ago, and it hasn't been used in all that time. Is there anything I can do to reclaim these payments? Red-faced of Nottingham, I did some, not quite as bad, but nearly as bad. And I was incensed. They know exactly what's going on and they just let you carry on playing. So it's partly your fault, my fault, but blimey, is there anything you can do to get the?
22:56 Martin Lewis? So in that specific circumstance, it's clearly cancel your direct debit straight away. Clearly you're out of contract. Legally, it's a tricky one. It's a grey area. But I would absolutely get in touch with them and say, "I have been paying this. I've just noticed. I accept some responsibility, but surely you have a duty of care to me as a customer too. You know this mobile phone is not being used and I would like you to refund me those charges." Or even, you might want to play straight in, "I feel it's fair. You refund me 50% of those charges. You know, go in a negotiation. If not, you could argue about taking to the ombudsman for unfair, unfair and poor consumer practices on you. If it were a financial issue, you'd have a consumer duty. You don't, you don't in this particularly regulatory structure."
23:39 Martin Lewis? The other big warning, which is I suspect what your problem was, this is what drives me nuts. That one I don't think is as deliberate. The one that is deliberate and disgusting and should be banned and isn't banned. Is you've got a mobile phone contract that gives you a new phone. You know, phones these days are 1500 quid. They are very expensive pieces of tech. And you're paying it off over two years, which includes the repayment of the capital cost of the handset.
24:06 Speaker 05 This is me.
24:06 Martin Lewis? And a bit more on top. The contract ends. You've paid off your handset.
24:12 Speaker 05 But the money going out stays the same.
24:15 Martin Lewis? Correct.
24:15 Speaker 05 And it stayed the same with me for two whole years. I'm an idiot, but they shouldn't have done it. And I rang up and rented and they.
24:24 Martin Lewis? People like you need to be protected. People like you need to be protected from themselves, Adrian.
24:28 Speaker 05 Yeah.
24:28 Martin Lewis? Right. Look, it shouldn't be allowed. Clearly, I have always argued that when a handset is included in a contract, it should be given, broken down in its own price and being given an APR, because often they ramp up the initial price anyway. And it should be seen because it is effectively a loan for the handset cost.
24:45 Speaker 05 And regulated, it should be regulated.
24:47 Martin Lewis? And once you've paid it off, and it should be, and once you've paid it off, it has to be paid off. Now, the very bizarre thing is if we'd been doing this show three, four years ago and you'd said, what's the cheapest way to get a handset? I would have almost invariably said, get your handset separately and then get a cheap SIM. And don't get the two together, assuming you have the money. And not everyone does, which is why many people got contracts. But these days, actually, through some resellers, we often found the cheapest way to get a handset is now on a contract over two years. It is actually cheaper than buying the two things separately. So I just think, and some of that reason is this, because they know they're going to make the money afterwards for the people who don't notice. So you just need a big red line in your diary before that contract ends. Get off that deal.
25:29 Speaker 05 They sent a snail mail letter. But they, you know, they could so easily have sent a text.
25:35 Martin Lewis? They could have sent a text and an email, and they could have sent a reminder text 30 days later. We seem, you haven't seemed to notice, which is what they would do if it was a positive action they wanted to take in their favour. If it was in their favour, think of the amount of communications. You would have been buried in a sea of communications.
25:49 Speaker 05 There must be a figure about how much money they are taking.
25:52 Martin Lewis? I have no idea. I'm sure there is, but I don't have it. I would just suggest it's probably hundreds of millions of pounds. So anyone who's paying off a handset, you know, you need to know when that ends and you need to stop paying that day. Either by calling them up and saying, my handset's over, what's the new price? Or even better, get yourself on a comparison site.
26:11 Speaker 05 We've got some telluses, which is so awkward to say, but for some reason I enjoy saying it every week.
26:16 Martin Lewis? It should be Latinified, shouldn't it? Tellamp.
26:19 Speaker 05 Yeah, something like that. But this is tell us where you ask for someone to tell us something and this is budgeting.
26:24 Martin Lewis? So what I wanted to know is what are your budgeting tips? Of course, I've got lots of mine that I've given over the years, but crucially on these budgeting tips, it's more about how do you stick to a budget? Now, just briefly, the key for doing a budget, many people do budgets wrong, they just look at one month's expenditure, it is never one month. We have expenditures that changes over the years, you buy a new sofa, you don't do that every year, you sort of have to factor in those provisions, but especially you factor in your annual things. Maybe you go on holiday in the summer, if you spend £1,200 on your annual holiday, that's £100 a month. If you spend £600 on Christmas, that's £50 a month, they need to be factored into your monthly budget for putting the money aside. And the other big mistake people make when they're doing a budget, when you're doing a proper budget planner, is it will say motoring. No one spends on motoring.
27:09 Martin Lewis? You spend on MOTs, on new tyres, on car insurance, on petrol. Itemise it, specify it using your bank account, don't go for big generics, look at it more individually and you'll have a much better addition. So add up what you're spending across the year in detail, divide that by 12 and you start to get into a decent position of a budget. And the easy way to tell if your budget is wrong is if you're building up debt or decreasing your spendings and your budget says you balance, your budget's wrong. Because clearly you're spending more than you've got. If you're building up savings and your budget says you're in debt, your budget's wrong. Because clearly you're spending less than you've got. So you need that intuitive check to be factored in as well.
27:48 Speaker 05 Okay, Gareth Brown says eat at least 20 minutes before food shopping. Absolutely, yes. Marion says make soup, freeze portions for quick lunch, use all the old vegetables, make croutons from old bread. There is an absolute science to all that. My mum is the best in Britain at it. And I do a lot of that myself, just I can't bear chucking old vegetables away.
28:12 Martin Lewis? So the generative AI now, sometimes using it, taking pictures but also noting it in, if you tell it what you've got left in your store cupboard and can come up with recipes for it, which is an interesting new development. I'm going to, let's go some more money ones. Brian Johnson, Facebook. Don't celebrate payday by spending money. Rather, set yourself a budget and if you reach payday without spending everything than celebrate. Brian, I love it. It's actually very similar to a tip in my guide to budgeting for students. I always say that if you want to splurge, the day to splurge is not the day that you get your loan. It's the day before you get your next loan when you've got money left over. Because if you splurge when you get your loan, you're probably going to end up eating a lot of cold baked beans because you don't have the money left.
28:54 Martin Lewis? But if you budget well and leave it, have the celebration when you've got the cash towards the end if you've got any left. So I love that one. I'll do Helen as well. We have to have some of the nerdy ones. Helen nerd is always a compliment from me. Helen Armstrong Smith. "I have a spreadsheet that always looks a year ahead. Income, outgoing, budget figures for unknowns, and monthly standing orders to savings. Is it wrong that I find this sexually attractive?" (laughing) I've never seen Helen, but Helen, how are you doing? "It tells me how much we have over or under budget every month, so I can see the trend and know if we're skint, okay, or flush, both now and up to a year out. I log every transaction." Helen, your sweet talk's getting to me. "Categorize it and monitor category spending against the corresponding budget.
29:39 Martin Lewis? For example, we may overspend on food, but if we've underspent on something else, we can sub one budget from another. Sounds over the top." No Helen. No Helen, you need to put this on a dating profile. "Sounds over the top, but just needs discipline, and once it's set up, it's easy. I always know where we stand financially." Look, not everyone's going to be able to be a Helen, but I absolutely love it. And the more you're in control of your money, the less your money controls you. Joe Smith says, "Create separate bank accounts for big annual things." This is all about budgeting tips. "E.g. car insurance, service, MOT, tax, Christmas and birthday holidays. Set up standing orders that ping money into these accounts on payday, so you don't even see that money hit your account. Much easier to manage it all, and you have to make a conscious decision to use that money for a different purpose.
30:24 Martin Lewis? This method was an absolute game changer for my budgeting." Yeah, I call it piggy banking. Some people call it jam jarring. It's really important because what you have to understand... Is your bank account is a little liar. It's a liar. When you look at your bank account, it tells you only a snapshot of today's finances. It doesn't tell you what's gone out and what's going to go out and where you are in the big picture. And by using the system that Joe's just talked about, where effectively you do a budget, you work out, okay, Christmas is £600 a year. I'm going to have a Christmas piggy bank jam jar savings account where I put 50 quid a month in so that when I get to Christmas, I know exactly how much I've got to spend to it. I'm going to put £100 a month in my holiday fund. I've got a bills account.
31:07 Martin Lewis? I know my bills average over the year £6,000, so I'm going to put £500 a month. It'll be more than that, ignore the numbers. I'm going to put £500 a month in my bills account. Once you separate all of those, then it does two things. First of all, when you look in your bank account for your normal spending, what's in there is what you can actually spend because you siphon all that money out the day after you've been paid. So it's gone and then what you're looking in is how much you can spend in the month. And you might put some in the savings account as well that is for saving for a rainy day. But also, when you come to going on holiday, if you suddenly decide I want to go on a holiday earlier in the year, you'll have less money than you go later. But you know how much money you actually have to spend rather than, oh, I'm going to spend what I think. You've done the budget.
31:47 Martin Lewis? So it's, it's a, many people swear by that system of budgeting and a few people swear at it too because it can be restricting because you suddenly realise you don't have the money you have. But ultimately, it leads to less financial pain. Now broadband. While the situation is very similar to mobiles, there's a few specific things you need to know to cut the cost of your broadband. And again, millions of you are overpaying.
32:11 Speaker 05 What should we talk about with broadband then?
32:13 Martin Lewis? Broadband. So let's go through what you do on broadband. It's a very similar pattern. So the first thing I would say is check what you're paying. Because most people don't realise what they're paying and those prices have gone up. Just to put this in context, over a year, the bog standard prices of 64 meg broadband deal with BT is around 800 quid a year. Think of it per year, then you realise quite how big a bill this is. With Sky 500 at 30 meg, so slower, Virgin 650 at 132 meg. Yet there are 7 million people who are out of contract on broadband. There were 40 million on mobile. The reason it's smaller, simple. Mobile is an individual contract. Broadband is a household contract. There are less households than there are people.
32:58 Martin Lewis? But commensurately, it's roughly a similar proportion of contracts are out of contract. And you could pay as little as 250 quid for faster speeds. Most people out there could halve their cost and double their speed if you're out of contract right now. Now unfortunately, there is no easy mechanism like texting to find out if you're out of contract on broadband. I wish they'd introduce one. There isn't, so you're just going to need, you've almost certainly got an online account. Go check your online account to see whether you're out of contract and see whether you're free to switch. If you are free to switch, we're back to those comparison sites. It's exactly the same rule as mobile and it's more regulated here. So absolutely with broadband, most big providers have to offer existing customers all the tariffs they offer new customers.
33:41 Martin Lewis? Right, so what happens here is the same price is then available on a comparison site, but they'll say, and if you sign up, you can claim a £150 Amazon voucher. And that's how you bring the price down. Those are not available direct. They're short-lived deals, they change every week, so it's all about what's available at the moment. So just to give you an idea, right now, there's a Virgin 132 meg broadband only deal that depending where you're paying, between £23 and £25 a month. Once you factor in the automatic bill credit it gives you via comparison sites. A Vodafone 150 meg deal that you're going to be paying again around £24 a month for. You can be going up to 500 meg broadband. Now look, most people on BT are 64 meg.
34:23 Martin Lewis? This is nearly 10 times the speed and this is 30 quid a month and those people are paying 50 pounds a month. You know, that's the differential from people who are out of contract.
34:31 Speaker 05 I always say, the other variable is... The level of customer service because you know it's going to go down. There'll be faults from time to time. And if you've then got to wait two hours to speak to somebody a long way away.
34:43 Martin Lewis? If the fault is go if the line is going down, that tends to be the outreach issue, which is all provided by BT rather than the supplier. I'm going to tell you something on customer service. I've just I've got notes when I write on this. We have customer service ratings and we do those for lots of different sectors. And then we try and rank them. We do some statistics and an algorithm to rank them into good, okay and poor. On broadband, all of the out of tens for good, okay and poor are about two points lower than every other sector. Right. Because good broadband tends to be about five and a half, six out of 10, because the whole sector has such bad customer service feedback. So the assumption that you pay more, you get more. I mean, there are some more really expensive providers that have, you know, very good customer service feedback. They're still reliant on the provider.
35:27 Martin Lewis? The other thing that's worth understanding, two more things on broadband you need to know. That will go into this, two more things. First of all, there's a growth of alt nets. These are small, localized providers that can be fast and can be cheap and are not using BT's outreach system to provide your cable. They're using their own systems, tends to be in big urban areas. Comparison sites, depending on which ones, are catching up and adding more of those alt nets. But broadband is postcode dependent. The second thing that you need to know is social tariffs. There are four million people in the UK eligible for broadband social tariffs. These are not quick broadband. It's about 30 meg, but that's enough for most people with basic usage.
36:10 Martin Lewis? But they're long term, cheap prices, 13 pounds a month to 20 pounds a month. It's generally for people on universal credit or sometimes other benefits like pension credit or legacy benefits. If you are on a low income and especially if you're on universal credit, getting contract, most broadband providers offer it. If yours doesn't, you can move to one that does, you know, the big ones, BT does it, lots of others do it. And ask them about their social tariff. You'll Google social broadband, social tariffs to see the eligibility criteria. Four million people are eligible. Only about 5% of the people who are eligible are getting those social tariffs. Far, far cheaper deals. And we started the program by talking about mid-contract price hikes. Well, social tariffs can't go up mid-contract.
36:52 Martin Lewis? They are specially protected, so you won't have those April price hikes if you're on a social tariff. Go and check out your social tariff, especially if you're on universal credit.
37:01 Speaker 05 Just something on Vodafone, just going back a bit. I had a Vodafone business contract I've been paying for two years without using it. I wrote to Vodafone and they gave an excise payment of around 300 without fuss, so definitely worth trying.
37:14 Martin Lewis? Well done.
37:14 Speaker 05 Just your...
37:15 Martin Lewis? Although business contracts can be different from domestic contracts, absolutely. A couple of other things on broadband. Switching now is much easier. We now have what's called one-touch switching. We've had it for a while, but there are a couple of providers like Virgin who couldn't be engaged in it. Now, this happens everywhere. What this means is when you apply to switch broadband, your new provider does everything. You don't need to contact your old provider. So it's got simpler to do. Bundling broadband TV and phone can also be interesting. When you switch, it's normally only about two hours downtime. Engineers don't come in most cases, only to switch to or from Virgin generally. If you're getting fibre to the premises, which is where the fibre goes all the way into your house rather than just to the exchange and then you have a copper wire which is slower delivering it to your door.
37:57 Martin Lewis? So for the faster speeds, they often need to send an engineer, but they only need to look outside your property. So they will tend to let you know it's happening. You don't normally need to be in, but you know, you need to be aware of it because you might find some strange bloke or woman outside your property looking at your bricks and looking at stuff and it would be worth knowing who they are.
38:13 Speaker 05 Okay, several texts from people living in rural areas. "What are your options? We're lucky to get 24 megs", says somebody. "It'll be two years before Openreach get anywhere near my village."
38:28 Speaker 05 Someone else says, "Out of the sticks, can't get broadband speeds you're talking about. Is there different advice for me?" What?
38:33 Martin Lewis? It is literally get yourself onto a comparison site with the widest range of providers possible and see what's available. If that's not working, then you need to start looking at some of the 5G home providers that are out there that will basically put, you're doing it via a mobile signal and if there's a good mobile signal in your area and that could give you a decent, you know, and they'll use a couple of SIM cards in one box that will give you a decent contention ratio. There are no easy fixes. This is post-condependent. Most of the cheapest deals, they always say cover 90% of the UK. It's invariably the rural areas that aren't covered and, you know, 90% of the UK by population, not 90% of the UK by area.
39:08 Speaker 05 But I think the stuff you can do within the community, you get everybody to write somewhere, don't you? Is that to open reach? I mean, there is a mechanism there. I've seen it.
39:18 Martin Lewis? It's not quick, though. It's not quick and there are no guarantees. And you know, all net providers are sometimes coming to do this. And absolutely, if you've got a big enough community, you might want to get in touch with them and say, we want you to come and fit fibre in our area. We've got 2,000 people, we'll all agree to be with you. And we won't make the prices particularly cheap. Just one other thing I wanted to note. The speeds I'm talking about, the rules now are that at least 50% of customers must get the advertised speed, must get the advertised speeds at peak times. All bigger providers have also signed up to a voluntary code that where they will give you estimated minimum speeds pre-application. And then if they don't meet that and they can't fix it within 30 days, you're free to leave penalty free. So the advertised speeds used to be terrible.
40:03 Martin Lewis? But now they're getting closer. I think you had a question that we held off earlier.
40:08 Speaker 05 Yeah, currently paying for Sky, Sky for broadband, landline, TV package. We know broadband is out of contract, but as we researched, there isn't enough signal to buy into a new supplier. What are our next step? That's from Mick on Twitter.
40:25 Martin Lewis? Mick, right, look, the one big thing I haven't talked about in mobile and broadband, which is absolutely massive, is haggling. Haggling is the other big powerhouse. These are both mature industries. What do I mean by that? It means pretty much everybody who's going to get them has them. So therefore, once everybody's got them and they're right across society, a company's job is to win new business from other providers and to protect its existing customer base. So therefore, it will fight to keep you. We've talked before about how they do that. They fight to keep you. Normally, you go on to them, you need the phrase that pays, you need to tell them why, you know, I can't afford the budget. I found it so much cheaper elsewhere. You know, think of your reason why you want a cheaper price. Benchmark your prices elsewhere. Well, clearly, you've found prices elsewhere.
41:07 Martin Lewis? They aren't that good. But you've got some prices out there at which you can go off and then talk to your existing provider when you're out of contract and say, look, I need to stick with you. If they're not giving you a good enough deal. Then you go through to customer retentions. That's what they call it because its job is to keep you. We're always polite and nice. We're always charming. You want to win them to your side with noting individual agents often have their own quota of how many discounts they could do a day. You want to, if you shout at them, they're not going to want to give you a discount. If you charm them and be nice, they are. And we shouldn't be, I've got to be very careful with call centre people. It's not their fault, you know, even if you're a bit annoyed with them. So always try and be polite. Get through to disconnections, talk to them. If they call you bluff, if they say to you, all right, we'll disconnect you, then say, oh, I need to go and talk to my husband, my wife, my boyfriend, my girlfriend, my pet
41:51 Martin Lewis? parrot first, just to double check that they're happy for me to leave, although I do want to leave. Try calling back another day. You might have it better another day or two later. If it doesn't work, then you should be thinking of leaving. But in that cases, I would be thinking that haggling is a really good option. Now, as we're talking about haggling and I've got new data on it, I thought I would interrupt the conversation with Adrian to give you just a little bit more detail. First of all, what are the four biggest areas where you can succeed upon haggling? This comes from a poll of nearly 15,000 people who have tried to haggle. It isn't a statistically representative poll, but I still think this is a pretty good indicative poll. So here are the first areas. In fourth place with a 64% success chance is car and home insurance.
42:36 Martin Lewis? In third place with a 64% success chance, but slightly how it comes rounding, is mobile phones. Now, let's think about 64%. That means nearly two in three who have tried succeed in getting a reduction when they haggle, when they're about to be out of contract or they are fully out of contract, which is when you do haggle. In second place, it's broadband and paid for TV with a 71% success rate. And the top area in which you can haggle? Well, it's breakdown cover. The AA and the RAC both have huge success rates. Overall, it's an average 78% chance, which means nearly four in five people who try
43:19 Martin Lewis? and haggle when they're coming to the end of their contract on breakdown cover succeed. And if you want the top 10, I'll do it quickly. So now, why don't I do? The top 10 individual firms to haggle with that had enough votes in my poll. Again, it's just an indication, but it gives you an idea if you're with one of these firms that you may well be able to succeed if you push them to haggle politely and nicely. I'm going to give you the overall success rate, even though it's broken down to big and small successes. Producer Seuss, give me some top 10 music.
43:54 Martin Lewis? In at number 10, it's Green Flag Breakdown with 73% success. At nine, Sky Mobile, 74% success. Now that's what I call a haggle. It's now broadband and TV. In at number eight, 75% success.
44:13 Martin Lewis? Car and Home Insurance from Hastings is a 75% success at number seven. Talk Talk, well, you'll be talking and talking when you haggle with them, at number six, with 76% success for their broadband and TV. In at number five, it's Car and Home Insurance from Policy Expert, 79% success.
44:33 Martin Lewis? Now we're getting to the big ones. In at number four, it's the AA for Car and Home Insurance at 83% success. In at number three, the RAC Breakdown Cover, Roadside Recovery, 83% success. Exactly the same as the AA again, this time for its breakdown cover, also at 83% success. And top of the haggle charts, well, they're no virgin when it comes to giving a discount, it's Virgin Media. I don't believe I said that. It's Virgin Media Broadband and TV with an 84% success rate. I'll send you back to Adrian.
45:07 Speaker 05 I am just hopeless at this and always have been. Is there some kind of special school you can go to to be reprogrammed when you're well into your 50s, just to, you know, I want to learn how to haggle before I die.
45:21 Martin Lewis? Well, I mean, look, haggling with call centres isn't the same as going into, you know, going abroad.
45:26 Speaker 05 But I'm hopeless at that as well.
45:27 Martin Lewis? I mean, all you're doing is you're saying, I've looked at the prices elsewhere, you're more expensive. I've checked for my postcode because you want to be more specific. They want to know you're not just quoting a general price. I could actually go and get this, but I like your service. But this is too expensive for me and I cannot justify paying it. I want to stay with you. Is there anything you can do to help me?
45:48 Speaker 05 Okay.
45:48 Martin Lewis? That's your basic question. It's not, you're, I mean, you're a broadcaster, Adrian. You're capable of doing this. You're capable of asking questions, I know.
45:56 Speaker 05 Do you know what? I was getting quite relaxed about this, then a neighbour, a friend of mine, Dawn, who's away in Spain, was on the phone to her yesterday, he said, "I'll be tuning in tomorrow just to see how you're doing that mastermind." I said, "Don't put the pressure on, for goodness sake."
46:13 Martin Lewis? So the adorning realisation of pressure in that case.
46:16 Speaker 05 Yes, exactly.
46:17 Martin Lewis? So Adrian, your mastermind school, you've had it all correct this year, you've currently got six right and eight wrong.
46:23 Speaker 05 Oh no, all that means, all that means.
46:25 Martin Lewis? It's better than random chance.
46:26 Speaker 05 I've known you a long time, Martin. All that means is, I'll get one so hard, so hard this week that nobody could answer it.
46:35 Martin Lewis? Is there anything worse in Adrian Charles's house? This is a man who has made a living of the science of interrogating the mundane. The greatest tragedy he can have. "The wifi is really slow. It has been for three days. I don't know how I'm going to cope with this. I need to do a search on what a chair would look like if people's knees bent the other way round."
47:01 Martin Lewis? You can write a column on that.
47:02 Speaker 05 Yeah.
47:03 Martin Lewis? So Adrian.
47:04 Speaker 05 Don't joke about it, yeah.
47:05 Martin Lewis? "To prevent such dilemmas, other things being equal, where is it generally best to put your wifi router?" Okay, simple question, you got that? "Other things being equal, where is it best to put your..." A: Somewhere higher up in the room, so the signal spreads out. B: Somewhere lower down in the room, so the signal can rise and nothing is missed. Or C: It makes no difference.
47:36 Speaker 05 Oof, well, look, you know, I don't think, do signals rise and fall like hot or cold air?
47:43 Martin Lewis? I'm asking the questions.
47:44 Speaker 05 I know you're asking the question, I'm just, I'm just showing.
47:46 Martin Lewis? A: Somewhere higher up in the room, so the signal spreads out. B: Somewhere lower down in the room, so the signal can rise and nothing is missed. C: It makes no difference.
47:54 Speaker 05 Um...
48:00 Speaker 05 I don't, I don't know much about radio signals. I stopped doing physics, but as soon as I possibly could.
48:07 Martin Lewis? 1824.
48:08 Speaker 05 Hmm, I think, uh, no, I, I, I don't, I don't think, I mean, I'm just thinking, if it's lower, there's likely to be more obstructions.
48:20 Speaker 05 So that might come into play. If I'm gonna go for that, I reckon high up.
48:27 Speaker 05 Because you've got line of sight, which we, whatever you're using, but that's.
48:32 Martin Lewis? Final answer?
48:33 Speaker 05 Yes.
48:34 Martin Lewis? So. If you put the signal lower down.
48:38 Speaker 05 Mm hmm.
48:39 Martin Lewis? Absolutely, there are obstacles. Put in the place that can block the signal. A big mistake many people do is they put their wifi router in a cupboard. Instantly, you're cutting your signal strength and you shouldn't be doing so. Elevating the router allows the signal to spread out more evenly across the room with less obstacles reaching devices at different levels in the room. The correct answer, play the hallelujah yet again.
49:08 Speaker 05 Incredible.
49:09 Martin Lewis? Not only that, placing it on the floor can cause the signal to be absorbed by the ground, weakening its strength. So this is an important point. Many people complain about their wifi speed. But you have to work out first of all, is the problem what's coming into the house or how it's getting around the house? So the week, the, the most important way to test that is if you've got a laptop or something you can plug directly into the router on a cable. Do a speed test with that and then contrast that to a speed test and you just Google speed test that you do when it's not plugged in, when it's using a wifi signal in different places. If the speed is a lot lower on the wifi, then the issue is your router and your signal, not, not the strength and the speed coming into the house.
49:49 Speaker 05 But you can get thingies, can't you?
49:50 Martin Lewis? You can get, you can get ex, extenders, you can get all these type of things. But you first of all need to know is, is many people complain about speed and it's not what's coming into the house. It's just about their wifi and their router and how they've got it set up. General tip, have it higher up, have it open and accessible so that it can spread the signal across and have it in the room where you're going to be you. If you haven't got an extender, have it in the room where you're going to be using the wifi the most. They're all pretty sensible, common sense type stuff, but it's absolutely important to do. I mean, staggering agent, it's seven, eight. I mean, you're almost going to be on parity, right and wrong.
50:20 Speaker 05 I mean, for somebody inherently stupid, that's, that's.
50:23 Martin Lewis? Clearly not true.
50:24 Speaker 05 Well, look, no, look, I, I challenge that.
50:26 Martin Lewis? Right.
50:27 Speaker 05 Do you know where my router is? It's upstairs in a little boiler room behind a little laundry room.
50:34 Martin Lewis? Okay, that's.
50:35 Speaker 05 Higher.
50:35 Martin Lewis? Really, really silly.
50:36 Speaker 05 Insane. So in a two story house.
50:38 Martin Lewis? Yeah.
50:38 Speaker 05 Where would you put?
50:40 Martin Lewis? Well, you're always going to have the problem in the two-storey house because if you put it on the top floor where it's higher up, you're going to have the floor absorbing the signal and blocking the signal going down. I would go back to where do you use the wifi most? I mean, you might want to get an extender, but the first thing you want to do, go and get an extension lead for that router and just have it sitting outside that cupboard, not inside that cupboard. And it would be interesting. And what I'd like, if you've managed to do that, come back on next week's show, do a speed test on your wifi downstairs now, and then do a speed test on your wifi when you move the router out and see if it makes any difference, and let us know. Experimentation, live, not live, you'll be doing next week, nearly live.
51:18 Speaker 05 We could do it live. We could do it from my house.
51:23 Martin Lewis? Okay, you lucky, lucky podcast listeners. It's that time of the show where I've got special tips just for you. I should, Coco, I know, how exciting. And there are three of them this week. First of all, a free National Trust Family Day Pass. Now, these were available online, but they've all gone online now. But you can still pick up a physical copy of the Daily Star, the Daily Mirror, or the Daily Express, or some regional newspapers, including the Liverpool Echo and the Manchester Evening News, until Sunday, the 26 of January, assuming they have papers on those days. But you're better to go quicker. Now, the papers cost around one to two pounds, but the pass is worth around 25 to 35 pounds. You can use them in most National Trust properties, except National Trust Scotland. And just be careful not to get the National Trust confused with English Heritage, which
52:07 Martin Lewis? is a different organisation. The Family Pass allows two adults and up to three children, or one adult and up to four children, or a couple, or an individual, to visit one National Trust site for free in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Next, there's a new top easy access savings account. Now, we have seen a price war in easy access cash ISAs. Even though savings rates in general are dropping, the cash ISAs are rising because of competition amongst a few small providers. Now, a cash ISA is just a savings account you never pay tax on. And the current top cash ISA rates beat the top normal easy access savings rates. So if you
52:50 Martin Lewis? Haven't used this year's cash ISA or ISA allowance, where you can put up to £20,000 in per tax year and that tax year ends on the 5th of April. Well, if you want easy access savings, you may as well use it because the rate's higher, even if the tax benefit is irrelevant to you. The new top payer is trading 212. It's paying 5.1% AER. You need a minimum of a quid in it. It's got unlimited withdrawals. The way it works is you get a 4.9% variable standard interest. Variable means they can change it, so like all easy access savings, you need to monitor it. Plus, newbies are getting one year's 0.2 percentage point boost, which is how you get the 5.1% in total. It does have a slightly complicated protection structure. You can go do a bit more reading about that.
53:33 Martin Lewis? But in general, it's a top paying easy access account and it happens to be a cash ISA. And my final one, I've done it in my quick tips before, but I make no apology for doing it again. HMRC's tax return deadline is fast approaching. It is the 31st of January. It is the end of this month. This is the self-assessment deadline for the tax year 2023 to 2024. At the beginning of the month, there were 5.6 million people who hadn't done it, who needed to. That's now down to 3.8 million people, but that's a lot of people, people. So, the key rule. If HMRC has told you you need to do a self-assessment tax return, you need to do a self-assessment tax return. That's the primary rule. If it's told you, you need to do it. Even if you don't think you should be doing it,
54:16 Martin Lewis? you need to do it or you need to get permission from HMRC not to do it, or you will be fined if you don't submit it. Other people who need to volunteer to do it are the self-employed. So if you're newly self-employed, you won't have done one before. If you have over £10,000 of savings interest, that's of interest, not of savings. That's a lot of savings to generate 10 grand of interest. If you earn over £150,000 a year. Or if in that tax year, you earned over £50,000 and received child benefit. Now, the child benefit thresholds have gone up since, but this is about the thresholds in the 2023-24 tax year, which is why it's a £50,000 level. In all those cases, you should be doing a self-assessment tax return. If you miss the deadline, there's a £100
55:00 Martin Lewis? Fine, later on them can be penalties. And if you're not paying, then there's a 7.25% annual interest penalty. That can be quite a lot because taxes are a big sum. The best thing to do is get the form done, get the form done, send it in and pay what you owe and do it before the deadline. I mean, there's reports this week that HMRC are not answering phone calls and there's great difficulties in getting in touch with them. Well, let me tell you, the nearer you get to the deadline, the even worse the already bad situation will get on that. Am I trying to scare you into doing your tax return? Yes, indeedy I am. The sooner you do it, the better, the easier for you. If in the event you're saying to me, I'm never going to get it done in time. I, I, I just can't. I mean, there are practical issues or you've got stuff going in your life, or in that which case if, if they're real reasons, then talk to HMRC about that or at least send them a note of what the problem is.
55:43 Martin Lewis? But if it's just you're not going to get it done in time because you're too busy at work and you just can't face it, well, that's a bad situation. I did urge you to get it done. But my second note would be pay what you think you owe. Because this is how the, the interest works. If you owe £12,000 and you pay them £10,000 and haven't done a form, you'll get the £100 fine and you'll pay interest on the amount underpaid. Well, which in this case is you owe £12,000, you've paid £10,000 is £2,000. If you just don't do anything, you'll pay interest on the whole £12,000. So paying what you think you owe will at least protect you from some of those interest charges. And if you can't afford to pay, again, try and contact HMRC urgently. Do it via the web chat, do it via the phone system, do it via email, do it whatever way
56:28 Martin Lewis? you can, get a note on there. But contacting them is difficult right now and is going to get even more difficult in the run up to that deadline.
56:38 Martin Lewis? That's it for this week. If you've enjoyed it, please tell your friends you've been listening to the Martin Lewis podcast and they should too. We tend to put out a new episode every Thursday. Do subscribe to keep up to date and then your pockets will be pleased with you. And if you've not enjoyed it, why are you still listening after an hour? I ask you that same question every week. And if you've heard it before and you're still listening and you don't like it, well, you're a glutton for punishment, aren't you? Maybe you secretly like the fact that you don't like it, which is a meta like for the show and I'm going to take it as a win. See you next week.
57:13 Speaker 06 Martin Lewis is the founder of MoneySavingExpert.com, but other consumer and price comparison websites are available. You can get in touch with Martin's podcast team by emailing [email protected] . The offers and rates mentioned in the podcast are correct at the time of recording. However, if you're listening on demand, it's worth double checking as the details can date.
57:42 Speaker 03 BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
57:48 Speaker 03 Sometimes we all need an extra help in hand, especially with a 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 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,
58:30 Speaker 03 like Gmail and Slack. 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.
58:58 Speaker 06 This week on The Interface, why Meta's banking on you watching movie-length videos on Instagram. Would you do it? Ninety minutes, just how Christopher Nolan intended. Plus, some troubling signs that the AI bubble may be bursting. And we'll be talking about some of the consequences, like the fact that tech companies might start selling your deepest, darkest secrets if they go bankrupt. Join me, Jess Maddox. And me, Thomas Germain, for The Interface. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or find us on YouTube.
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