Holiday hacks: cheapest way to spend abroad, car hire, insurance, 18 days off for 9 days leave, passports, GHIC…

Martin gives you his holiday tips, everything from the cheapest way to spend abroad to how to maximise your annual leave. The Tell Us this week is all about things your children misunderstand / mis-assume about money. Martin also explains credit rating, how to cut your water bills and how to get £100 off your energy standing charges. To get in touch with the podcast, email [email protected] mailto:[email protected].

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Welcome to The Haunted Library. Join me, Colin Morgan, as I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  A story of science and ambition, loneliness and longing, and what it truly means to be human.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Listen to The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts, or find us on YouTube.

• 0:39Speaker 02

  BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

• 0:43Martin 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 Five live show with Adrian Charles, but there's also bonus money-saving tips just for you lucky, lucky podcast listeners. In today's pod, well, it's January, it's cold, it's dark, no surprise, this is the biggest month for booking holidays, especially summer holidays abroad. So I'll be going through all the things that you need to do and know now to cut the cost and the hassle when you do go away. Cheapest ways to spend, how to get 18 days off for just nine days' leave, how to avoid the car hire desk extra cost trap, a warning about passports and G-hit cards, how kids can spend abroad, using mobile phones abroad, and so much more.

• 1:27Martin Lewis?

  The tellers this week is all about what mistakes your children make with money. I did it because I keep hearing kids calling their prepaid cards credit cards. That's dangerous. It risks diminishing the difference between types of plastic and inuring them to debts when they're older. We need to gently correct and explain, and I'll try and help you do that. It also led to an unexpected conversation between me and Adrian about credit ratings in a pub.

• 1:53Martin Lewis?

  The mastermind this week is all about water bills, and I'll show some of you how to cut hundreds of pounds off them. And finally, I have a quick tip on how to cut £100 off your energy standing charges. Yes, you did hear that right. Play the theme tune.

• 2:26Speaker 04

  Marty, actually, did I see a picture of you with some of the Traitors?

• 2:30Martin Lewis?

  You did, yes. I've had, twice this week, I've had a couple of funny things like that happen. Over the last weekend, I was walking with Mrs Money Saving Expert with my wife, Lara, and we were walking down in town, quite near the BBC, and there were a couple of people on the other side of the road who said people had stopped. So I realised, because my daughter and I have been watching Traitors, although my wife hasn't, I was like, oh, that's Jake and Leanne, who, I won't do a spoiler just in case you haven't caught up yet, we're in the final of the Traitors, we'll say. And so I went up to them and said that, because I thought my little girl would be pleased, can I have a photo? And it took them a second or two, and they were like, yes, of course you can. And then we're like, can we have a photo? Which is very nice. And then I had another episode yesterday, actually, where a man came up to me, I'd just nipped out of Money Saving Towers to go and have a look

• 3:12Martin Lewis?

  around to go and buy a drink. A chap came up to me and went, oh, hello, how are you? And obviously that happens to me quite a lot in my life. And then I suddenly realised and I went, oh, and it was Boy George, just out of nowhere. You're in the middle of your lunch break, Boy George comes up to chat to you.

• 3:27Speaker 04

  I love it. Who asked who for a selfie there?

• 3:30Martin Lewis?

  I thought, oh, we've got to get, we've got to record this for social media. So I asked him for a selfie at that point, and we did a selfie together, which was a nice one. So, yes.

• 3:38Speaker 04

  I met him once, he's a big unit, isn't he? You'd play, you'd have him on your rugby team, wouldn't you?

• 3:42Martin Lewis?

  I'm not sure he is as much anymore, actually.

• 3:44Speaker 04

  Really? There's less of him to love now?

• 3:45Martin Lewis?

  There's less of him now. But he was very smiley and happy. It was rather nice. So the tell us is, what have your children misunderstood or misassumed about money that you had to explain? How old were you?

• 3:59Speaker 04

  It's finite, would be.

• 4:01Martin Lewis?

  Do they get it? But I think that what prompted me is something that I've been concerned about recently, which is I keep hearing children, because these days, obviously, many children, you don't give them money, you give them a card. And the cards that are available for children are prepaid cards. You know, lots of different varieties of these prepaid cards. But I keep hearing children referring to it as spending on my credit card. And I have a real problem with that.

• 4:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:28Martin Lewis?

  Now, interestingly, quite a lot of people, because I put something on social media about it, have suggested to me this is because of the Americanisation of television and watching on YouTube. And it seems that in the States, credit card is a ubiquitous term for a payment mechanism. And that's what we're educating our kids. But for me, that's very dangerous.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 4:45Martin Lewis?

  Because language matters. A credit card is a debt card. A prepaid card isn't. And if we bring them both and homogenise them, it risks diminishing the differences between types of plastic and injuring our young people to debt when they're older. There's already enough doing that because we send them to university and enforce them to get what we call a debt. So we need to gently correct and explain to our young people what they are.

• 5:11Speaker 04

  It's a critical branding thing, that, isn't it? It's a bit like the genius whoever called death insurance, life insurance.

• 5:18Martin Lewis?

  Yes.

• 5:18Speaker 04

  You know, if you call them a debt card instead of a credit card, then people wouldn't have as, certainly wouldn't have as many credit cards.

• 5:26Martin Lewis?

  So I have a nuance on this. Let's just talk about the three main types of plastic that you can spend on and what they are. You have a prepaid card. That's where you load up in advance and then that is the money you have to spend. So you have to put your money onto the card before you can spend it.

• 5:42Speaker 04

  Examples of that would be Monzo would be one.

• 5:44Martin Lewis?

  Monzo would be one, or the Starling Kite card, or the Go Henry card, or lots of other cards for kids, but for adults as well. Or Revolut is another one, that you can preload and you only spend what you have already placed on the card. Next, we have a credit card. A card you spend money on and then repay afterwards, so you owe the money. And if you don't fully repay it each month, in other words repay in full each month, got to do the catchphrase, you pay interest on top of that because it is a debt. Then you have a debit card. A debit card pays with what's in your bank account if there is money in your bank account.

• 6:25Martin Lewis?

  But again, if you are overdrawn, a debit card is a debt card because you're not spending your own money. And interestingly, and psychologically, most people always think debit card better than credit card. Debt on an overdraft is typically at 40%, and for some Lloyds Halifax customers, it's about to go up to 50%, whereas a typical high street credit card is 25%. So the worst debt card of the mainstream variety is actually a debit card if you're in debt with your overdraft, followed by a credit card, but a prepaid card you can't be in debt on. So that differentiation, and it's certainly when I talk to my daughter about it, I'm like, you have a prepaid card, you can't get in debt. It isn't a credit card. A credit card is where you can owe people money. And I think, I'm not sure

• 7:09Martin Lewis?

  people, first of all, I'm not sure that many adults could explain the differences, particularly, it's my job, obviously I can. And I think we need to be, have clarity over our language and make sure they understand, while these plastics all look very similar, they are completely different tools for a completely different job.

• 7:25Speaker 04

  Briefly, while it's on my mind, there's, there's a benefit to having, there's a benefit to your credit rating, as I understood it. Okay.

• 7:35Martin Lewis?

  Go on, go on, go on.

• 7:35Speaker 04

  I'll probably have a can of worms.

• 7:36Martin Lewis?

  I'm allowed to use common parlance, go on.

• 7:39Speaker 04

  But then, but a benefit in the sense that if you, actually, so, you know, somebody I know in their twenties said this to me the other day on the missus something that I know what I'm on about, when I, no, I don't. I know financially somebody who doesn't know what they're on about, i.e. you, but said, I've, I've heard I should get a credit card, because if I get it and pay it off every month, which I understand you've got to do, that's good for my credit rating.

• 8:00Martin Lewis?

  So let's imagine you are, you and I are in a pub, we're not married this time, that's much more pleasurable. We're in a pub, right? We're standing there, we're in a pub. Now, I'm just going to preempt this.

• 8:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:09Martin Lewis?

  Don't be your generous self. And when I ask you something, I want you to make a clinical decision rather than, rather than I'm a nice human being decision.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  Right.

• 8:17Martin Lewis?

  First person comes up, it's someone you know, who you've often met in that pub, who always forgets their wallet, and always says to you, would you lend me 20 quid? And I'll give you the back, 20 quid back tomorrow, and I'll buy you a drink. They've done this about 20 times before, and they've always paid you back the next day without you having to remind them, and they've always bought you the drink. Would you lend them the 20 pounds?

• 8:40Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 8:41Martin Lewis?

  Got a good credit history, haven't they? They've got a good history of being a good credit citizen. They borrow, but they pay you back and they pay you back whatever you've asked them on top. Next person comes in, same thing, and they always forget their wallet. They always ask you to lend them money and they always forget to repay you and you have to chase them. You sometimes don't get the money back and they say, I forgot my wallet. Would you, would you lend me 20 quid?

• 9:03Speaker 04

  No.

• 9:03Martin Lewis?

  No, because, because, because you're not going to get it back. The final person comes in, seems very nice. You have never met them before, you have never spoken to them before, you don't know who they are. And they say to you, forgot my wallet, would you lend me 20 quid? I'll give you back three pounds tomorrow. Would you lend it to them?

• 9:22Speaker 04

  You know, on shore.

• 9:23Martin Lewis?

  Well, you wouldn't.

• 9:24Speaker 04

  You probably, you know, probably.

• 9:25Martin Lewis?

  Clinical decision, clinical decision, right? I mean, if I made it 200,000 pounds, you'd say no.

• 9:30Speaker 04

  So the logic.

• 9:32Martin Lewis?

  So the point is, your person is the third person. When credit scoring works on behavioural prediction. So you might have a lot of data saying this person will repay me and repay the interest. You also have to do an affordability score. Do they actually have the money to repay me, which is a separate scoring mechanism? You might say, well, look at this person's behaviour in the past. They haven't repaid, therefore they're much riskier. So I either want to charge them more or I don't want to lend to them too, because they have a bad credit history. But your young person has no credit history. It's not that they behave badly, I simply don't have the data to predict their behaviour. So what we have to do to manipulate that system is build data. And therefore, one easy way to do that is to get a credit card. It will usually be a credit builder or rebuild card with a horrible rate of interest.

• 10:14Martin Lewis?

  So you must pay it off in full at the end of each month. Do 50 to 100 quid of normal spending, not an excuse to spend more. Pay it off in full every each month and after a year it'll rehabilitate. If you want to be really clever, and again, the problem with saying this to young people is I worry about 18 year olds getting credit cards. You have to do it clinically and follow the recipe, otherwise it's not worth it. Is actually get two and put 50 to 100 quid on two each month. And that will build it even more quickly because you've now got two cards, which is showing you're a good credit citizen, showing you're a person who'll repay your debt each time. So yes, you're absolutely right. Credit cards are also good because you get section 75 protection. We're going on to holidays, I'll do that bit now because it's actually quite important. If you're going abroad.

• 10:57Martin Lewis?

  Or you're booking to go abroad with the exception of through a travel agent that breaks the causal link, the right way to pay is on a credit card. Now, of course, I want you to pay it off in full, so that's no interest at the end of the month, but if you book it on a credit card, you get section 75 protection, which is a legal protection that says the credit card company is jointly liable with the retailer for anything that happens. So if the retailer went bust, you can go to the card company. Now, this actually applies on anything that costs over a hundred pounds up to thirty thousand pounds and that you spend any of it on the credit card. So even if you put a ten pound deposit on the credit card and you booked a ten thousand pound hotel on, the credit card is liable for the entire ten thousand pounds, even if you only put a tenner on the credit card.

• 11:41Martin Lewis?

  So spending at least some on a credit card is important. Also, when you're abroad, if you're buying abroad, you know, I always talk about a vase in a shop in Brazil, and you have a problem with that vase, taking it back is going to be tough, but if you put it on a credit card, the credit card company is jointly liable with the retailer. So that's another boon of using a credit card paid off in full, and also you can get rewards on credit cards too. So credit cards aren't bad if you use them right, but they are bad when you use them as a debt card. So you have to separate the credit card's payment mechanism, which can be positive and give you protection and give you rewards and help and build your credit score, from the credit card's debt system, which is what happens if you don't pay it off in full every month. And I'll do my final, which wasn't where we're going to go, but I think it's fascinating, so I'm going to keep talking.

• 12:26Martin Lewis?

  The final thing that's really important, we've talked about this on the show, the reason I do that in full, and I've made it my catchphrase over the years, is just let's be very simple. You have a thousand pounds debt on a credit card. You repay the thousand pounds, there is no interest. You repay nine hundred and ninety nine pounds in the month, you don't pay interest on the one pound, you still pay the interest on the entire thousand pounds. That's why it's not nearly in full, it's not trying to repay most of it, that's why it's in full at the end of the month.

• 13:01Speaker 04

  But you don't the following month. Do you, the following month, you don't, you don't still pay interest on all of it. You then pay.

• 13:07Martin Lewis?

  Yeah, you pay on whatever you owed over that month, yeah.

• 13:09Speaker 04

  Interesting though, it didn't, we last mentioned this, I, to my shame and discredit, I didn't realise that. I mean, listen, you know, I just, I just didn't know.

• 13:17Martin Lewis?

  I would say it's probably to your shame and pro credit.

• 13:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, but, but I mentioned, but I mentioned it to someone and said, yeah, that's a disincentive on paying off more of your credit card because you owe a thousand pounds, you pay a pound off, if you're still going to be charged interest on the thousand, then, you know.

• 13:32Martin Lewis?

  You pay nine hundred and ninety-nine off.

• 13:34Speaker 04

  Or pay nine hundred and ninety-nine off. Well, you know, so what's, what's the incentive to pay more, you know?

• 13:39Martin Lewis?

  Well, well, why do credit card companies want you to pay more? Well, let's talk about what the perfect credit card customer is. Okay, the perfect credit card customer is someone who's perpetually in debt because they're constantly paying interest. This is why credit card minimum payments, I mean, in the old days, they didn't even cover the interest. Now, I was involved in campaigning for the regulation, I think it was 2007. Now we have regulation that credit card minimum payments must at least cover the interest and a bit more. But this is why, if you have five thousand pound debt on the credit card and you're paying minimum payments on a typical high street card, I'm trying to remember the numbers, I may get this slightly wrong, but I'm right scales, it'll take you thirty years to clear it because your own, as you, what you owe drops, what you repay drops, so you're hardly ever paying it off. You pay about nine grand in interest.

• 14:21Martin Lewis?

  Instead, in the first month, your repayment on the minimum payment is two hundred quid. If you repaid two, fixed it at two hundred quid a month, instead of letting it drop as what you owe drops, you'd repay it in about two years within sixteen hundred pound interest cost. There is no incentive, they don't want you to pay it off, they want you to pay the minimum, then you're constantly paying interest, year after year after year, the longer it takes us to repay something. Two functions of the cost of interest. One, the interest rate, higher the interest rate, the more you pay. Two, the length you're repaying for. And by paying less, you pay more. So you're exactly right, it is a disincentive, but that's not accidental, that's by design.

• 15:03Martin Lewis?

  Where do we start on holidays? Well, let's do passports. I think passports and G Higgs, this is really important for everybody to understand. So if you are going abroad this year, I want you all to check yours and all members of the family's passports for two things. For when you go, the day you arrive, will you have over six months left on your passport of validity? And will your passport be under, in fact, for the day you leave, not the day you arrive? Will you have over six months left for the day you leave? So you've arrived, you've been there two weeks on that last day. And will you have under, your passport is under 10 years old? Now, those are two crucial facts that may not be the same.

• 15:46Martin Lewis?

  Now, the reason I do those rules is those are the most harsh rules that you've got out there. So let's just talk about the European Union, which is where the vast majority of people in the UK go when they go abroad. If you're travelling to the EU, your passport needs to be less than 10 years old on the day you enter. Some countries, it's the day you leave. And valid for at least three months after the day you plan to leave. Now, this tenure thing confuses people. You can't do it anymore. But what you used to be able to do is when you renewed your passport, you could renew it months early. And you could get the months that you had left on your current passport added to your next passport, so it's over 10 years old. But many countries now won't accept a passport that's over 10 years old, even if it's still valid. So there's two separate factors. How old is the passport? And how long do you have left?

• 16:29Martin Lewis?

  Now, that's three months. In India, to get into India, your passport needs to be valid for at least six months on the day you enter. You need two blank pages for your visa. So you've got to be careful on your passport. Check your passports now. What you don't want to do is check this the week before you go away and go, oh mate, I'm not going to get in. So check your passports now. Another check I would make is your European Health Insurance Card. Or your Global Health Insurance Card, they're basically virtually exactly the same thing, although Australia is partially covered on the Global Health Insurance Card. What this is... It's a card that means if you're travelling mainly in the European Union, but a couple of other countries as well, you get healthcare the same as a local. So if it's free for them,

• 17:14Martin Lewis?

  it's free for you. If they can go to a GP for free, you can go to a GP for free. Slightly different in Australia, mainly in the European Union, it works that way. Everybody should have an EHIHC or its replacement, the GHIHC, and you should have a valid one. So I want people to check their dates, especially if you have a European health insurance card, the old card, because those are the ones that are now, there are millions of them that are out of date. Check your valid date. You can renew that for free. You should never pay anyone to get an EHIHC or a GHIHC card, or it's now a GHIHC, sorry, keep using the wrong terms. The EHIHC was replaced by the GHIHC. So when you renew your EHIHC, it'll now be a GHIHC, Global Health Insurance Card. You should never pay anyone. Go on to the NHS website. Make sure every member of the family has one. You don't need to have them with you if something happens to you, but it's

• 17:56Martin Lewis?

  always far easier if you've got them with you, carry them with you when you go out, when you're out of the country, and it gives you a valuable level of protection. It's only in state-run hospitals and state-run GPs that you can use it, but it's absolutely crucial to have. So those

• 18:09Speaker 04

  are my two star checks. Where do I apply to that?

• 18:11Martin Lewis?

  There are lots of links. The simplest is go to the NHS website. This is the problem. There are many shyster sites, and I use that word deliberately. What they do, it's a grey area of the law. So they advertise on search engines, and they often say it's a fast track, there's no fast track on GHIHC, there's no fast track. Or they often say, you know, this is the GHIHC site. You go in, they'll charge you £20, and literally you'll enter your data, and then they'll feed you your data into the official system for you, but they'll charge you £20 for doing it. It's an absolutely pointless...

• 18:46Speaker 04

  Everyone's got to make a living, I know. But imagine getting up in the morning and that being your job. That's what you do.

• 18:52Martin Lewis?

  I've had long discussions with lawyers over the years, whether I'm allowed to say shyster or not. I can't call it a scam, because it isn't a scam. I will say that again. I can't call it a scam, because it isn't a scam. Shyster is a quasi-legal way, immoral way of operating, and I believe it is an immoral way of operating, and you have to be warned. About these shyster sites. So I'm not, there are other legit addresses, but the easiest for me is do it via the NHS or do it via gov.uk because then you're absolutely certain what you're going to be getting. But I mean, the same happens to passports and visas and driving licence all have shyster sites who advertise where you pay a fee or a fee over the top. If you're applying for your ESTA to go to the States, there's shyster sites,

• 19:37Martin Lewis?

  so you'll pay three times the actual price. It's more difficult when there is a real fee because then people don't know what the fee should be. So they don't know they're being charged a hundred quid, that it should only be ten quid type thing.

• 19:46Speaker 04

  Let's have a question on spending money abroad.

• 19:51Martin Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 19:51Speaker 04

  Jen sent us this.

• 19:53Speaker 05

  Hi, Martin. It's Jen from Margate in Kent. My teenage daughter is due to go on a trip to Germany later this year with school. Normally, when we go on holiday ourselves, we use a Chase account card to save on any extra fees for the currency exchange. This account is in my name. How can I support her or give her anything to use when she is in Germany so she doesn't incur any extra fees or penalties for using her money abroad? Thank you.

• 20:23Martin Lewis?

  Thank you, Jen. I can see we've got a money saver in the house. She's using a Chase card. Chase is my top current pick for spending overseas. But let's talk about kids because often you want to give the kids the money, it's much more difficult. You're not giving them cash these days. Let me go into, let's just do the basics of spending on plastic when you're abroad. Normally, when you use most plastic abroad, you pay, and you always want to pay in the local currency. So your card is doing the conversion. You know, when you're shopping abroad, it says pay in euros, pay in dollars, pay in, pay in pounds or euros. Pay in euros. If you pay in pounds, that shop, that overseas cash machine is doing the conversion for you. I have never seen a case when that's cheaper

• 21:04Martin Lewis?

  than even a bog standard UK card. So you want your card to do the conversion. So pay in the local currency. When you do that, most cards get a perfect exchange rate, but then add what's called a non sterling exchange rate fee, which is normally around 2.75%. So what that means is when you spend 100 pounds of euros or 100 pounds of dollars or 100 pounds of dong, if you're in Vietnam, whatever you want, it will cost you 102 pounds and 75 pence. If you get a special card which has a no non sterling exchange rate fee, then your £100 of euros or dollars or dongs costs you £100.

• 21:47Martin Lewis?

  You're getting the same near perfect exchange rate on the day, so it's whatever that day's exchange rate is when you do your spending. So all of the cards I talk about, the specialist cards, we just talked Chase, that's what Jen mentioned there. Chase is a debit card that gives you non sterling, gives you perfect exchange rates or near perfect exchange rates in every country and also gives you 1% cash back up to £15 a month. So you're effectively getting even better than the exchange rate if you factor the 1% in as a discount. But kids can't get that. So there are a number of prepaid kids cards that give you near perfect exchange rates. You have Hyperjar, which is a free card, but you actually pay £5 for it to be delivered and they give you a £5 Amazon voucher. You can load up the money, it's for 6 to 17 year olds, parents must download the free app and parents can have control of it.

• 22:33Martin Lewis?

  It allows you to spend on it, but you can't take money from cash machines. So it's only a spending card, it's not a cash withdrawal card. If you want a cash withdrawal card, you've got the Starling Kite prepaid card, but that's only for where parents have a Starling account, so the Kite is the kids' version, and you've got the Nationwide Flex One. Those are the free ones. If your children have the very popular but paid for GoHenry card, that is also near perfect exchange rates abroad, so they could use that if they were abroad. And there's the free Revolut card, £5 delivery again, but only on weekdays does that have near perfect exchange rate, it's 1% on weekends. So you want to use that way. So with all of those, you could load your kids up for money and then when they go abroad, without, with the exception of the Hyperjar where you can't withdraw from cash machines,

• 23:18Martin Lewis?

  they could spend or they could withdraw from cash machines, they'll get near perfect exchange rates. But remember, when you withdraw from a cash machine abroad, there can be two charges, your cards charge, most of these cards don't charge. And the overseas cash machine can also charge.

• 23:31Speaker 04

  I think I've got one of the good ones, a credit card to use abroad. But is it always going to be a good one? Or can they change the terms and conditions? Do you see what I mean?

• 23:39Martin Lewis?

  They can always change the terms and conditions. They should notify you. There are actually, it's become quite a popular thing. There are about 13 or 14 cards that give you the non-stirling exchange rate fee now. So there's quite a lot of specialist cards, which is why I now pick on Chase, because it gives you the 1% cash back. If you want a credit card, there's a Barclay card, travel card that gives you a quarter of a percent cash back. Why would you want a credit card over the debit card? Because you get the section 75 protection we talked about earlier. But with the Chase, you don't have an overdraft on it. So you preload it, it effectively works like a prepayment card. And while it's a bank account, the Chase card, you can open it without switching bank account. You just use it as an app and it doesn't do a credit score. So pretty much anyone can get it. With the Barclay card, you'd be credit scored. And if you're doing the Barclay card, of course, you need to make sure, I'm going to do it yet again.

• 24:22Martin Lewis?

  You need to make sure you pay it off in full at the end of every month.

• 24:26Speaker 04

  Paul's going to the US for the first time in over 15 years. Is there a particular credit debit card to get for US dollars?

• 24:33Martin Lewis?

  I mean, US is absolutely card-tastic, right? You can generally use cards everywhere. The only issue you'd have is tipping, because you often need to tip over there. And honestly, the double tipping in the States now, they will have a service charge and then they expect to tip on top. I mean, it can add 40% to what you see on the bill. So if you're going in a restaurant in the States, especially if you're on the East Coast or the West Coast, expect to pay 40% more than the list price for what, I factor that in when you're budgeting. But that's not the question yet. Look, as I say, when you use one of these cards, in whatever country you're in, you get the same near-perfect exchange rate on the day that the bank does.

• 25:15Martin Lewis?

  Now, that means these cards work in dollars. They work in euros. They work wherever you're going. So you can get one card, it works everywhere. What you may want to do if you want cash, the easy way to get cash with these is while you will pay an overseas ATM fee, what I tend to do if I want a little bit of cash in my pocket, which you sometimes feel safer when you're abroad with a bit of cash as well as your card, just in case, is as soon as I get to the airport, I go, I find the cheapest ATM with the lowest cash withdrawal fee. I use my card, I make sure I pay in that currency. You know, those cards, they're really quite vicious. They say, would you like to do a currency conversion? We'll convert it for you. And you press no. Are you sure you don't want to do a currency conversion? No. Are you absolutely certain currency conversion? Are you mad?

• 25:59Speaker 04

  A face comes up on the little screen.

• 26:00Martin Lewis?

  Right, a face comes up red and boiling. And you don't want to do the conversion. You want your car to do the conversion. They want you to do it because they're making money from it. So you don't do the conversion. You take your cash out in dollars and that.

• 26:11Speaker 04

  But you're paying interest on that because it's on a credit card.

• 26:13Martin Lewis?

  Well, it depends. Chase card's a debit card.

• 26:15Speaker 04

  Right, okay, yes. Okay, but it's a credit card.

• 26:19Martin Lewis?

  Okay, so this gets really complicated because if you're on a credit card, some credit cards, like the Barclays Travel Card, if you pay it off in full at the end of the month, doesn't charge interest on cash withdrawals. But some cards, like Halifax Clarity, do charge interest on cash withdrawals even if you pay off in full. So it depends on the credit card. And the ones, my top picks, don't charge the interest if you pay off in full.

• 26:46Speaker 04

  While we're on talking about holiday tips, you actually have, you've had a couple of tips for us related to that.

• 26:51Martin Lewis?

  The couple of random ones that no one would ask about that I want to throw in. So the first one is, we're in a peculiar year this year. This happens about every four or five years, where Easter is very late in April and therefore very close to the 1st May bank holiday. Which means this year you can actually get 18 successive days off work for just nine days annual leave if you're on a typical work pattern. Because it's the gap, basically you would book off the gap between Easter Monday on the 21st of April, so you'd have the Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday off. You'd book off the rest of the week and you'd book that up until Monday, the 5th of May bank holiday. And that would mean nine days of annual leave, but 18 off. Now, you could also do that in variance so that, you know,

• 27:34Martin Lewis?

  you're getting 10 days off for five days and that type of stuff. So it's just a quick tip for anyone because there's going to be a fight to book annual leave over that period if you're in a place where lots of people are booking at the same time. So let's hope that people are listening to this show and this podcast. You're the ones who get your leave first.

• 27:50Speaker 04

  And if you're crushing HR systems around the country, then don't mention Martin's name.

• 27:54Martin Lewis?

  No, don't, no.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  If possible, we don't want to get into trouble.

• 27:57Martin Lewis?

  Second quick tip, and I get loads of successes on this in the summer, so I need to pre-warn people so they're able to do this, is the rebook and cancel, note it's not cancel and rebook, it's rebook and cancel trick. It is your friend. So when you're booking hotels and car hire especially. Aim for products that have free or very cheap cancellation. So because what will happen is in the run up to the summer holidays, we'll be on here again and I'll be talking and I will say to you, what you should do now, if you've got a holiday or Carha booked, which you should always try and book early because you're locking in, is go back online, go back onto the comparison sites and check now if it's available cheaper, which it can be, the price can have dropped. And if it has dropped and you've got free cancellation, what you then do is you book

• 28:39Martin Lewis?

  it again and you cancel your first booking, so you get it at the cheaper price. So Steve got in touch with me. Booked a Melbourne hotel well in advance a few years ago. It was quite expensive because the Formula One Australian Grand Prix was scheduled for that week. When it was moved to the week before, prices dropped and we rebooked, saving over £300. And I get lots of successes, especially on Carha. Last couple of years, we've seen a change to the pattern of Carha. It used to always be booking early was cheap, but I think something due to the capacity post Covid has meant that in certain areas, it suddenly gets much cheaper in the three or four weeks before you go away. Now, you can't guarantee that will happen, so book your cheap Carha, get your free cancellation, or even better if you don't have to pay and you're able to cancel it that way. And then three or four weeks, check again.

• 29:24Martin Lewis?

  And if it has dropped, I've had people who've saved 75% by doing it that way. So I call it the rebook and cancel, not cancel and rebook, because if you cancel and then you can't book because something's happened, you'll be in trouble.

• 29:33Speaker 04

  You've got nothing at all.

• 29:38Martin Lewis?

  Now, on to the tellers. And we talked earlier about my concern that too many children are calling their prepaid cards credit cards. And that sparked this week's tellers, which is, what have your children misunderstood or misassumed about money that you had to explain to them? And how old were they when they did it? And do they now understand it?

• 29:59Speaker 04

  You've sort of seen into the future here because a lot of it is to do with what we were talking about.

• 30:05Martin Lewis?

  With the credit cards. I've got loads here. I've got Emma, I do Facebook. My seven-year-old thinks that cards have infinite money on them. I tried to explain that work gives us money for working and once that money has run out, then that's it. I think we're slowly getting there, reminding him, kids do really struggle. It's very, it's interesting. I did a quiz for my daughter's birthday where she had lots of her friends' rounds because I'm a fun dad. They loved it.

• 30:29Speaker 04

  It depends what the questions are.

• 30:30Martin Lewis?

  And I nicked one of the House of Games quizzes where they do averages. I don't know if you've have you done House of Games?

• 30:34Speaker 04

  Yes, yeah, yeah.

• 30:35Martin Lewis?

  We both done it. So you do averages and you ask two people to average and I I included in that things like average property price and average salary and it was fascinating that some some were pretty good and some just completely different scales of magnitude. What have you got?

• 30:49Speaker 04

  Roberto says, misapprehension of of kids, that it grows on that money grows on trees, he thought when he was five. Now he's six, he believes it just magically appears.

• 31:01Martin Lewis?

  Well, yeah, we've got one of those. Charlotte, one of mine thought that the free cash signs on cash cash machines literally meant the cash was free and we could take as much as we like. Catherine, I think probably slightly older here. My daughter didn't realise that a regular payment from a debit card is not the same as and cannot be managed the same way as a direct debit. She missed cancelling two subscriptions due to this as she couldn't find a direct debit on her account to cancel. I think there are many grownups who don't know the difference between the three.

• 31:28Speaker 04

  But you're set up to fail. They set you up to fail with this. There's a kind of a carefully curated ambiguity, isn't there? Because, as you know, we've said, they make money from you messing up.

• 31:39Martin Lewis?

  Yeah, absolutely. Again, I defined the three types of part cards before. Let's do the three types of regular payments, shall we? You have a standing order which you must set up from your bank account to pay another party, this will often be somebody you know, a regular fixed amount. You have a direct debit that you set up from a bank account and you would give your bank account details, not your debit card details, that's the crucial difference, and that is a payment that can be taken from your bank account, which can be a varying payment depending on the amount that you owe, but you have very strict rights called the direct debit guarantee that mean you can cancel it and it must be fair and and you have, you know, you have power if it goes wrong. Then you have what's known as a continuous payment authority or a recurring payment.

• 32:24Martin Lewis?

  This happens when you give the longer month number on your debit or credit card. So not your bank account details. If you do that, what you're effectively doing is you're authorising a company to take a payment, a bit like you, it's a bit like if you made a payment every month, like you used your card to pay every month, but they do that automatically. When you do that, now while the law does state that you have a right to cancel with your bank, some bank staff don't know that and push people away. You have a right to cancel with your bank. It's easier to cancel with the company, but they can leave subscriptions dripping away and they're not listed in your regular payments on firms. Your standing orders and direct debits aren't listed. So the best way to spot it is to look at your bank or your credit card statements and look for the regular payments that you haven't made and then you need to cancel them.

• 33:08Martin Lewis?

  I actually had one, it was a mobile company and I called them up and I wanted to cancel it and they just said, you can't, you have to go to, I was like, this is ridiculous. I want to cancel a payment with you and they refused. It was interesting because I'd done it for work. I'd set it up to check out their service and I just thought, all right, well, you're never going on my list. I felt like saying, you're so playing with the wrong person here because clearly you're never going on my, my list of a firm that anybody should use at that point because this is absolutely horrendous. Go on, what have you got next?

• 33:35Speaker 04

  Both my kids, nine and 13, call their Monzo bank cards, credit cards. We've been into that. I think we've explained why.

• 33:41Martin Lewis?

  Yeah, but I think it's the American influence.

• 33:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:43Martin Lewis?

  Heather, once asked my then five-year-old if I could swap my £10 note for her two £5 to pay the window cleaner, she said no. And when I asked why, she said, because you'll have two and I'll only have one.

• 33:57Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 33:57Martin Lewis?

  There's a bit of challenge.

• 33:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. The, I mean, there's some, I don't mean silly, but there's the kind of things that can take root at a young age. So Tom says, for example, when I was a kid, I assumed cheques could be written for anything and were essentially free money. Remember my dad looking at a Porsche catalogue and saying, why don't you just write a cheque? And similarly, it was when they were little, somebody said, when my brother was younger, he assumed an ATM was just somewhere you could go and get free money. Now that, when you're in a four, five-year-old mind, whatever, that is entirely logical. And you almost got to explain right from the get-go.

• 34:31Martin Lewis?

  Look, I think this is the deconstruction that needs to happen and it goes on at a much older age. So when I designed classes for kids years ago, one of the, one of the things I always did when I was talking to 15-year-olds is I said, who do you think gets the cheaper car insurance price?

• 34:47Martin Lewis?

  The new customer who's signing up or the existing customer who's been there and has been a loyal customer for many years and quite rightly logically they all put their hands up that it was the existing customer but they were wrong and and so I think many of these things are intuitive that kids think but they're wrong I've got this one from Sarah I'll never forget the day we moved my daughter into her uni house her new housemate was lovely and we got on really well chatting helping her set things up we got talking about money and finance and we discussed whether she had a student account she said that it did and it came with an overdraft facility to use I explained to her that it was only borrowing money and she could have to pay it back she was shocked she had no idea and thought it was free money I think she learnt a lot that day it's why I've campaigned

• 35:32Martin Lewis?

  for financial education in school there are young people eighteen year olds who are financially incompetent and able to get debt who believe that the bigger APR is the better APR the bigger number is the better number the higher interest because they don't know it is interest is the better one I mean this is why as parents every week people think oh it's sweet my child says no you need to have your antenna on you need to intuitively we need to gently correct them about these as soon as we can about these misconceptions because every every little bit helps to use the advertising signal.

• 36:08Speaker 04

  We've got a just going back to holidays. Mel's going to Egypt it best to wait to get there to exchange currency I heard you can play with dollars euros and pounds is this correct well there's a couple of questions in there aren't there?

• 36:22Martin Lewis?

  Well generally you can pay on a card in Egypt and and as you can generally hear using the the cheapest cards are cheaper than spend than bureau de change generally but if you want to go to a bureau de change you want to change your money so people always ask me should I wait till I get there my answer is only if you have specialist knowledge so if you're going to a country that you regularly go to and you know there's a local bureau de change that will give you exceptionally good rates go for it.

• 36:52Martin Lewis?

  If you don't, I would change my money before I went. And the reason I would do that is I would go onto a travel money comparison site, which is comparing 30 or 40 bureaus, and I would get yourself the best rates. And generally, the best UK bureau rates, because you're doing a comparison, you've got a widespread, will beat your local bureau in the place you happen to be holidaying. Because one of them is a comparison and one of them is location specific and just random, will it be good or bad? So my general rule would be, unless you know something about that location and know that happens to be, they always give incredible rates there, and I'd question how they're doing it. But then I would just, if you want to change your money, change it here, then at

• 37:37Martin Lewis?

  least you've got certainty that you've done a comparison, you've been able to do it that way around. And that isn't it for travel. There's lots more to come, including cheap travel insurance, how to avoid excess car hire costs when you go to the desk and they're trying to charge you a lot more, and lots more on spending abroad.

• 37:57Speaker 04

  Why don't we do a bit of this? Cue the music.

• 38:08Speaker 04

  Martin.

• 38:09Martin Lewis?

  Yes, this is Money Mastermind, where I ask Adrian a question. And traditionally, I was saying he gets them wrong. But this year, he's three for three. I mean, you have 100% record in 2025, which is pretty outstanding, actually, Adrian. Overall, you have got seven right and eight wrong. You're nearly

• 38:26Speaker 04

  Why don't we retire this feature? It's not going to get any better.

• 38:30Martin Lewis?

  It is fascinating scoring. I mean, if you're at parity in a three option multiple choice, they're actually showing there is some knowledge going on in there. It's wonderful. I'm very proud of you. You're listening.

• 38:40Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 38:41Martin Lewis?

  So let's get on to the question. Listeners, Adrian recently opened his electricity and water bills at the same time. He was shocked.

• 38:51Martin Lewis?

  There we go. I just have to give you the time.

• 38:53Speaker 04

  You please do that noise because sometimes I don't realise it's been a joke.

• 38:56Martin Lewis?

  I'm very well aware. It's a poor one this. It was, I was busy. And not surprisingly, he was shocked because bills in England and Wales are going up 36% over the next five years on average, though it does depend on which water company is. A 20% rise this year alone, so the big rise comes straight away. Now, in England and Wales, you get a water bill based on the ratable value of your home, which is a proxy for how much it could be rented out for, which is effectively a proxy for your house's value. The ratable system is based on the local taxation system of the late 1980s,

• 39:39Martin Lewis?

  the predecessors of the poll tax, which was the predecessor to the council tax. But that is still...

• 39:45Speaker 04

  Bizarre.

• 39:45Martin Lewis?

  That is still what the water bills are based on. So my question for you, Adrian.

• 39:51Speaker 04

  Is it mad? Answer yes. Thank you very much. Play the alley-oop.

• 39:56Martin Lewis?

  If you believe the ratable value of your house is wrong, and you would probably only do it if you felt you were paying too much, how do you challenge it? A, through the Valuation Office Agency. B...

• 40:12Speaker 04

  God, this is hard. Go on, yeah?

• 40:14Martin Lewis?

  Through the Valuation Office Agency, but only within the first six months of moving in. Or C, it can't be challenged. So A, through the Valuation Office Agency, B, through the Valuation Office Agency, but only within the first six months of moving in, or C, it can't be challenged.

• 40:31Speaker 04

  Well, it can't be B because that means a nonsense because what, you know, I've been where I live for more than 10 years, so...

• 40:38Martin Lewis?

  So the logic of that would be, so the logic of that would be, well, you should have challenged when you moved in or you've already lost your right to challenge?

• 40:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:46Martin Lewis?

  I'm not saying that is the answer. I'm saying that's what the logic of that would be.

• 40:49Speaker 04

  I would say...

• 40:51Martin Lewis?

  So you've got A, the Valuation Office Agency, B, the Valuation Office Agency, but only within the first six months of moving in, or C, it can't be challenged?

• 40:58Speaker 04

  Since.

• 40:59Martin Lewis?

  And just to everybody at home.

• 41:00Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 41:01Martin Lewis?

  Say out loud your answer now, because then you're committed and you can't say, oh, I knew it afterwards. I want you to say out loud your answer now, see how you deal with it.

• 41:08Speaker 04

  Well, my logic here is simply that since the whole thing is barking mad, I would go for the most barking mad one, which is that what we just talked about B, that value, you know, valuation office, whatever that is.

• 41:22Martin Lewis?

  But only within the first six months.

• 41:24Speaker 04

  Only within the first six months. So I've lost my right to challenge.

• 41:28Martin Lewis?

  Okay, final answer.

• 41:29Speaker 04

  Final answer.

• 41:30Martin Lewis?

  Okay. Now, in 1990, the general rate system was replaced by the community charged poll tax and the district valuers office, which is the ones that looked after the rate system, was at that point disbanded. When the new council tax came in, the valuation office agency was set up and their job is to look at council tax. If you move into a new property, within the first six months, it is easy to challenge your council tax band. After six months, it is still doable but much more difficult. So there is a six month after moving in, you need to check it rule.

• 42:05Speaker 04

  But that's for council.

• 42:05Martin Lewis?

  But that's for council tax. When it comes to water.

• 42:08Speaker 04

  I think the answer is C. Can I change?

• 42:10Martin Lewis?

  You can't change, you've locked in.

• 42:11Speaker 04

  All right, okay.

• 42:12Martin Lewis?

  Because I've already started giving you the explanation.

• 42:13Speaker 04

  I know, I know.

• 42:14Martin Lewis?

  When I start giving it away.

• 42:15Speaker 04

  I'm a desperate man.

• 42:16Martin Lewis?

  And I'm afraid that I would, I think I'm almost going to give it you wrong twice because you said the most ludicrous option would be you can only challenge within the first six months of moving in. No, the most ludicrous option is the correct option, which is it can't be challenged. Play the uh. It can't be challenged. So if you think the entire property structure has changed and your house is now worth throup and hate me when it used to be worth 300 million pounds, you still have absolutely no right to challenge in the way that you can with council tax. No right to challenge. And it's worth people being aware of that. But let's move on a little bit to water because water is really important.

• 42:54Speaker 04

  You've got some, we've got a little bit of time left. I'm really interested to hear your tips on this.

• 42:58Martin Lewis?

  Okay, so look, the first thing I would say, England and Wales only, this works differently in Scotland and differently in Northern Ireland. The first question you ask yourself is, do you have more or the same number of bedrooms in your property than people? So, three bedrooms, two people, would count a yes on that. In that case, you are likely to be better off on a water meter than having a bill, because we talked about the bill is based on effectively the value of your property. So, very simply, you've got a big house, not many people living in it. It's likely to be cheaper if they're measuring your actual water usage. It's going to make it a lot cheaper doing it that way. So I think that's one of the first things you need to look at. If that sounds right, get onto the Consumer Council for Waters calculator. Just as an example, Ursula, go in touch with me. I got a water meter fitted, as there's only two of us in a three-bed

• 43:41Martin Lewis?

  house. We now pay £16 a month instead of £60 a month. So that's £500 a year cheaper. This is nothing to be sniffed at. Now, some people say to me, I wanted a water meter, they said I can't have one. In some ways, that is actually the sweet spot, because if you can't have a water meter, because you might be in shared pipes in flats, so they can't do one, you can ask for an assessed charge. Now, what an assessed charge does is it works out how much you would pay if you were on a water meter roughly. You then get given that. Now, if that's less than your water bill, you can go on the assessed charge, but it doesn't matter what you use, you're going to pay the assessed charge. If it's more, you stick on your water bill. Luke, I moved from my first home in October 2024. For context, I'm new to utility bills, et cetera. My water company wanted to charge

• 44:25Martin Lewis?

  me £50 for water a month, when it's just me in a two-bed flat. When I called them up to negotiate, they told me that's the price and to deal with it. So I looked online and saw the value of getting a water meter installed. I booked an appointment, which they hid from me in the first place, and because they could not fit the water meter, I'm now on an assessed charge of around £100 a year, saving me £500 a year quickly. But he's not even actually got the water meter. So it's really important that, again, more or the same number of bedrooms than people, you're likely to be better off on a water meter. And then there's the website Save Money Save Water, which you can go to, has lots of free water-saving gadgets.

• 45:11Martin Lewis?

  Now, a couple more important updates about water bills. First of all, are you one of up to 2 million homes on low incomes or on universal credit missing out on saving hundreds of pounds with a social tariff? Now, these social tariffs are offered by all firms and they can reduce what you pay by up to 90% by lowering or sometimes capping the cost of your bills or your water meter charges. Yeah, there are almost 2 million households missing out. It's incredibly important. If you are on a low income, and exactly what the criteria are depends, but let's say less than £22,000, £23,000 family income, or you're on universal credit, just get onto your water company's website, see what it's offering, or call them up and talk to them about it. There's a separate scheme that you could have as well, which is called Watershore, which is typically worth about £160 a year.

• 45:56Martin Lewis?

  Now, to be eligible for the Watershore scheme, you need to have a water meter, receive benefits, and either have three or more children, or a medical condition such as Crohn's or eczema, which means you need to use more water. If that's you, you might be able to have your bills capped under the Watershore scheme, and that can work in conjunction with the social tariff. Now, just a note on water meters, and one of the questions that many people have to me is, if you get a water meter and suddenly it's not working for you, can you change back? Yes, usually, is my answer. You normally have up to two years to change back with most water firms, although there are a couple that don't do it. So it is a question to check and ask beforehand.

• 46:39Martin Lewis?

  And the other thing just to say is if you moved into a property with a water meter, or you have had a water meter compulsorily... compulsorily? Compulsory? Fitted, sorry. Compulsory fitted. I can't even think of the word, but you know what I mean, I'm going to carry on. Then you can't change it back. You don't have a choice, I'm afraid. So the changing back rule is only for those who have chosen to opt for a water meter voluntarily, and I managed to pronounce that word correctly.

• 47:08Martin Lewis?

  Now, we're going to go back to travel and I've got podcast producer Simon with me.

• 47:13Speaker 00

  Absolutely delighted to be back the week after I've been on holiday, we've done this topic.

• 47:18Martin Lewis?

  It's just to spite you, don't go away again, man. You're not allowed. Before I get to your questions though, Simon, I just want to do a reminder of what we talked about on the pod with travel insurance a couple of weeks ago. The golden rule is always get your travel insurance ASAP, as soon as you book. And the reason for that is pretty simple. Half of the use of travel insurance is to protect you in case something happens before you go that can stop you going. If you leave it to the last minute, you don't have that protection. And as I've said many times before, every summer, someone gets in touch with me that something's happened. It's usually a horrible illness, you know, they're going to need cancer treatment or they've got leukaemia or something like that has happened.

• 48:00Martin Lewis?

  That means they're not going to be able to go away. They haven't got their travel insurance. The hotel or the flight are saying, no, you can't have a refund because you didn't book with cancellation. And they don't have to give you a refund because the flight's still available, the hotel's still available. The problem is the fact that you can't travel, not the fact that there's a lack of availability on the room. And they say, what can I do? And I feel impotent because the answer is that's what travel insurance is for. That's why you get ASAP. So I know you've got travel insurance questions for me, but before we do that, if you have booked a holiday and you don't have travel insurance, get your travel insurance now. If you're booking a holiday, get your travel insurance straight away afterwards. And if you're going to book a holiday, remember you do your travel insurance ASAP. Now, what questions you got?

• 48:41Speaker 00

  Elaine wants to know, we have annual travel insurance that expires in September 2025. We've just booked a trip for September 25, but the insurance will have expired. Would a new annual one cover a trip that has already been booked?

• 48:54Martin Lewis?

  Yes, a new annual one would cover a trip that's already been booked. What you could do is you can get the travel insurance now and you can book it to start the day your old travel insurance policy ends. And it should cover you for a year onwards and you should be able to do that. The only slight issue is if it's with a different company, there can be jurisdictional questions of arguing depending what happened. Happens when, who covers you? So what I would probably do in that circumstance, even though it may not be the very cheapest way, because there may be a cheaper policy than your existing policy, is I would probably sign up now for another year when your existing policy ends with your existing insurer. And then whatever happens, you're covered. And that would cover you for the following year.

• 49:35Martin Lewis?

  I mean, I should say, if you're not planning to go away again after that September trip, until after September 2026, then you could just get a single trip cover to cover you for when you go away.

• 49:46Speaker 00

  And Lyn's asked a question, and we've got a lot of questions about this. She asked for the best travel insurance for over 70s.

• 49:52Martin Lewis?

  Travel insurance gets very expensive the older that you get. Now, there's a couple of ways to do it. Some of the packaged bank accounts like Nationwide or Virgin have travel insurance that covers people who are older without much of a premium at all. And it is worth looking at those as long as you're going to use them for the other insurance like the mobile and the breakdown. If not, it can still be cheap. It just depends, is the answer. I mean, I would be checking for really dirt cheap policies. And these are bog standard, no thrills. You know, I'm not talking there's any great bells and whistles with them. And they don't have the, you know, not really collected the feedback. Places like Coverwise Bronze, Leveraguard Flexi Bronze, Avanti, Admiral Stayshore

• 50:33Martin Lewis?

  are all worth looking at for older people that you can still get roughly similar prices to people under age 65. It's 65, which is the crucial point. Once you're getting over 80, though, it does get very difficult.

• 50:46Speaker 00

  Kocot has asked a question about travel insurance for pre-existing conditions. They want to know why it has skyrocketed so much since Brexit and Covid.

• 50:54Martin Lewis?

  I mean, just insurance premiums have gone up so much generally. I don't know that pre-existing conditions have gone up. I think what we've had is we've had a change of policy where the regulator has told firms that they must signpost people who have pre-existing conditions to specialists if they don't have cheap policies. And I think what may have happened is some of the normal insurers may have then priced at a premium the pre-existing conditions because they're not really covering it. So I would always first, if you've got a pre-existing condition, go on to a normal travel insurance comparison site to just see if standard travel insurance will cover you for your condition. It depends on the severity of the condition and when it was. And always make sure you declare it. There's no point getting travel insurance policy that doesn't declare your pre-existing condition. It arguably could leave you uncovered if you did.

• 51:39Martin Lewis?

  If you're struggling, then there's a couple of specialist pre-existing condition comparison sites.

• 51:46Martin Lewis?

  Medical travel compared is one with a wide range of insurers and I'd also check paying too much as well. So they would be the two sites, medical travel compared and paying too much.

• 51:59Speaker 00

  And Hans has asked for advice on what to do if you don't get what was promised or what was advertised to you.

• 52:05Martin Lewis?

  It always surprises me that people don't realise that travel insurance is a regulated product and like all financially regulated products, that means that if you have a problem with the travel insurer, you think you haven't been treated fairly, you don't get what you think you were promised or something goes wrong, you have a right to go to the Free Financial Ombudsman Service for it to adjudicate. Now, that can be even as simple as you've put a claim in, they say that your claim isn't valid, you think what they're saying is wrong because they've got the facts wrong or they're adjudicating it the wrong way. Even on a claim, you can then take that claim to the Free Financial Ombudsman Service. I would always tell the company that you're planning to do that in advance because being honest, they have to pay if you go to the Financial Ombudsman and sometimes it makes them think with a little bit more clarity about whether they should be settling, whether

• 52:50Martin Lewis?

  the ombudsman is likely to order in your favour anyway, in which case they're going to have to give you what they would give you anyway and pay the ombudsman on top. So I think it's worth letting them know in advance that you're going to do that, but you always have to complain first to the insurer, but once you've complained to the insurer, if they are rejecting what you want and you don't think you've been treated fairly or you don't think you've got what you would have offered, or you have any other problems, once you've complained to the insurer, you can go to the Free Financial Ombudsman Service, even about travel insurance.

• 53:16Speaker 00

  That brings to the end the special quickfire travel insurance round.

• 53:19Martin Lewis?

  Thank you. How did I pass?

• 53:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, flying colours.

• 53:23Martin Lewis?

  My full marks?

• 53:24Speaker 00

  Literally flying colours.

• 53:25Martin Lewis?

  Oh, well done. Now, that impromptu pump sign.

• 53:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, well, I didn't know I was going to make it.

• 53:28Martin Lewis?

  You wasted it as a producer. You should be on air.

• 53:30Speaker 00

  We had one question from Desme, what's the best credit card to take abroad for minimum fees?

• 53:35Martin Lewis?

  Well, again, I talked about the Chase card and that is a debit card. So if you're going abroad and you want a credit card because you get that section 75 protection, it's the Barclaycard Reward Credit Card that gives you near-perfect exchange rates when you go abroad, doesn't have ATM fees and...

• 53:56Martin Lewis?

  Gives you 0.25% cash back on your spending. So Chase is 1%, it's a debit card, this is 0.25%. Make sure you pay it off in full every month. Although I'm just wondering, a bit like we talked about in the tellers, whether you're using credit card as a shorthand for plastic. In which case I would probably go with Chase as the debit card.

• 54:14Speaker 00

  Peter asks, I've got a post office travel card that I preload prior to travel. Is it best making payments in the local currency or in British pounds?

• 54:22Martin Lewis?

  Absolutely always. You want your card to do the conversion, pay in the local currency. Post office travel card isn't one of the best cards out there. You can get better rates either on prepaid with the likes of Revolut or by all the other cards that I've been talking about while we're at it. It's fine, but it's no great shakes. But you still want it to do the conversion. I mean, I've seen horrible conversion rates abroad. I mean, where you're losing 10, 15% if you pay in pounds and let them do the conversion. Let the shop or the ATM do the conversion as opposed to your card company doing the conversion. So pay, it's a simple one. Most people go to Europe, pay in euros if you're going to America. Pay in dollars if you're going to Vietnam, as I like to say that currency. Pay in dong.

• 55:05Speaker 00

  Like literally last Friday, I was in Tenerife airport and I bought, I got a Burger King and they asked me what I wanted to pay and I was like, I wish Martin Luther was here. And I knew there was a right answer.

• 55:16Martin Lewis?

  What did you choose?

• 55:17Speaker 00

  No, well, so I went for euros. I knew there was a right answer. So yeah, so I got lucky there. We got a lot of questions about mobile phones, including this one from Sue.

• 55:26Speaker 06

  Hi Martin, Sue here. I'm due to go to the US later this year. I've just discovered that my new phone will accept an eSIM. Are they a good idea? What should I look for? Is there anything I need to be aware of or to avoid, please? Thanks a lot.

• 55:43Martin Lewis?

  Yep, Sue, I'm a fan of eSIMs. Now, I wouldn't tend to use them if you're just going away for a week in Europe. Almost all UK phones either have free EU roaming or you just pay a couple of quid to debt. To be able to use your phone in Europe at the same rate, you know, being able to get your free calls and your free texts or whatever you'd be doing in the UK. With data, they tend to match up, although some of them. Some of them have higher data limits than your UK contract if you're going abroad. So do check that out. But generally, going in Europe, if you're not going to be using it any more than you would at home, it won't cost you that much. You pay a couple of quid a day. If you were staying for a longer period, I might think of an eSIM. Now, an eSIM is a virtual SIM card that you can sign up to online. You put the details in. You have to be able to change the settings on your phone to be able to do it.

• 56:26Martin Lewis?

  And then effectively, all your data is then goes through the SIM card. So then you would make your calls on WhatsApp rather than making calls on your eSIM. Some of them will allow you to do calls, but it's often about a data package that you're getting when you're going abroad. And that's what's really expensive. So I generally am a fan of eSIMs. I've used them myself to great success personally, where I've been able to use a lot of data abroad for fractions of the cost. You know, saving hundreds of pounds if I'd used the same data abroad. I never would have done because I knew what the cost would be. But because I had one of these data packages, I could use my data while I was abroad. What I would say is if you're a first timer, you know, different SIMs, different coverage. If you're going to the States, different states, depending which phone has the best coverage where you go.

• 57:09Martin Lewis?

  What I would probably do is I'd get myself a cheap eSIM that, say, lasted a week and only had a small amounts of gig, because you can always just buy another one online very easily. For a firm that you think is good, then try and use it. And if it's working well, then just upgrade your data package. And if it's not working well, you might want to try a different one. That would be my general advice. There are good guides to eSIMs in each country available online as well, which are worth looking at.

• 57:35Speaker 00

  Kai me wants to know about car hire. They ask, how do you stop car hire companies charging extra fees when you pick up the car?

• 57:42Martin Lewis?

  Well, this is the car hire excess insurance trap that many get caught out on. Basic car insurance is included in the hire you get at the pickup desk. You'll often hear, hello, señor. And that's someone in Germany. Hello, señor. And you will need the excess insurance. If you don't get the excess insurance, scare tactic. If you don't get the excess. I'm fine. Let me move into the microphone to do this. If you don't buy our excess insurance, even if you get one scratch on the car, it could cost you thousands.

• 58:15Martin Lewis?

  Yeah, you generally get that type of thing, a rear fee a sell on the excess. And the problem is, especially if you bought cheap car hire, what they're trying to charge you, it could be 20 quid a day, it could be more than you're actually paying for the car hire for this excess insurance, and they will give you loads of scare tactics on top. So what I would always suggest you do is you get yourself a standalone excess insurance policy before you go, which instead of 20 quid a day can be about 2 quid a day. There's a good comparison site, Money Maxim has a comparison site where you can go and find it. If you use car hire a lot, you can actually get annual excess insurance for car hire. But even if you do do that, expect the person at the desk who is likely on commission to hard sell you to try and put you off, to tell you it won't work, or to try and make you jump through hoops.

• 59:00Martin Lewis?

  So you're going to need to be prepared to leave a refundable deposit of probably a thousand pounds on a credit card, a credit card, not a debit card. They generally won't accept debit cards. You need to have a credit card if you're doing this. It will usually need to be in the name of the person who booked, though in some cases it will need to be in the name of the main driver. If not, they may not accept it because they're trying to make you not be able to do this. So generally, I would always have the main driver be the person who is doing the booking and who has the credit card when you're getting your car hire in the first place. Once you've gone through this and successfully navigated it once or twice, I mean, I do

• 59:43Martin Lewis?

  it and I find it really easy now because I just, no, thank you, I've got one of these, no, thank you, yes, here's my credit card, yes, I'll pay the deposit, thank you very much, and you can get through it. And I think they can sort of tell on the desk, those people who know what they're doing and those people who don't know what they're doing. And there've been times when I've been at a desk getting car hire and there's been someone of some British people on the next desk and I hear it's going through, and I have to tell you, you can let me know what you think. Do I intervene? It's hard to intervene when you're me, because if they know who you are, it's a bit embarrassing, it looks like. But on the other hand, that just really annoys me and I'm going, you've got your excess insurance, it's fine, just, just don't get that extra policy. Anyway. I'll probably stop there, it was a long answer.

• 1:00:20Speaker 00

  A good one. And, I mean, you touched on credit cards there. Helen is going to Bruges in Belgium for Easter, needs to pay for the hotel on arrival. What's the best way to pay for the hotel? Is it debit card, credit card, or should she put the money on a prepaid money card?

• 1:00:35Martin Lewis?

  I would just get yourself a specialist card, whichever one suits you, a debit card or a credit card or a prepaid card, although the debit and the credit card have the better rates, and I would simply pay on that. I mean, you could argue do it on a credit card for the section 75 protection, but I think once you're there, if the hotel is there, the marginal gain of the purchase protection that you'd get on that, there is a slight gain. So a credit or a debit card, I would suggest would be the easiest way to go. I'll do one final thought that no one's asked, but it is an important one, when we're talking about currency and money. When I talk about near-perfect exchange rates, as I've explained, that is on the rate on the day that you pay. Now, clearly, exchange rates move every day, and

• 1:01:18Martin Lewis?

  they fluctuate every day. So what I'm not saying is that use one of the specialist cards and you will get the best possible exchange rate over a time period. You will get the best possible exchange rate on that day. And if the rate were to change the next day, you may gain or you may lose out compared to having waited. Some people worry about that. And so there is another strategy that you could adopt. And the other strategy would say that if you think the rate now is reasonable, and it's one that means that your holiday would be affordable, but you don't know what the rate will be when you go away, you could simply go and either get cash now to spend when you're abroad at today's rate, or you could go and get yourself a prepaid card, because some of the prepaid cards give you

• 1:02:03Martin Lewis?

  the facility to load up and get the rate on the day that you load up, as opposed to the rate on the day that you spend. Now, if you were to adopt that strategy, that would mean you're hedging your bets that you think the rate is better now than it will be when you go away. So what I would probably do, if you were really risk averse, is I would probably get half of my money now, if you think the rate's reasonable. I'd get half of it on a prepaid card, or if you need to, if you're a cash type person, on cash. And then I would do the other half for when you go away at the near perfect rates then. Then you're hedging your bets against currency moves one way or the other. I mean, it's not something I do myself. I just have a specialist card for spending abroad. But I know that some people are very nervous and very sensitive to price moves, in which

• 1:02:47Martin Lewis?

  case it is a way of hedging your bets in case there were to be a substantial move in the value of currency in between you booking and you going, that would mean it would make it more difficult to afford to have a nice holiday when you went away. And I think I'll leave that as my final travel thought.

• 1:03:06Martin Lewis?

  And now, podcast listeners, it's that time for the quick tips. I've just got one for you, but it's an important one. It's a way to slash £100 off energy standing charges, which is probably the single most complained about issue I get when we're talking about energy, or probably anything else. There's a new tariff just launched. It's from EDF. It's called it Simply Tracker Extra Tariff. Now, what it does is it tracks the price cap that over 80% of homes are on. So if the price cap goes up, it goes up. But the standing charges are £100 a year lower. So that's the daily charges you pay for gas and electricity are £100 a year lower over the year. So who's this good for? Well, it's especially good for those who have lower usage.

• 1:03:48Martin Lewis?

  It's incredibly difficult to work out, so I'm going for a very rough rule of thumb, is if you pay on average under £135 a month, then you will probably be better off on this than going for a cheap fix. You will certainly be better off than this than just sticking on a price cap. Most people can get this tariff on most payment methods, although on prepaid, you have to have a smart meter. So if you're on smart prepaid, you can do it. It lasts for a year. There are £25 per fuel exit fees. I should note, if you're a mid to high energy user, because the price cap is still predicted to go up somewhere between 3% to 6% in April... I think you would be better off locking yourself into a cheap fix because for you, the unit rate, the amount that you pay for using gas and electricity is very important.

• 1:04:31Martin Lewis?

  For lower users, the standing charge makes up such a big proportion of their bill, cutting a hundred quid off that will often be a bigger saving. But for mid to high users, I would be going for a cheap fix. Get yourself onto a whole of market comparison to decide which one is cheapest for you.

• 1:04:48Martin 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. If not, why not tell them you were listening to the off air podcast with Jane and Fee. Apparently their latest episode is about tax dodging alpacas. Do you know why alpacas don't like singing with backing music? It's because they prefer to sing alpacapella. Sorry. 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. Take care.

• 1:05:31Speaker 07

  Martin Lewis is the founder of money saving expert.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 [email protected]. 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.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  Welcome to the haunted library. Join me, Colin Morgan, as I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. A story of science and ambition, loneliness and longing, and what it truly means to be human.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  Listen to the haunted library wherever you get your podcasts or find us on YouTube.