Beat the urgent ISA deadline – top cash ISAs for savers, stocks & shares for investing

ISA ISA baby! Martin joins Adrian to answer all your questions on savings tax, Cash ISAs, Junior ISAs and more before the fast approaching deadline in April. Chartered Financial Planner Ed Marshall also joins Martin to help with stocks and shares ISAs. You tell us about your financial ‘light bulb’ moments. Plus Martin shares his thoughts on back-billing with MPs… find out why you might not have to pay for energy usage if its more than a year old. Get in touch with the podcast by emailing [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.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a berry chantilly cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  Why is the United States sending some Russian asylum seekers back to Russia? I'm Tristan Redman, co-host of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. When Russia invaded Ukraine, many Russians who opposed the war fled to the West. Fast forward to now and the US is sending some of them back. Is this a sign of Trump's closer ties with Putin or all about domestic politics? For more, listen to The Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your pods.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

• 1:09Martin 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. Usually much of it comes from my 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. Today, ISA, ISA, baby. The tax year deadline is fast approaching and that means you have to use your ISA or you lose it. I'll be talking through when is an ISA nicer? How do ISAs actually work? How you can boost interest on your savings by using cash ISAs? How does the tax on savings work? And we've had loads of your questions, lots of interesting ones, and I'll be trying to answer as many of those as possible. I say trying, I've answered loads of them. I know, I'm recording this after I've done the actual podcast.

• 1:52Martin Lewis?

  Plus, I have an investment specialist joining me to talk the best stocks and shares ISAs. We'll also be talking about energy back billing and the crucial rule that if they give you a bill for over a year ago, you generally don't have to pay it. The Tellers this week is all about, and it was fascinating, what your biggest financial lightbulb moment has been, when you suddenly realised what you'd been doing wrong and fixed it. And the Masterminds, all about credit card interest rates. Play the theme tune.

• 2:40Speaker 05

  Martin Lewis is here. I've got your coat, Martin.

• 2:43Martin Lewis?

  Oh no.

• 2:44Speaker 05

  After weeks of not getting it, you transferred it. And such is my love and admiration for you. I feel honoured.

• 2:50Martin Lewis?

  Well, we're talking about cash ISAs later and for those you have to transfer, not just withdraw the money. So at least there's some form of synchronicity.

• 2:56Speaker 05

  Before we get into ISAs, you were giving evidence yesterday on energy bills at a select committee. What was all that about?

• 3:03Martin Lewis?

  Yeah, so this is about back billing, which is fascinating because they were talking about the number of complaints about back billing. I think the number of complaints is just a drop in the ocean to the number of people who are actually suffering the problem because most people don't know the rules. So let me do the rule. Energy firms cannot bill you for energy used over 12 months ago unless you put an unreasonable obstacle in the place from them doing so. So if they try and do, that's called back billing and back billing more than 12 months is not something they're allowed to do. Now, there've been 3,000 complaints at the Ombudsman of firms doing this. But as I discussed when I was giving evidence yesterday, there's a pipeline issue here.

• 3:44Martin Lewis?

  The first thing is that people get these back bills and many people don't know that they're not allowed to be back billed. So they get scared, they pay it and these can be thousands of pounds. And the reason I think we're seeing it becoming a louder issue right now is not, I suspect because there's more back billing. It's been going on a long time, but because bills are bigger. And because bills are bigger, you know, when you've got a back bill for 150 quid, you stamped your feet a bit. When you get a back bill for 10,000 pounds, you want to try and fight it. Then people go to the energy firms and the energy firms, the number of cases where they meet people fight tooth and nail. And there's an issue. One of the things I was saying is we need off gem. Off gem has this regulation, as I say, it is, you cannot back bill over 12 months unless someone has put an unreasonable obstacle in the path.

• 4:28Martin Lewis?

  But there's no definition of unreasonable obstacle. It's what's called principles based regulation rather than example based regulation. And I'm suggesting that needs to change. So let me, here we go. We'll put you in the judge hat, Adrian. Put your big white wig on. There you are. An energy company has sent somebody to your house to do a meter reading. You were not in, they could not do a meter reading. They then send you letters telling you about the meter reading, which you say you never got. They then back bill you on the back of all this, once they finally get the meter reading done for energy that you'd used, that you had not paid for. Did you put an unreasonable obstacle in place?

• 5:08Speaker 05

  That's a difficult one, that's right on the edge, I just don't know.

• 5:10Martin Lewis?

  And a lot of the cases I get are grey area cases. Right, so because they're grey area, and this is my point, that we need a better definition of what the rules actually are, so that people have a legitimate expectation of what they can fight or not. Another big thing we found is energy firms send to say, "Oh, we're not actually taking your money, we're just because you're already in credit, we're taking your credit." They cannot do that. They cannot charge you, that's still charging you for more than a year ago. Personally, I'd like to see them reducing the rule to six months, not a year. In a modern, digital age, six months is a hell of a long time to get your bills right. If you can't get your bills right, why are you making the customers pay? The number of people, the impact on people's finances and mental health, when they suddenly get a bill from two years ago they weren't expecting, saying, "You owe us 10 grand", is an abomination, and we need the regulator to crack down harder on it.

• 5:53Martin Lewis?

  So I was giving evidence on that later, the regulator was actually quite supportive afterwards. What I will do in the podcast is, it was a report on Radio 4 in yesterday in Parliament that went through, it's not just my evidence, but other people's evidence too, and I'll put that at the end of the pod if people want to have a listen to that.

• 6:09Speaker 05

  Okay, so let's get into the big topic today, ISAs, or individual savings accounts. Different tax rules compared to, different rules on tax, I should say, compared to other types of savings account, and there's an April deadline looming. Which shall we do first? Explain the tax.

• 6:28Martin Lewis?

  Well, let's do what an ISA is first.

• 6:31Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 6:31Martin Lewis?

  And I did this when I had a croaky voice, I can now give it full justice. This is my ISA explanation of how I would like you to think about it. Right, an ISA is not a product. You don't put money in an ISA in reality, an ISA is a tax wrapper, it just protects it from tax. So. Think of it, you've got two cakes, a chocolate cake, which will represent cash, just because it begins with a C, and a strawberry cake, which will represent shares, because it begins with an S, as simple as that. Now, normally, what can happen when you've got normal savings in your cash ISA, in your normal savings in your chocolate cake, you get a slice of that chocolate cake, the tax officer can come along, hump, take a big bite out of the interest. All an ISA is, a wrapper, so we'll think of it as cling film.

• 7:15Martin Lewis?

  It's cling film, you can wrap around a slice, £20,000 per tax year, of the cake. Now, the cake is still cake inside the wrapper, nothing has changed. It's still exactly what it was. A cash ISA is just a savings account, but it's a savings account you don't pay tax on, because now it's in the cling film, the tax officer can't come along, and they can't put it in, because it's got the cling film on it, they can't take a bite. And that is what an ISA is in a nutshell. You can book stocks and shares in, you can put other things in. It's a tax wrapper that stops you paying income or capital gains tax that would be due, so capital gains would be on the shares, income tax would be on the cash ISA. That's what a cash ISA is. But the important thing to understand,

• 7:57Martin Lewis?

  your allowance is £20,000 per tax year. So you have until the 5th of April to put your money into an ISA this year, if you have the money and you haven't used it, and it's right for you to use it. Now, that's the official deadline, but that's not the practical deadline, because many ISA providers, they shorten it, and in practice, you have to put money in earlier. One more thing, I know you want, just in this explanation, the important thing to understand, because it's an annual allowance, let's just make this pretty simple. You could have put in £20,000 last tax year, and that would still be in an ISA, let's say a cash ISA. You could put £20,000 in this tax year, until the 5th of April, and that's also in a cash ISA. And then on the 6th of April, you can put another 20 grand in. And then, unless they change the rules,

• 8:42Martin Lewis?

  and there is talk of Rachel Reeves doing that, you can put £20,000 in the next year. So as you could see, just in four years alone, you could have £20,000 plus the interest, because the interest stays within the ISA, protected from tax. That's why the, even if you're going, well, I don't have enough money to use this year's allowance, never mind next year's allowance, you don't know what's going to happen next year. And just in case you might have the need for it next year, you may as well use up this year's allowance, if it's right for you while you've got it, because in case you're going to need the one next year.

• 9:09Speaker 05

  To be clear, the allowance is on the principal sum you can put in.

• 9:13Martin Lewis?

  Correct.

• 9:14Speaker 05

  Not on the amount of interest.

• 9:16Martin Lewis?

  And everything we talk about ISAs is a put-in rule, right? It's about what you put in. Doesn't matter how much you've got, you can have a, you know, there are some people in ISAs who have over a million quid now because of the interest or their share growth, more likely, that they've had since the ISA law started. You are allowed to put in £20,000 per tax year, and that's a total rule for all ISAs. You could put 10 in a cash ISA and 10 in a shares ISA, 20, or you put five in a cash ISA, and 15 in a shares ISA. That's how it works.

• 9:46Speaker 05

  Shall we get into the questions?

• 9:48Martin Lewis?

  Shall we talk about savings tax?

• 9:49Speaker 05

  Yes, go on, yeah.

• 9:50Martin Lewis?

  Because I just want to explain this, because people get very, very confused about this. We're talking about protecting yourself from tax, and my stuff is savings, we'll be doing investment later. And many people misunderstand how tax on savings work. So let's be very plain, your savings are not taxed. The interest you pay on savings is taxed. Now, many people say to me, it's outrageous, it's double taxation on savings. Well, technically, it isn't actually. You are taxed on your earnings when you work, you then put those into savings, and those savings then earn for you in the form of interest, and that secondary earnings is taxed. Your savings amount is not taxed, it's only what your savings earn for you that is taxed, and that is the interest.

• 10:33Martin Lewis?

  But you have a number of allowances, as well as the cash ISA that is worth knowing about. The first one is the standard, basic, personal allowance, the tax-free allowance that most people have, that's normally £12,570 a year, which is the amount that you can earn before you pay tax on your earnings and your savings interest on anything. You know, it's that, and that's what a standard, if you earn a lot, it gets taken away from you, but most people have it, and it's usually £12,570 a year. So that's your first one. The second one that you need to know about is your personal savings allowance. So this one is only for interest.

• 11:12Martin Lewis?

  Now, what that says is a basic 20% rate taxpayer is allowed to earn £1,000 of interest a year on top of their normal personal allowance, in the personal savings allowance, tax-free, in any forms of savings. So if we think about it, that would save you 20% of £1,000, that would save you £200. A higher 40% rate taxpayer can earn £500 interest.

• 11:35Martin Lewis?

  Tax free a year. What's 40% of 500, Adrian? 40% of 500, is it 200? It's the same. So that you see the tax game is the same as a basic rate taxpayer. If you're lucky enough to be a top rate taxpayer earning 45%, you don't get one of these. Now, just to put that in perspective, a thousand pounds a year interest, you would need 21 grand in the top easy access account to generate a thousand pounds a year. So if you've got less than that and you're a basic rate taxpayer, you're not going to be paying tax on your savings anyway. Because you're not earning enough interest to pay tax on your savings. The third one, and this is the one nobody talks about, but it's very important for lower earners. This one's complicated, so I'm going to take it slowly, all right? Tell me, tell me at each step if you understand. So

• 12:20Martin Lewis?

  there's a starting savings allowance of up to 5,000 pounds of interest you can earn tax free if you're a lower earner on top of all the others. So let's imagine for a second you've got 6,000 pounds of interest per tax year, six grand. Yeah. If you earn no income, well, you know, you've got 5,000 is tax free and it's all tax free. Yeah, so it's not coming nowhere near the 12,000, whatever it was. So now let's give you, now let's say you've got 7,570 pounds of income from earnings from work. Yeah. And you've got 6,000 pounds of savings interest, right? So that's 7,570 pounds plus five grand

• 13:00Martin Lewis?

  is your 12,570 that you can earn in your personal allowance and the extra 1,000 pounds that personal savings allowance we talked about earlier. So now you've got 13,570. No tax. No tax. Now. Now let's imagine your earnings are 12,570, so they're covered by the personal allowance. Yes. With me? Yeah. You've still got 6,000 in savings. The starting savings allowance says in that circumstance, you're allowed 5,000 of savings interest tax free plus your personal savings allowance. So still, now you're earning 18,570 pounds a year, 12,570 is earnings. The rest is in interest. It's still all tax free because of the starting savings allowance.

• 13:43Martin Lewis?

  Then, for each pound you earn, work earn, over the 12,570 limit, you lose a pound of the starting savings allowance. So let's imagine now, I'm going to see if you can work it out, see if you're following it.

• 13:56Speaker 05

  I won't be able to.

• 13:56Martin Lewis?

  I think you will. Let's imagine now, you earn 13,570 pounds from work. So that's 1,000 pounds over your personal allowance. How much of your 6,000 pounds of savings interest is tax free?

• 14:11Speaker 05

  Uh, 5,000.

• 14:12Martin Lewis?

  Correct, because you lose a thousand pounds. Well done. It's not a mastermind question, I'm tempted to give you the point now. You lose a thousand pounds of your personal, of the starting savings allowance. So you've only got four grand and you've still got the extra 1,000 personal savings allowance. Now, if we go to the top and you earn 17,550 in earnings, your starting savings allowance is gone. Because it's a pound for pound swap, but you still got your thousand pounds of your personal savings allowance. I know it's tough to do, everyone, I know it's complicated. But that starting savings allowance for many pensioners who have capital saved away and are living on very low income is crucial and is fundamentally miscommunicated, not talked about, and people don't know about it. So all of those, the important thing, and why that relates to cash ISAs, is what you earn in a cash ISA doesn't count as interest to any of those.

• 14:57Martin Lewis?

  Doesn't count to your personal allowance. Doesn't count to your personal savings allowance. Doesn't count to your starting savings allowance. It's in a tax wrapper, it's totally separate. So it's additional on top. And of course, you can have money in premium bonds of up to 50 grand that you don't pay tax on the interest to. But your cash ISA is this additional allowance. So if you've used up and you're paying tax on your savings, that's when your cash ISA is coming into its own.

• 15:21Speaker 05

  Okay, so that's when you're earning, basically you're earning more.

• 15:24Martin Lewis?

  Well, for most people who are, who've got, you know, sort of mid earners on a basic rate of tax, when you're earning more than a thousand pounds interest a year, you want to get it in a cash ISA. Now, there's a height, there's an issue at the moment that actually, we'll come on to best buy rates later. But currently, the best buy cash ISA is best by normal savings. So even if you're not going to be paying tax on them, because they pay a high rate and it's just a savings account, you don't pay tax on it, it's just a savings account. You may as well put your money in the cash ISA because the interest rate's higher. But, you know, I was doing the philosophical bit first on the practical bit. Most people who've got savings, if you've not used the cash ISA this year, should be using it because the interest rate's higher if you want easy access.

• 16:02Speaker 05

  Okay, let's do some questions.

• 16:03Martin Lewis?

  Oh, I'm gonna have a drink.

• 16:04Speaker 05

  You're quite, quite right too. I have, John has an ISA with Moneybox after you posted their high interest rate from February 2025. My question is, can I have another ISA from the 6th of April 2025? And we'll both run consecutively, so I'll be gaining interest on both of them.

• 16:23Martin Lewis?

  You are allowed to put in £20,000 this tax year that ends on the 5th of April, and you can put in £20,000 next tax year that starts on the 6th of April. So yes, you could open a brand new cash ISA on the 6th of April with a different provider, or you could add money to your existing Moneybox cash ISA, assuming they allow you, and that's a product term, or you could open a second Moneybox cash ISA if they allowed you to do so. You have a totally new ISA allowance on the 6th of April. So just to make it really plain, let's say someone's listening out there now and they've got £40,000 in savings, and they wanna put them in the cash ISA. You could put £20,000 in today, use it this year's cash ISA allowance.

• 17:01Speaker 05

  And £20,000 on April 7.

• 17:03Martin Lewis?

  On the 6th of April, and you've got all £40,000 in an ISA.

• 17:06Speaker 05

  Okay. Heather the Fruitbat says, "Fruitbat flew at me once in Brisbane. I still have nightmares about it."

• 17:14Martin Lewis?

  Did he give you a banana?

• 17:15Speaker 05

  No, no, just gave me.

• 17:17Martin Lewis?

  I think big.

• 17:18Speaker 05

  All big. Oof, big. They only eat fruit, so unless they mistook my head for a, I don't know, a melon or something, then it wasn't gonna be a problem. Anyway.

• 17:28Martin Lewis?

  Guava.

• 17:29Speaker 05

  Heather, yeah. Heather says, "Can anyone open an ISA, or does it depend on your yearly wages, etc.?"

• 17:35Martin Lewis?

  Anybody over the age of 18, and there is no maximum limit, can open a cash ISA, or a stocks and shares ISA, or an innovative ISA, or an AIM ISA. You have to be under the age of 18 to open a junior ISA, and to open a lifetime ISA, you have to be between the ages of 18 and 39. There are no income criteria on opening ISAs. However, as I've discussed...

• 18:03Martin Lewis?

  Whether there is a benefit of the tax on ISAs depends whether you would be paying tax anyway, and that's where the income bit comes into it.

• 18:10Speaker 05

  Okay, Karen, is it worth opening an easy access cash ISA even if you aren't going to use your full allowance of 20k?

• 18:18Martin Lewis?

  Absolutely, it's up to £20,000. I mean, at the moment, because easy access cash ISAs are out paying normal savings, yes, even if you've got £500 and it's in savings, there's no harm putting it in a cash ISA, it's just a savings account. It's just a savings account you don't pay tax on, and if the rate is high, use that.

• 18:33Speaker 05

  Beryl has a cash ISA, which she took out six months ago, wants to now wants to take out another ISA. Does it have to be with a different bank and can I put the maximum in?

• 18:43Martin Lewis?

  It could be with the same, it could be with the different, as long as you've not used your £20,000 ISA allowance for this year, you're absolutely fine to put money in, and in some cases, in a flexible ISA, you could have taken money out and then you could be putting it back in. It used to be, I can't remember if it's one year or two years ago, it doesn't really matter because it's what you, it used to be that you could only open one cash ISA per tax year. So, in fact, I'd need to be more technical, it used to be you could only open one cash ISA for new money per tax year. Now you can open multiple cash ISAs in a year, so you could have two or three different providers and spread your £20,000 about. I just said something there that actually I think I'm probably going to explain because it's quite important. There will be people listening to this who have money in cash ISAs and the rates are pants.

• 19:27Martin Lewis?

  You know, you're earning 1%, 2%, 3% interest. Many people wrongly assume that once you have put your money in a cash ISA, it is locked away within that provider. That is not correct. You have a right to transfer that cash ISA. The way you transfer a cash ISA is this, you don't take the money out, because that counts as taking money out of a cash ISA, and you lose the cap, that wrapper, you're taking it out of the cling film and your cling film's gone, especially if it's from a prior year. What you do is you ask the new provider on their application form, they will say, do you want to transfer money across? And they will then move the money for you. Now, you can do that even if you're not putting any new money in, you can apply for a new cash ISA to not put any money in, just to transfer.

• 20:12Martin Lewis?

  I should say there are a few providers who don't allow transfers, but that's a provider thing, not an ISA rule thing. So if you have cash ISAs at the moment and their rate is poor, you want to move them to the best rates. And I'd be even more so if you got a fixed rate cash ISA three or four years ago, the rate is likely to be abominable. And even though you have to pay penalties to take your money out of the fix early, and there are calculators out there where you can work out whether it's worth it for you or not. It's often worth, if you're earning one percent, well, pay the interest penalty and put it in somewhere that's paying four and a half percent would be where I'd go.

• 20:45Speaker 05

  Have you got, have you got any sort of best buy here and talk us, talk us through them?

• 20:49Martin Lewis?

  Let me talk you through those best buys. It's a good point. Now, there's something interesting going on in the cash ISA market at the moment. We've got four providers, Trading 212, Plum, Moneybox and Chip. And by the way, every provider I mentioned has the full UK £85,000 savings safety protection. So you know, in the unlikely event one of them were to go bust, your capital is protected. What these, what these are doing, you're like this, Adrian, they've started to give you a short term bonus rate. So they get, they, they bump the interest up for three months. And why do you think they do that?

• 21:20Speaker 05

  Well, to get you in.

• 21:21Martin Lewis?

  Well, to get people on the top of the best buy tables.

• 21:23Speaker 05

  Right.

• 21:24Martin Lewis?

  Right. Because then they'll look, so Trading 212 is probably, is the top rate at the moment. In fact, Moneybox has got the same rate, but worse underlying rate. So I'll explain Trading 212. It's paying 5.25%. 4.5% of that is the underlying variable rate it's paying. Then it's got 0.75% on top, which is a bonus for newbies only lasting three months. Okay? I'm going to ask you which ISA you would pick of the three I'm going through now. It'd be interesting to hear. So that's one. And you've got Plum, Moneybox and Chip are fighting with it. Now, when I say fighting with it, just to put this in perspective, I'm not supposed to mention this, but it's, it's absolutely crucial to the story.

• 22:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:04Martin Lewis?

  Because I was doing this in my weekly email that goes to about eight, nine million people on Tuesday, and I was doing it on my telly show, I was doing cash ISAs. They knew that and so that day with the rate started at 5.02 then one went 5.03 then another 5.03 with a slightly smaller bonus then one went to 5.25 then another went to 5.25 just by boosting the bonus not by boosting the other seven rate changes in the day because they all wanted to be the top of that list and they wanted to be on the telly show.

• 22:36Speaker 05

  Because people again want to people are thinking what am I going to pick or might as well go for the top one.

• 22:41Martin Lewis?

  Well, so I'm very careful that I'm categorizing them into three categories. So you've got the top including short term bonus is trading 212 5.25% money box is paying the same but the underlying the second underlying rate is 4% so the bonus is a bit bigger and 4.5% underlying rate. Now remember these are all variables so rates can change anyway. All these easy access ones are variable. Then you've got tembo is 4.8% straight rate. Right? So it's 4.8% variable but there's no bonus. It's 4.8%.

• 23:10Speaker 05

  And what was it? What were the previous ones?

• 23:12Martin Lewis?

  5.25 but 4.5 underlying and 0.75 bonus for three months for newbies.

• 23:17Speaker 05

  Right.

• 23:17Martin Lewis?

  And then you've got post office is the top big name at 4.4% but it has a bonus too. Its bonus is 3.15%. So two ways to think about that. It's paying 4.4%. We know in a year that rate will be pants and you'll need to transfer it elsewhere because it's going to drop by 3.15%. The other way to look at it though is you've got a guaranteed minimum of 3.15% because 3.15% is a year long bonus. So you've got a guaranteed minimum of 3.15% with that if interest rates were to drop. That's the lowest it's going to go. Well, I mean, there is a feasibility of negative interest but we're not going to get into that. So those are your three choices. Do you go for the short term bonus rate with a with a slightly lower underlying rate, the top straight rate or the the name that you know

• 24:01Martin Lewis?

  with the 3.15% bonus for a year?

• 24:05Martin Lewis?

  No right answer.

• 24:06Speaker 05

  No, well, again, I just think, how are you supposed to know if you're not, if you're not an eminent Forex expert?

• 24:12Martin Lewis?

  Shall I give you the, shall I give, shall I do, I mean, I probably shouldn't say that. I don't care as long as you go for one of them.

• 24:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:18Martin Lewis?

  And this is, so there's a big thing in what I do called the, I think it's the final mile, right? And often when I go and do a road show or I'm going to do a tour, people always come to me, about half the questions are final mile questions, they've done all the research, they know, they know what they want to do and they go, this is what I'm thinking, is it right?

• 24:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:36Martin Lewis?

  Right, because, because they're scared to do the final.

• 24:37Speaker 05

  It's analysis paralysis, isn't it?

• 24:39Martin Lewis?

  Exactly. And so, let me be honest with you. All of these are pretty good.

• 24:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:45Martin Lewis?

  They'll all work for you, you need to monitor them, you might need to meet with them in future, don't get paralysis, just do one of them, you're not, there's no wrong answer, there might be no right answer, there's no wrong answer of the ones I'm talking about, these are the best buys anyway, so do whatever you feel most comfortable with. We just need to contrast those, those rates with the top normal savings, which is Monument 4.75%, but you need 25 grand, or GB Bank 4.6% with a, with a grand, or Post Office, which is the same as the ISA at 4.4%. So, let's just, let's, let's compare Monument 4.75% straight rate to Tembo 4.8% cash ISA. Not much difference, is there? So if you weren't paying tax, Tembo would, the cash ISA would slightly beat the, the normal savings.

• 25:29Martin Lewis?

  But if you were paying tax on the interest in the normal savings, at 20%, that 4.75% drops to 3.8%, you lose 25, 20% of the interest. At 40%, it drops to 2.85%. At 45%, it drops to 2.61%. So then you can see cash ISAs smack the pants off normal savings if you're paying tax. I need to just do fixed rate cash ISAs as well, they're very important. So, in fixed rate cash ISAs, normal savings pay higher rates. Top normal savings fixed rates for one year at the moment, secure trust vanquished, synergy 4.6%. Top one year fixed rate cash ISA, Castle Trust 4.49%, Shawbrook 4.48%. So the rate is lower in fixed rate cash ISAs. So if you're not paying tax, you'll probably

• 26:12Martin Lewis?

  want to go for the top savings there. If you are paying tax, cash ISAs still smack the pants off the normal savings. The only advantage of cash ISA fix is over normal fixes. With a cash ISA fix, they can't lock your money away. Put your money in a normal fixed rate savings, you can't touch it for the term. Put your money in a cash ISA, the rules say they have to allow you access to your money. Now, they normally charge you an interest penalty. You lose 90 or 180 days' worth of interest. So you're not going to get the interest.

• 26:37Speaker 05

  On the whole lot or on what you take out?

• 26:38Martin Lewis?

  On the whole. You generally have to close it to take it out anyway. So it's on the whole lot. So there is an advantage. For those people who are saying, I almost certainly want to lock money away for a year or two years, and I know I can lock it away for two years, but there is a tiny chance in an emergency I will need that cash. At least in a cash ISA, you do have access to the money in an emergency. It'll cost you, you will lose interest on it, but you could get your capital back. And that's actually not a bad feature. And we'll be talking stocks and shares ISAs in a moment, and I've got more of your cash ISA questions to answer later on in the podcast. So don't go anywhere. Well, actually, I think that's not true. You can go where you like, as long as you're still listening.

• 27:17Speaker 05

  The tell us, the financial lightbulb moment.

• 27:19Martin Lewis?

  Yes. Have you ever had a lightbulb, financial lightbulb moment, when you suddenly realised you'd approached something financially the wrong way, then it all made sense to you? We want to know what it was and how did the realisation occur. Matt, putting the amount of pet insurance premium into a bank account each month rather than taking out insurance. With two dogs, I now have 4K in the bank for treatment and pay for regular dog checkups with it. So that's known as self-insuring. It is something that people do. The problem with self-insuring is the initial months before you've got the savings put away. If something were to happen then, you've got a real problem. If you get a bill for three grand and you've only got 200 quid in that savings. If things have gone well for a few years, there's another way that people could do it. I've never really checked it out in pet insurance. I talk about it in private medical insurance. One way to

• 28:02Martin Lewis?

  do self-insuring is you have a really high access. So you get a cheap insurance policy with a very high access. You know, I'm not going to claim the first two. So that you basically have it there in cases of, you know, stuff hits the fan emergency. But you self insure in the meantime, brings your insurance premium down lower. So for small things, you're going to pay for them and you're only going to claim on the pet insurance. Or in the really.

• 28:26Speaker 05

  Which in practice is what you tend to do with car insurance anyway, isn't it?

• 28:29Martin Lewis?

  Yeah, but car insurance is, car insurance is a compulsory, is a grudge purchase. You have to have it. But with private medical insurance, there are some people who use that. I've not done it. I've not heard anyone doing it on pet insurance. I can't see why it wouldn't be possible depending on the excess situation. But yeah, it's an interesting one.

• 28:43Speaker 05

  Okay, um, Tim in Bath says my light bulb moment in his late thirties in a queue for bacon sandwiches at the local rugby club. There's a bloke in front talking in a very animated way about being upset how anyone could be in such a bad financial state. And he said, look, it's just so simple. You don't, you don't spend more than you earn.

• 29:07Speaker 05

  Which is, which sounds startlingly obvious. I suppose it's true unless you've got to feed your kids and, you know, I suppose.

• 29:13Martin Lewis?

  Well, I, one of the great problems we've had over the last few years, being straight and being depressing. Is when you talk to the big money and debt agencies, your citizens' advices. When people have come into citizens' advice and they've had the expert help on budgeting and money management and cutting down their minimum expenditure. Over fifty percent of those people are still deficit budgeting. In other words, over fifty percent of the people on minimum expenditure still have less income than minimum expenditure. So for those who can do it, it's absolutely the right way to go forward. And I've always been supportive of budgeting and doing money, you know, money makeovers on yourself. But currently it isn't possible for everybody. Um, let's go to a different one. Penny. Moving my mortgage payment date. If you have bills panning up and are worried about going overdrawn, your mortgage payment is due before your next pay packet.

• 29:57Martin Lewis?

  See if you can change it to a few days after you're paid, but within the same calendar month. Most people seem to get paid at the end of the month, but others are paid mid months. So if you've changed jobs but never changed your mortgage payment date, see if it could work for you. So I actually often talk about moving it to just before your next payment date, right? So that you're going to be overdrawn for as little time as possible. You want, you want your big bills coming just before you're paid. So that it clears them straight away, rather than it leaves you on a lower amount, certainly. It's a different way. Moving payment dates can be really effective.

• 30:26Speaker 05

  Can I tell you mine?

• 30:27Martin Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 30:27Speaker 05

  Right.

• 30:28Martin Lewis?

  Yeah, well, yes, of course.

• 30:28Speaker 05

  I I asked myself, I asked myself, having spoken to you every week, why don't I address these things? Why don't I go look at everything from my broadband, mortgage, I mean, you name it.

• 30:38Martin Lewis?

  Yep.

• 30:38Speaker 05

  Sky, etc.

• 30:40Martin Lewis?

  Seventy five percent typically.

• 30:41Speaker 05

  Why am I not tackling this? And I did a job on myself, but the reason I'm not is because I'm actually frightened about what I'll find. I'm frightened, I'm frightened to find out how much I've been diddled so far. There's almost a sunk cost fallacy, I suppose you've got, I just, I don't want to realise how stupid I've been being for the five, 10, 20 years, whatever. I've just had my head in the sand.

• 31:02Martin Lewis?

  So that that is not an uncommon.

• 31:04Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 31:05Martin Lewis?

  Thing. But I think what's an interesting answer to it. So I remember years, when I started out, I mean, twenty years ago now, and I had to do makeover, I hate doing makeover programmes where I go in. Because my whole thing is teaching people how to do it themselves, not doing it for them. And I didn't, I didn't like it. But hey, I was young and it was a career and they, and they gave me a programme called Make Me Rich. And I was like, please can we not call it that title? It's the opposite to what I do. Can we add a question mark? No, it's first commission.

• 31:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:27Martin Lewis?

  These days, I say, this is what the title's going to be. Uh, you know.

• 31:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:30Martin Lewis?

  It's changed. And I would go into people's houses and it would often be people with debt and I'd look through their finances. And I would, I'd say, look, you do, you realise this is your total amount of debt, you're in forty thousand pounds of debt. And the faces would absolutely crumple in front of me with that dawning realisation of quite how badly they were in the mire. And then the thing I'd say to them, which I think applies to you, is you feel like you are in a much worse position than you were at the start of the day. But in reality, you are in a much better position because you have just taken the first step towards sorting it out. And you have to get through that transition. You have to accept that transition towards fixing the problem.

• 32:13Martin Lewis?

  As in, as with all other forms of people in denial about what the issue is, you actually just have to take the first step.

• 32:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:19Martin Lewis?

  And then you can be, think of, and there'll be people out there now, get in touch, who've done this. And then they get a wonderful feeling. You know, it's like starting on a run. It's a horrible thought, starting on the run, you run, you know that once you get the euphoria and towards the end, you feel good about yourself. So I would urge you to forgive yourself your past errors. And actually get the joy at the end of that as realising, do you know what? I'm not being diddled anymore. I've sorted it all out. I'm in a better situation. And I always talk about for most people. See it as a job of work. If you have to take a day off work to sort your finances, for most people who've never done it before, the gains can be thousands of pounds in a day. And you don't get paid that much, so it's the best paid day of the year.

• 33:01Speaker 05

  It's almost a political assumption that the market will sort itself out. So if I don't do anything, the market and everything will default to just... But I know, it's absurd, it's stinking thinking.

• 33:13Martin Lewis?

  The market, the market's job is price differentiation to make everybody pay as much as they will pay your company. And you are at the top end of that. You're paying the most. Those who don't look after these things pay the most.

• 33:26Speaker 05

  Yeah. I'm an idiot, is what we're trying to say, but I will...

• 33:30Martin Lewis?

  No, you know what? I'm going to argue against that because, I mean, yes, in the generality, obviously.

• 33:37Martin Lewis?

  But not in this... No, you're not. But in the specific, that's a representative of what many people think. And you know, let's be really straight about this. There are many people who have had mental anxiety. It's often interlinked with mental health. There are people who are neurodiverse who find ADHD can make these types of things really difficult. There are lots of blocks, both for everybody and because of all the different forms of people that we are out there who are listening to this, who don't do those things. So we need to take away the stigma of the past problems and actually take away the warmth and encouragement of, why not give it a try? You might just feel better at the end and you'll certainly have more money in your pocket.

• 34:20Speaker 05

  Okay, shall we do some stocks and share ISAP questions? Shall we bring in some help on this?

• 34:28Martin Lewis?

  Yeah, so I mean, stocks, it's a regulated subject. I'm not regulated and I don't cover stocks and shares, investing. Let me do my normal statement I say on that. And I said it in a select committee recently, not on energy, a different one. I always get concerned because... I worry the fact I don't talk about investing makes people think that I'm anti-investing and they shouldn't invest and we're already a risk averse nation. I do invest personally. It's not my professional expertise, so I don't talk about it professionally and it's a regulated subject, so I don't talk about it. But I do invest and if you're going to be putting money away for more than five years, you will generally find that in the long run, a decent spread of investments will outperform savings. So don't take my

• 35:12Martin Lewis?

  silence on it as anything other than it's not my subject. You know, I don't talk about medical healthcare, but it doesn't mean I don't think you should go and see a doctor. It's just not my subject and that's the only reason I don't talk about it, not that I'm anti it.

• 35:24Speaker 05

  Okay. Well, we've got Ed Marshall with us, Chartered Financial Planner, Independent Advisor with Dean Wealth Management. Ed, how are you doing?

• 35:31Speaker 06

  Hey, very well. Thank you very much. Good to be with you today.

• 35:34Speaker 05

  Right. So Susie says, how do you know which S and S stocks and shares ISA is best as you can't compare interest rates like a cash ISA? And please explain what fees are involved.

• 35:46Martin Lewis?

  So maybe we start with, you can put up to £20,000 in the stocks and shares ISA. It protects you from capital gains tax and it protects you, protects your dividends from tax as well, doesn't it, Ed?

• 35:56Speaker 06

  It does. Yeah. I mean, it's a tax wrapper, as you were saying earlier. So it's a great way to shelter £20,000, no dividend tax, no interest, tax to pay on your interest, no capital gains. So we're on a winner for starters. The whole thing with investing in a stocks and shares ISA is that over the long term, you expect to get more peaks than troughs, more positive years than negative years. You're trying to outperform cash, you're trying to outperform inflation, you want a real return for your money. So there's two questions. First of all, which platform do I want to have my stocks and shares ISA with? And then the second question is, which fund or funds am I going to buy that matches my attitude to risk? That's the risk that we're willing to take along the way and the returns that I expect to be compensated for in exchange for taking that risk. There are

• 36:39Speaker 06

  a number of different platforms, a number of different funds. We can dive into some of those options very easily today.

• 36:44Martin Lewis?

  So the platform is very simply, who are you going to put it with and who's going, which, and you're going to be looking at what its charges are and what its choice of investments are. So that can be a hard AJ Bell or Triple I, it could be anyone.

• 36:57Speaker 05

  But what Suzie's asking is, what she's asking the simplest question of all is, well, who's going to make me the most money? You know, because obviously you're not getting interest on cash.

• 37:06Martin Lewis?

  Let's start. And one of the reasons I don't talk about investments, Ed can give you his best analysis of what he thinks is going to happen in future. But he doesn't know because he doesn't have a crystal ball. And that's what puts people off investing. They want certainty and there isn't certainty.

• 37:21Speaker 05

  It is.

• 37:21Martin Lewis?

  But where are you going on this, Ed?

• 37:22Speaker 05

  But I could just say, you could look at past performance of any particular fund.

• 37:26Martin Lewis?

  Past performance, you know, literally by law, they have to tell you that that does not reflect future performance.

• 37:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, so risk and return are intrinsically linked. If I want to take more risk, I should expect a higher return. You mentioned before about diversification, that's absolutely crucial as well. So if you don't care about short term volatility, you don't mind when the markets go down, you just want to hold it because they're going to make you more profit over time. You buy a hundred percent global equity fund, you buy as many shares as you can within that single fund, and you will generate over time a higher expected return.

• 37:54Martin Lewis?

  So what is a global equity fund?

• 37:56Speaker 06

  So a global equity fund would be something like, for example, Vanguard, a lot of us have heard of Vanguard. They have a range of funds called life strategy funds. So if you buy the hundred percent equity life strategy fund, you are getting around about six to 10,000 different shares around the world. You've bought the world roughly as it looks, the global stock markets. And because you've diversified so heavily, your peak should outweigh the troughs, you should get a higher return over time. Not everybody though wants to take that level of risk because if we think back, it was only five years ago that the markets fell by a third in six weeks because we were going into the pandemic. And that stressed everybody. So if you don't want that level of risk,

• 38:36Speaker 06

  you buy a fund that's also got bonds, so government and corporate bonds within there, take a little less risk, get a bit of a lower return. But you moderate out that volatility along the way.

• 38:45Martin Lewis?

  Give us an example of a fund where you could add that in.

• 38:47Speaker 06

  So again, the Vanguard Life Strategy Funds, I just use this as an example. You can have 20% bonds, 80% equities, 40% bonds.

• 38:55Martin Lewis?

  Equities are shares, aren't they? Just to help.

• 38:57Speaker 06

  That's right, global stock markets, yeah. And so you've got other fund managers, like Dimensional Fund Managers. You've, when you're, when you're looking at different platforms, thinking, but there's so much choice. Where do I go? You can look at the likes of Money Saving Expert, you can look at YouSwitch, you could also look at Which. There are different platforms listed, like AJ Bell, you've got Vanguard on there, you've got Interactive Investor, and they can help you make those choices.

• 39:21Martin Lewis?

  And, and I think one thing that's important to say to people, as I often get questions about my shares have gone down, should I sell them? My shares have gone up, should I sell them? There are only two dates that really matter with shares. It's the date you buy them and the price you buy them, and it's your date you sell them and the price that you sell them. Now, if the share price has gone down, it doesn't mean it's necessarily going to go up. My view, it'd be interesting to hear yours, Ed, is you should always look at this, at the situation on the day. If you have £2,712 worth of a share, the fact it's gone down or up in the past is to an extent irrelevant. The question is, am I happy to have £2,712 of that share at the moment of where it's going to go in future? It doesn't, there's no sort of rationale linked to where it's moved in the past, is there?

• 40:03Speaker 05

  But there's also, sorry, take that one, Ed.

• 40:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, the fact is that the markets will always provide a higher return. Over just looking at the global markets, the global economy has always got to expand by more than it contracts. So the global markets are always going to give you a return above cash and inflation. So yes, you've got that £2,700 invested, it will fluctuate in value. But if you're well diversified, and what I mean by diversified is you've not bought a fund manager who's got 80 different stocks in that fund, they're telling you they're going to outperform the market, they've done it for the last five years, and then they fall off a cliff in terms of the performance, they've called the market wrong, and you've lost more than the market. Nothing more frustrating than that. Just buy into funds where the only risk is the risk of the markets, and then over time, time does take away risk.

• 40:48Speaker 05

  There's another variable which Susie identifies, is that it's not only how that fund performs, but how much they're going to charge you to be in that fund.

• 40:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, great point. So you've normally got two costs that you need to bear in mind here. You've got your fund platform cost, i.e. what's the cost of that platform typically between 0.15% and 0.45% a year is what you might expect to pay for that investment platform. That's where you log on to, you see the value of your investment. Then you've got the fund cost, which might be quarter of a percent to half a percent a year. You never see the cost of the fund. The cost of the fund is deducted before the unit price is calculated, but it is there and it impacts on performance. High charges will reduce your returns. Of course, you could get a financial planner who will explain all of this to you and give you advice. But if you want to DIY, do it yourself, then you just need to pay attention to fees.

• 41:39Speaker 06

  Perhaps we pay no more than 0.75% a year overall, it's very easy to achieve that.

• 41:44Martin Lewis?

  So just to do some of the language, when you're talking, effectively what you're talking about is between active and passive fund management. Passive fund management is something that's tracking an index or tracking global shares without active fund management, you talked about before, is when you've got someone who's picking stocks for you. And you're, you're moving towards the, the passive saying, well, actually, I'm not sure there's that much point in the active, which is, it's a big debate in the industry, but a lot of people tend to go that, that passive will work there. I think that works well. In terms of an independent financial advisor or a financial planner, look, I, I think for most people who don't know what they're doing, that's a very good thing. But let's be honest, between you and I, you need a bulk of wealth to do that. You're, and, and this isn't denigrating you, actually, I just have to say, I've had investment people come on before and I'm always like, you've got to talk the type of funds people should get and they won't name funds.

• 42:28Martin Lewis?

  Ed, I'm so pleased that you've done it and you've been brilliant. Thank you very much for that. But Ed, let's just set expectations. How much would someone need to have or to be putting away a month to go towards a, a financial planner or a financial advisor? You're not going to do it for somebody who's just got a 500 quid lump sum, are you? It's not worthwhile, they're worth the fee that they'd pay.

• 42:47Speaker 06

  No, a lot of financial planners though will just simply charge you a fixed fee. They'll charge you a planning fee. So whether that fee is £500, £2,500, they will charge you a fee, they will give you advice and they will set up that plan. And even if you're only contributing £100 a month into it, the value of that advice, having paid the planning fee and having got the plan set up, it will pay dividends for you over the years because they've set you on the right track.

• 43:12Martin Lewis?

  But it is for people with bigger amounts of money. Let's just be plain on that because you've got to factor in the cost, the cost you're going to play. I'm in favour of it. I'm saying people should do it, but we need to be realistic.

• 43:23Speaker 05

  Just one more quick question. Can you transfer shares you hold outside an ISA into an ISA?

• 43:28Martin Lewis?

  Yes, Bedden ISA ring it's called, and you'd do it for capital gains, wouldn't you?

• 43:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:32Speaker 06

  You would, yeah.

• 43:33Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 43:33Martin Lewis?

  So I'm going to do some more with Ed. Hopefully, as long as you can stay on the podcast, we'll do some more questions like that on the podcast. But I think you should play that theme tune now, Adrian.

• 43:47Martin Lewis?

  Hello, welcome to Martin's Money Mastermind, where Adrian picks from a three option multiple choice question. He has currently got eight right, got right last week, and 12 wrong. So now I wanted to admit I had an issue with my credit card this week. I know I probably shouldn't say that, the clickbait tabloids will be all over it. I decided I was going to buy Adrian a little trophy in anticipation of him getting this mastermind question right. Unsurprisingly, that was flagged as suspicious activity. Equally, Adrian's own credit card statement is confused. He bought an emotional support tortoise two years ago, and he's now transferred that balance to his current credit card, on which he bought a 12-foot inflatable power drill when the card was on a promotional

• 44:32Martin Lewis?

  rate. And yesterday, he purchased an antique foghorn on the same card. No one has any idea why, unless they read his Guardian column, in which case this type of thing is rather mundane. So, the key question, Adrian. All those three debts are on the same credit card at different interest rates. One is at 0%, one is at 18.9%, and one is at 24.9% on the same credit card. When you pay off 200 quid...

• 45:08Martin Lewis?

  Where does the credit card company allocate the repayment? A, it pays off the highest interest rate debt first. B, it pays off the largest debt first. C, it pays off the lowest interest rate debt first.

• 45:26Speaker 05

  Oh, God.

• 45:28Martin Lewis?

  I just, I just wish you could all see Aiden's face where I asked the question. There's this sort of frown and, oh my, where are you taking me? So, yeah, the question is, what are they paying off first? When you, when you've got multiple interest rates on one card, what do they pay off first?

• 45:44Speaker 05

  I would.

• 45:48Speaker 05

  I think they're paying the one with the biggest, the biggest one. Not the highest interest rate, the one with the biggest principal.

• 46:00Martin Lewis?

  What would you want them to do?

• 46:03Speaker 05

  I, well, I don't know, because I think, um, I think probably the highest interest rate, I think I'd probably want them to do.

• 46:11Martin Lewis?

  Yeah, you would. You'd want them to pay the highest interest rate. But you're saying A was the highest interest rate, B the largest debt, C the lowest interest rate. And you're going for B, the largest debt first.

• 46:21Martin Lewis?

  Well, what I can safely tell you is there's never been a situation where they pay the largest debt off first. That's never happened. So let's have the uh. That's wrong. Eight thirteen. Until 2010, credit card companies would default with certain things about minimum repayments and various other things. But they would default to paying off the lowest interest rate first, which meant if you had two different types of debt on the card, your highest interest rate debt was effectively trapped until you paid the lowest interest rate debt, accruing more money. Now, I was involved in the campaign and it was Gordon Brown's finance team at Number 10 who changed the laws. And I was involved in it at the time, which I'm quite proud of. But in 2010, the rules were changed. They now have to, by law, pay off the highest interest rate debts first.

• 47:03Martin Lewis?

  So if you had a debt at 0% and you had a debt at 24.9%, your payments would go first towards the 24.9% debt, the one that is. Accruing cost at the greatest rate, not the 0% rate.

• 47:16Speaker 05

  But that could be £10. You could only have, you could only have £10 on that.

• 47:19Martin Lewis?

  Yes, but then the first money goes towards clearing that. Well, that philosophy is what I would always, people who have, you know, we take this further because I talk about people who've got debts on different cards. You've got one card at 10%, one card at 15%, one card at 20%. Your biggest debt may be at 10%, but I would say focus all your spare cash on paying off the 20% card. That's the one that's growing quicker, growing quickest. Once the 20% card is gone, then pay the 15% off card. And on the cards that you're not focused putting your money on, you just pay the minimums. Now, normally anti-minimum payments, when you've got one card, you want to pay off more. But with multiple cards, you want to get rid of the debt that's costing you the most and growing quickest. And that's what we did in 2010, is got the law changed so that card companies, if you

• 48:01Martin Lewis?

  have different interest rates on one card, have to do what you would do if you had a choice to pay it off, which is pay off the highest interest rate debt first. So thankfully, at least in that, years ago, I used to say, never, ever, ever spend on a balance transfer card because the spending would be at 20% and the balance transfer would be at 0% and you'd trap the spending in. I mean, you still generally shouldn't do it because you should go and get a special card for spending on. But I haven't, that never, ever, ever was one of my catchphrases, along with in full. I don't do it the same way anymore.

• 48:29Speaker 05

  Okay, we've got a whole minute left together. How should we spend?

• 48:32Martin Lewis?

  Ask me a cash ISA question or an ISA question if you've got one.

• 48:35Speaker 05

  Okay, I will, I've got to go, I've got to find the, that's the ones, I've got to find the questions for that. If you're in between retrieving interest monthly or annually, which is best, Ruth says.

• 48:51Martin Lewis?

  If you're not taking money out of the account, it makes absolutely no difference. If you want to take money out of the account, then you've got to do it monthly and that's the way that you can use the income. The reason the interest rates tend to be different on the same account is because when they do the monthly interest, they're assuming that you take the money out, so they're not compounding it. Whereas the annual interest is compounding it over the year. You're actually being paid the same amount. If you leave the money in, you get the same amount. But obviously, if you're taking money out of an account, you won't be any interest on that account. And that's why the interest rates tend to be slightly different between monthly and annual on the same account. So I've got Ed Marshall from Dean's Wealth Management back with me now to do a few more of your stocks and shares ISA questions before I do a few more of your cash ISA questions. Okay, Ed, Janet's got an interesting question here.

• 49:36Martin Lewis?

  I currently have a stocks and shares child trust fund worth approximately £16,000 for my 15-year-old. Payments of around £100 go in each month. Is it worth moving to a junior ISA or leaving where it is until it matures when he's 18? Just while you think about that, when it comes to child trust funds, they are effectively now just like a junior ISA. Now, in the savings side, if you've got a savings child trust fund, because child trust funds are closed accounts and junior ISAs are open accounts, the rates are better in junior ISAs, so it is always worth transferring the child trust fund into a junior ISA because with cash ISAs, it's very simple. If the rate pays more, go for the higher rate. It's more complicated in stocks and shares though, isn't it?

• 50:18Speaker 06

  Well, it can be, but because for the same reason, child trust funds are closed on the stocks and shares side of things, you're going to have far more choice by going for a junior ISA. And by choice, I mean availability of funds and also more competitiveness in terms of charges. So you might want to look at the fund that you're invested in with the child trust fund and look at the charges and think, could I switch that over to a junior ISA, get a fund that's more appropriate and pay lower charges at the same time? And the answer is most likely yes, it is going to be worth your while switching.

• 50:49Martin Lewis?

  A few places where she should look at doing that, please?

• 50:51Speaker 06

  Yep, you could look at Vanguard, you could look at AJ Bell, you could look at Hargreaves Lansdown, if you're looking at platforms that will allow you to do it yourself. There are also platforms that independent financial advisers would use, such as Transact, such as Quilter, who all offer junior ISAs as well.

• 51:09Martin Lewis?

  Okey dokey. Mick, I have some shares from a company save-as-you-earn scheme. I would obviously pay capital gains tax on a chunk if I sold any. How do I transfer them into any form of ISA to minimise the capital gains tax liability?

• 51:23Speaker 06

  So you can transfer those shares out of the Save As You Earn scheme, you can transfer them across into an ISA, a bed and ISA as you've mentioned earlier, in order to not pay tax.

• 51:32Martin Lewis?

  I probably confuse people with that term. So a bed and ISA is what you do, there isn't a product, is there? It basically means you sell your shares outside an ISA and put them into an ISA.

• 51:40Speaker 06

  That's right, Martin. Yeah, so you're in a taxable environment and you're moving them into a tax-free environment. Now, if you want to move them from a Save As You Earn scheme and get them over into an ISA, you've got to do that within 90 days of having got them out of the Save As You Earn scheme. And you're likely going to want to use a platform such as Redmain Bentley, such as Hargreaves Lansdown, where you can hold those shares on the platform and then instruct the platform to move those shares across into the ISA wrapper for you. Alternatively, you could go to a stockbroking firm and get them to do it, but most people want to do it themselves. The important thing is that you hold the shares on that investment platform, which means you've got to effectively re-register

• 52:24Speaker 06

  those shares from the nominee platform that they're currently held on with the Save As You Earn scheme over to the platform of your choice. It's not particularly cumbersome, it's just a couple of pieces of paper, but it can take a couple of months for them to move across. So difficult to get done before the end of the tax year, but not impossible.

• 52:42Martin Lewis?

  Of course, there's something called bed and breakfasting with non-ISA shares too, isn't there? Which is where you sell your shares because you want to crystallise the capital gains tax gain or loss at that point. And then you can't buy them back for 30 days and you buy them back and that crystallises what's happening in capital gains. That's bed and breakfasting, isn't it?

• 53:01Speaker 06

  That is. And you've got a £3,000 capital gains allowance this tax year, and it's use it or lose it. So that doesn't mean that you've sold £3,000 worth of shares, it means the shares that you've sold, you've created £3,000 worth of profit, £3,000 worth of gain. Now, if you're married, if you've got a spouse, then that means that you could also transfer shares into their name. They will then use your base cost for those shares when they're sold as well. So you've got another £3,000 worth of capital gains allowance to use. And of course, we're very close to the-

• 53:30Martin Lewis?

  What's that called? Is that bed and spousing, which is sounding a bit dodgy?

• 53:33Speaker 06

  We could go with the bed and spousing works for me. I don't think it's got it. And of course, we're in the new tax year soon, 6th of April, you can do the whole thing all over again.

• 53:42Martin Lewis?

  Yep. Let's move on to the next one. Thanks, Ed. I'm slightly confused what this one is about. Adam, should I pull any stocks and shares out before April to use potential higher limit before end of tax year and changes or leave where they are? Will this avoid any tax on my shares? And should I also gift some to my wife's ISA before April? What are the rules? I presume he's talking about capital gains tax.

• 54:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, it sounds like we've got taxable investments that he wants to be able to sell down, again, crystallise that gain. And yeah, by all means, I mean, if you've got those surplus proceeds and you've already used your ISA allowance, make sure that you use your wife, your spouse's ISA allowance as well, because again, use it or lose it, your ISA is so valuable because of that tax-free nature. And with all the changes that we've seen coming through in the budget with Rachel Reeves last year, like ISAs have never been more valuable than they are right now.

• 54:34Martin Lewis?

  I know the answer to this, but it's your job to answer it. I think you can do it in one word. Christina, shares ISAs, is it possible to invest in other country's stock markets?

• 54:44Speaker 06

  100%. You can buy shares from all over the world as long as they are listed on a recognised stock exchange. And of course, most people choose to invest their stocks and shares ISAs into funds, which of course then in turn will buy those shares all around the world.

• 54:59Martin Lewis?

  Dave Kimberoo, my son wants to start a stocks and shares junior ISA focusing on the S and P, he's been doing his research. Seems quite a volatile time to be doing this. What are the pros and cons versus the cash ISA? Well, I'm just, it's always a volatile time. If he's young and he's planning to hold it for a long time, brilliant, the longer you hold it, hopefully the better it'll do. It's like investing almost in the American economy, you could argue. As versus a cash ISA, it's a bit like saying, what do you want for dinner? Do you want a steak or a Diet Coke? That they're not the same thing. A cash ISA gives you a defined return with no risk, apart from the risk of you're not going to beat inflation. A stocks and shares ISA, you're putting the money in with risk, but in the hope that it will grow much, much faster over the longer period than it generally will.

• 55:43Martin Lewis?

  We have to be more brave in this country about investing, I think.

• 55:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, and if you look at the culture in America, they are certainly much braver when it comes to investing. It's a much more normal thing to do. Buying stocks in the UK, it isn't quite so much. Another point I'd make is that the S and P 500, so you're buying a really narrow part of the global stock market. The US is about 60% of the world's stock market. The S and P 500 is part of that. But what about the rest of the global markets? This is why you really want to look global, because the more you diversify that stocks and shares portfolio that you've got, we're talking thousands of stocks, perhaps up to 15,000 shares around the world, the less the risk you take, the diversification helps to take some risk off the table. So don't limit yourself to just the S and P 500. Think global.

• 56:31Martin Lewis?

  Ed, I'm doing this one. It's my show, I'm allowed. Tin Alien says, can ISAs be switched between different types, so from cash to stocks and shares or stocks and shares to cash when needed for market stability? Yes, they can. It's a very simple one. And we'll do the final one, which someone's got a negative question. So we'll do that. It's always worth doing one. Steve, I've been badly bitten by these products in the past with charges applied and mismanagement risks inherent. How can I minimize the risk of not really making any profit or even making a loss? Well, that is always a risk. That is the risk of investing. But I think, you know, there are ways. You were talking tracker funds earlier.

• 57:06Speaker 06

  Yes. One of the risks that we hear that people have encountered in the past is they've invested in a stocks and shares ISA, they've lost money, they've cashed out. And when you say, right, so where did you invest? You suddenly find that they were invested in very specific funds, maybe technology funds, maybe finance funds, areas of the markets that have been particularly hard hit at particular points in time. They've seen their fund drop by half, by three quarters. They've never made it back. They've cashed out at a loss. When you diversify and you buy global, you've just got all the components of the global markets thrown in there. And some are going to do terribly and some are going to do brilliantly. But they all average out, which is why it helps to take some risk off the table. That's

• 57:49Speaker 06

  why you ideally want to get a bit of advice. Or when you're doing your research, just look at these principles that we discussed today.

• 57:56Martin Lewis?

  Thank you so much. That is Ed Marshall. Ed, brilliant. Lovely to have someone being direct and answering questions. You know, it's a bit ballsy to do so on this type of subject, broad brush, but people want to know some specifics. You can't guarantee to be 100% right on your fund choice, but at least you've done the analysis to get there, which is what people want. So thank you so much.

• 58:14Speaker 06

  My pleasure.

• 58:17Martin Lewis?

  So that was me asking Ed questions. Now I've got podcast producer Hannah in the studio to ask me some cash ISA questions, just the final few of the odd different ones that came in. What have you got for me Hannah?

• 58:26Speaker 07

  So Fiona says, my son wants to start saving for his first property. We live in an expensive area and are hoping to get a house with his partner. I understand there is a limit on the house price. Is he better off just having a normal ISA? How does it work if the house price is over the threshold?

• 58:43Martin Lewis?

  So I presume you're talking about the lifetime ISA known as a LISA. With the LISA, it is only usable as a first time buyer on a property that costs under £450,000. Now, the lifetime ISA, when it works well, is a fantastic product, or fantastic wrapper, I should be more technical, I was talking about all that earlier. It's where you can put up to £4,000 per tax year in, and then the state will add 25% on top of what you put in. So if you put in the full £4,000, you'll get £1,000 on top, and you can do that year after year. And as long as you've had it open for a year and you're buying a qualifying property, which is any residential property under £450,000, you then get that

• 59:23Martin Lewis?

  bonus to use towards your first time deposit. The other time you can use the bonus is once you're aged 60, but as the lifetime ISA is only openable when you're aged 18 to 39, and it's only been going since 2017, no one has hit the 60 when you can use it yet. So you have got to the nub of the problem with your question. And it's something I've been campaigning on. I think it's the third time I've mentioned giving evidence to a select committee, but I gave to a select committee on this a couple of weeks ago. I have a big problem with the fact that if you were to buy a property over £400,000, or your son is to buy a property over £450,000 and he's been saving in a lifetime ISA, he will effectively have to pay a fine of 6.25%. So if he's put 10 grand in, he's only going to get around £9,400 of it back, although there will be interest that's added

• 1:00:06Martin Lewis?

  on top of his, because you have to pay a fine to withdraw from a lifetime ISA for any other reason than buying a qualifying property or once you're aged 60. I have been asking them to change the rules so that if you're buying a property, if it's over £450, While you won't get the the bonus, you shouldn't have the fine. It's technical. Currently, the fine is actually you get 25% bonus and you get a 25% fine. When you add 25% on and take 25% off, it's minus six and a quarter percent. I'm saying you should get a 25% bonus and a 20% fine, which will roughly leave you with what you put in in the first place. That hasn't happened. The law hasn't been changed. So at the moment, that's a risk. So you asked me which is better.

• 1:00:48Martin Lewis?

  The question is, how likely is he to buy his first time property? That would be over £450,000. If it is pretty likely, then you might not want to put the money in a lifetime ISA. If it's pretty unlikely,

• 1:01:04Martin Lewis?

  then you will want to put the money in a lifetime ISA, as long as he is definitely going to be buying a property. I hope they change the rules. I hope by the time your son gets there, the rules will be different because it's an absolutely ridiculous system that puts people off getting a lifetime ISA. But I can't tell you they will.

• 1:01:18Speaker 07

  Samantha says, can I open a stocks and shares ISA for my grandchildren and then gift it to them when they're older if they already have a junior one?

• 1:01:26Martin Lewis?

  You can't gift an ISA. An ISA is an individual savings account. So you can open a stocks and shares ISA. You could gift them the returns of that ISA. They could put it into an ISA, but you can't gift them the ISA allowance. If that's what you're asking me, you can't say, I've got my ISA allowance. I'd like you to have an ISA allowance. You can have the value of it, but you can't get the tax wrapper. The cling film, if you go back to my initial analogy, is non-transferable. There is a case on the event of death, but we're not talking about that. The cling film is non-transferable, I'm afraid.

• 1:01:59Speaker 07

  Joe says, my son opened a one-year online ISA last year at the end of March when he turned 16. He matures soon, but the age for an ISA went up to 18 last April. So what can he do as he'll be 17? It's too much for a junior ISA as he has over nine grand, which I think is the limit.

• 1:02:19Martin Lewis?

  What an interesting question. Okay, so they changed the rules so you could only open an ISA now if you're aged 18. It used to be aged 16 and the junior ISA goes up to 18. So you could have both a junior ISA and a cash or shares ISA. But before that cutoff, if you had opened it aged 16 before the cutoff, then, and you'd got your ISA in just before that point, you could now have a maturing, I presume it's a maturing, say a one-year fixed rate ISA, and therefore it's still in a cash ISA. Now, the transitional arrangement said that for those people who are aged 16 or 17, it would be 17, I'm just doing, you would have to be 17, you'd have to have one year. For those who are aged 17, while they can't open a new ISA,

• 1:03:03Martin Lewis?

  they would be able to do a nicer transfer. So the rules state that you should be able to go, apply to open a new cash ISA, do a transfer, you can't add any money to it because you're not 18 and you have to be 18 to get a normal ISA, not a junior ISA, but then just do a transfer form and move your money in. The difficulty is, I suspect many of the ISA providers require you to be 18 to open an ISA because those are the rules, even though there are transitional arrangements that allow them to take money on a transfer for a 17-year-old. And I have not checked which providers will allow this. But it is a very interesting question. So if you'll bear with me, I will try and have an answer for you.

• 1:03:48Martin Lewis?

  I'm typing now to remind myself, answer on which providers allow 17-year-olds to transfer cash ISAs. I'll try and get you that back in the podcast bit in next week's show.

• 1:04:04Speaker 07

  Lovely. Lyn says, how can I combine or add to my annual ISAs when they are fixed term and all started on different dates? I would like to combine them together for tidiness and ease of admin.

• 1:04:15Martin Lewis?

  Well, combining cash ISAs is often something many people should do in case you lose track of them or it makes management difficult. Look, but these are fixed rates, like any other fixed rates. So, what I would suggest you do is when these... The easiest way to do this, if I'm only looking at answering your question technically, rather than looking at the returns and whether you want to fix them or not, is when each one of these fixes matures, transfer it to an easy access cash ISA, get the best easy access cash ISA that you can, and then, once they've all matured, you will have them all in an easy access cash ISA and then transfer that to a fix.

• 1:04:56Martin Lewis?

  Because with fixes, you have to fund them within the first 30, 60, 90 days to get the money in, you're not going to be able... I think it's very unlikely you're going to be able to step them and move them all straight into a fix. So if your whole thing is I want them all to be in one place, then moving them into easy access until you've got them all in one place and fixing. But of course, there's a risk that you might miss the best fixes doing that, though currently easy access rates are paying slightly more than fixes anyway. So hopefully it will work out well for you, but I can't promise it will work out well on rate if you're trying to do that because you want them all in one place.

• 1:05:26Speaker 07

  Joe says, "How do you split and transfer money into a matured child trust fund into two ISAs at once, one cash and one investment? I need to do this with my daughter this Easter, otherwise she'll have no funds for next term."

• 1:05:39Martin Lewis?

  Again, within the rules, you can do that, but whether the individual providers will allow it is my question. So you could try it. I would suggest if you're struggling, you sort of follow what I've just said. I would transfer it all into an easy access cash ISA, assuming it's all in easy access at the moment anyway, assuming it's into a savings cash ISA. And then, once it's all in the savings cash ISA, I'd then transfer some of that into your stocks and shares cash ISA, if the providers won't allow you to do a partial transfer.

• 1:06:04Speaker 07

  And Simon says, "I heard you can now have multiples of the same ISA. Is that coming in this year or is it already in place?"

• 1:06:11Martin Lewis?

  Already in place. You can... So what that means is you could open a cash ISA in the current year with three different providers, as long as you're not putting in more than £20,000 in all of them in total. And that is our last ISA. So I hope that for some of you, an ISA is nicer and you decide to do it.

• 1:06:29Martin Lewis?

  Okay, I know the pod is running long, but I really did like this week's Tellers, Hannah, so I would love us to do just a few more of those before we finish because we had so many good ones coming in. I will go with Sue's to start, and remember the Tellers was all about your financial lightbulb moment when you suddenly realised. Sue says, "My lightbulb moment was to forget that council tax is payable over 12 months. Save the payment amounts for February, March and use them to pay the car insurance in full." So many people pay council tax by 10 monthly installments, which is a bit weird. You can actually now, in almost all cases, arrange for it to be switched to a 12 monthly repayment. But in Sue's case, she likes the budgeting benefit of having a couple of months without and it pays off for car insurance. I like that. What have you got?

• 1:07:12Speaker 07

  So I've got Rod, who says, "Changing the payment of my car tax from direct debit to card payment. The direct debit would have been taken on the 1st of April at the new rates. Paying now by card means that I pay at the old rate."

• 1:07:24Martin Lewis?

  While we're on that, just a quick tip, I've mentioned it before, if you have an electric vehicle, electric vehicles are going to be paying duty from April. But you can renew your electric vehicle duty currently for free. So anybody can go who's got an electric vehicle, if you renew now, then you're renewing for a year and you get the next year for free. And that is irrelevant of when you renewed before. So you might have only actually done your renewal, your annual renewal, two months ago. You could go and renew now and you'll get a year from this point for free. So you're postponing the period at which you'll have to pay for your electric vehicle duty. Just a quick, extra unplanned tip from me there. Tracy says, "Overpaying my mortgage was my lightbulb moment.

• 1:08:07Martin Lewis?

  I didn't understand how it came down faster, but it made a massive difference." Yeah, because when you overpay your mortgage, effectively, it's a bit like you're shortening the term. And the two functions of debt are the interest rate, the higher the interest rate, the more you pay, and the length of borrowing, the longer you borrow, the longer the interest has to accrue, the more you pay. So by overpaying in the right way to reduce the capital you're paying, you're effectively, and you go and read, guys, on how to do this properly, shortening the term so less interest accrues. And if you're taking four, five years off, I mean, we can be talking tens of thousands of pounds. Let's do two more each.

• 1:08:41Speaker 07

  So Daniel says, saving X amount of pounds each month and paying insurance and other bills as lump sums rather than as monthly payouts. I realised it saved money, but then there was the benefit of interest too. Now I do it that way for so many things, including holidays. It's the same as a monthly bill, but it's more liberating and empowering.

• 1:09:00Martin Lewis?

  Much better that way round. Dave, use my cash back card for all my spending, then pay off in full at the end of the month. Especially good with very large purchases of his vehicles, et cetera. Yeah, if you've got a cash back card that's doing that, I mean, they're paying you to spend on it, as long as you're paying it off in full, you're neutering its ability to charge you interest, as long as you don't withdraw cash on it and you don't go over your credit limit. It works really well. Your last one, what's your top pick, Hannah?

• 1:09:26Speaker 07

  Michael, he says, paying extra into my work pension scheme, therefore paying less tax and national insurance resulted in no reduction in my monthly take home pay was an eye opener for me.

• 1:09:37Martin Lewis?

  Oh, I like that one. And I'll do Gemma. I tell everyone now to ignore their direct debit values when setting up energy bills. Excuse the pun, but the lightbulb moment, I see what you did there Gemma, and I like it, came from checking unit rates and standing charges, not payment amounts. Quite right. The unit rate and standing charges dictate what you pay. The direct debit is just their estimate of what you should pay. One of the problems some people have is they go onto their energy firm and they, they say, oh, can you lower it for me? And they say, yeah, well, lower your direct debit. Well, they're just lowering your estimate. What you pay is dictated by your unit rates and your standing charges. That's what you should be looking at. A comparison site will compare those for you, but those are the crucial thing that dictates in total how much you're actually going to pay.

• 1:10:20Martin Lewis?

  And I think that's a rather nice, it was unplanned, but is a rather nice segue into the final bit of the show. I promise you, we've put in the bit from Radio 4, which reported on the evidence that was given in Parliament, including by me, all about back billing on energy yesterday. So let's play that now.

• 1:10:40Speaker 08

  The consumer champion, Martin Lewis, has told MPs the rules that allow energy suppliers to send customers bills for gas and electricity consumed up to a year earlier should be tightened. And he said companies that repeatedly broke the rules on so-called back billing should lose their licence to operate. David Cornoch reports.

• 1:11:01Speaker 00

  Back billing is when an energy supplier issues customers with a new bill for energy used more than 12 months ago. It's against OFGEM regulations and was banned in 2018. But last year, more than 3,000 people complained to the energy ombudsman about receiving back bills. Martin Lewis, the journalist who founded MoneySavingExpert.com, told MPs on the Energy Committee that many consumers were unaware of the rules.

• 1:11:27Martin Lewis?

  Then there are those who complain to the companies, and as many companies do, and energy companies specifically, some of their staff are not well-trained, or it's negligent, or it may be deliberate, but I have no proof of that. Those companies then use legalese to say, no, you do owe us the money. And many people, when they get, you do owe us the money, they get worried, they get scared, I'm going to have bailiffs at my door, even if it's not being suggested, that's what they worry about, so they pay.

• 1:11:48Speaker 00

  And he explained why he thought back billing had become more of an issue.

• 1:11:52Martin Lewis?

  Bills are bigger. So back bills are bigger. I actually think it's a function of, you know, if you get a back bill for 150 quid, you spit and swear a bit and you pay it and you get on with it. If you get a back bill for 10,000 pounds, you try and fight it.

• 1:12:06Speaker 00

  A Lib Dem, Claire Young, was concerned by what she'd heard.

• 1:12:09Speaker 09

  How effectively are energy suppliers being held to account over breaches of the back billing rules? And do we need tougher penalties for repeat offenders?

• 1:12:17Speaker 00

  Martin Lewis agreed it was time to get tough.

• 1:12:20Martin Lewis?

  I would say you probably shouldn't have a licence if you're a repeat offender and you've been warned by the regulator. Why should you be allowed to have an energy licence if you're back billing people and causing them catastrophic finances? I mean, a year is a very long time to get your bills right. And if you've cocked up as a company, why are you asking the customer to pay for your cock up? People don't know they're being back billed, they're not expecting, they don't have the finances. You know, not everybody is able to pay for a back bill that they didn't know.

• 1:12:44Speaker 00

  In 2023, the energy suppliers paid around 25 million pounds in fines linked to billing and metering issues. Tim Jarvis from the regulator OFGEM said the watchdog was looking at cutting the time companies had to send bills, but that was only part of the problem.

• 1:13:01Speaker 10

  It's often not so much the bill, it's the treatment of the customer when they query the bill, that they're having to...

• 1:13:09Speaker 10

  Battle for months on end to get a resolution rather than being treated fairly. So we have a range of licence conditions that we will look at, including treating customers fairly to make sure they get a good treatment.

• 1:13:21Speaker 00

  He said the three main reasons for back billing were a supplier not having an up-to-date meter reading, a change of tenancy, or a household's direct debit being too low. Labour's Luke Murphy was concerned about how energy companies pursued customers for payment.

• 1:13:37Speaker 11

  In terms of instances of threatening and bullying behaviour, whether has been made by energy suppliers when seeking payment for back bills, have you, what actions have you been taken, what instances have you seen of that?

• 1:13:50Speaker 00

  Answering this time, another Ofgem executive, Beth Martin, who said bullying and threatening behaviour was never acceptable.

• 1:13:58Speaker 12

  As Martin Lewis says, we have a fundamental licence condition which is around, it's our standards of conduct, so suppliers have to treat customers fairly, honestly and in a professional manner. That's a critical part of our licence condition. It applies to every single interaction that a supplier has with a customer. And we will take action on that if we need to.

• 1:14:19Speaker 00

  Finally, the MPs questioned the Energy Minister, Miata Fanbula. She thought the problems with back billing could be a symptom of wider issues.

• 1:14:27Speaker 13

  The thing that I'm candidly worried about is that this is a bit of the canary in the coal mine. So what you start finding are these examples that go through the licence assistance advice and through money saving that kind of alert you to a problem, which is why we've moved pretty quickly to ask the regulator to look at this and to make sure it's not happening.

• 1:14:45Speaker 00

  Labour's Melanie On suggested fining companies wasn't enough to make a difference.

• 1:14:50Speaker 14

  Is there a case to be made for giving the regulator more powers to remove licences from some of these retailers where they are repeat offenders for failing to do the very basics of their job?

• 1:15:04Speaker 00

  Miata Farnbullah agreed there was an argument for a more powerful regulator.

• 1:15:08Speaker 13

  I'm not here to defend energy suppliers, but I think it's really important that we put the issue of back billing in context. So yes, there are absolutely, you know, a number and a sizable number of them. But in the context of millions of bills that are issued, it is a small proportion. Now, for the consumers that are impacted, it's not small, and that's why I care about it, and that's why it matters.

• 1:15:32Speaker 00

  But in the end, she said, the government had the wider job of raising standards and improving customer service across the board.

• 1:15:40Martin Lewis?

  That's it for this week. If you've enjoyed it, please tell your friends that you've been listening to the Martin Lewis podcast and suggest they do too. You can subscribe so that you get it. The podcast tends to drop every Thursday. And if you've not enjoyed it, why not try origami? That's a much slower pace. Maybe that's better for you. I don't care, frankly. It's your business. You don't like my podcast? I don't like your origami? Go and do some paper folding on your own.

• 1:16:06Speaker 15

  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 are listening on demand, it's worth double checking as the details can date.

• 1:16:37Speaker 03

  BBC Sounds. Music. Radio. Podcasts.

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  Why is the United States sending some Russian asylum seekers back to Russia? I'm Tristan Redman, co-host of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. When Russia invaded Ukraine, many Russians who opposed the war fled to the West. Fast forward to now, and the US is sending some of them back. Is this a sign of Trump's closer ties with Putin? We're all about domestic politics. For more, listen to the Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your pods.