Pod Insights The Martin Lewis Podcast Car Finance Agreements Update & Ask Martin ANYTHING! About this episode In this episode, Martin gives an update on the ongoing car financing agreements case going through the Supreme Court. He also answers your questions on absolutely anything, including how much to save for your kids to go to university, buying vs renting, and… is Martin getting into politics?
Transcript 11,765 words · 10 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:50 Martin Lewis? Hello, I'm Martin Lewis and this is the cunningly named The Martin Lewis Podcast. I do wonder what that's going to be about. Now, usually, much of it comes from my BBC Radio 5 live show with Adrian Charles, but not today. Oh, no. This is a pod-only special. I'm going to be starting with an update on car finance reclaiming. As we now know, the big Supreme Court decision that everything has been on hold for is happening this Friday.
2:21 Martin Lewis? Yet the mainstay of this podcast, as it's my last one before I take a wee summer break, is an 'ask me anything'. And as this introduction is the last thing I record in the pod, I can tell you, you really did, there's even a question on cheese. Plus, you asked me about overpaying your mortgage versus investing, buying versus renting, how much to save for your kids to go to university, you ask about the rip-off of overseas cash machines and many, many more. And some of you got a bit personal too, asking me, what was it that got me into this in the first place? Anyway, enough of me telling you what you'll ask me, why don't you ask it me? Play the theme tune!
3:13 Martin Lewis? Hello and welcome to this pod-only special. Now, the mainstay of it is going to be your questions and my answers. And I hope that my answers are going to be as good as your questions, but we will find out. But before we get into that, there is a big item of news this week, and many people are avidly awaiting it. It's all about the car finance mis-selling cases. And we finally now know that this Friday, the 1st of August, at 4:35pm, the Supreme Court ruling is coming that everything has been waiting for. Now, you might think, why on earth are they doing it then? And I agree to an extent. The Supreme
3:55 Martin Lewis? Court term ends this Friday, it won't then be sitting till September, they said that they would try and get it done in July, this is the last possible moment. As for the 4:35pm, that's simple, it's after the markets have closed. Now, this is a hugely market-sensitive announcement. It has ramifications not just for car finance firms, but right across the financial services sector. Depending on what the decision is, it could even have ramifications across the economy. Now, there is a lot of confusion out there about what's happening. So what I want to try and do now, and obviously I have no idea what the Supreme Court is going to rule. In fact, as far as I'm aware, I don't think anyone has an idea.
4:38 Martin Lewis? They're not even giving the parties to the case advance notice of what they're going to announce. I don't think the regulator or the government know either. So this is really going to be a shock announcement coming on Friday. Now, the first thing you need to understand that many don't understand, and if you've even read some newspapers, you've got this wrong, is there are two distinct main types of car finance misselling. And while the Supreme Court is only looking at one of those two types, both of them are on hold until the judgment is handed down. So everything is waiting for the court decision, even though it's only about one type, although it does have knock-on consequences for the other. So let's run through the two.
5:21 Martin Lewis? The first type is what's called discretionary commission arrangements, or DCAs. I'm going to call it DCAs from now on. And that applies to about 40% of car finance deals. And this is the one that you will have heard me talking about. This is the one I've been out there and talked about in the podcast and on my TV show and on my site, and we've had 3 million complaint letters through the tool that we devised for discretionary commission arrangements. That's this one. And this isn't the one the Supreme Court is making a decision on. That's the other one. But let's carry on with DCAs. What are they? Well, it's where you went to get your car financed either a PCP deal or a higher purchase deal.
6:01 Martin Lewis? These were banned in 2021, so we're talking between roughly 2007 and 2021. And the broker and the dealers increased the amount of interest that they charged you without telling you. And because they did that, they got more commission. Hence, it's called discretionary commission arrangements.
6:25 Martin Lewis? Now, this case is one that is primarily being done via the regulator, not via the courts. The regulator launched an investigation into DCA misselling. And that's why this case is likely to continue, whatever happens, unless the Supreme Court throws out an absolute wobbler. So discretionary commission arrangements are still likely in play, mostly regardless of what the Supreme Court says, but I have to put a brackets on that because we don't know 100%.
6:57 Martin Lewis? And that's the one, most of you, if you put a complaint in, will have put a complaint in on. Now, let's talk about the other one. This is what the Supreme Court is deciding, and it's called Commission Disclosure Complaints. Now, what this is about is it was a case brought by claims management firms, not the regulator, not consumer bodies, to try and say that if car finance agreements didn't tell consumers all the details of the commission, which they very rarely did, they were unlawful. And it applies to 99% of car finance cases. And last year, there was huge shock when the Court of Appeal, the second house court
7:42 Martin Lewis? in the land, upheld the case brought by the claims management firms. That is what the Supreme Court is looking at. If the Supreme Court upholds the Court of Appeal's decision, the knock-on effects could be substantial on other forms of lending and on the economy. To be honest, it could shake the foundations of consumer lending in the country, meaning less possible available credit for many. So much so, even I, and I try and champion consumers in the work that I do... Have concerns and have said this since day one of this case that it could potentially do more harm than good.
8:22 Martin Lewis? It's therefore unsurprising that we've heard talk that the Chancellor could even intervene with retrospective, which is unheard of, legislation if the Supreme Court were to uphold in full what the Court of Appeal says. So there's a lot of ifs and buts going on here. Now, if you think about it, the real difficulty is, when you look at discretionary commission arrangements, you can see the harm. You were charged more interest than you should have been charged in order to give someone a higher commission. So therefore, you can see the harm is the excess interest that you were charged. But on commission disclosure complaints, which is effectively saying on a technicality, the agreement you had was unlawful. If that is upheld, what is the harm?
9:07 Martin Lewis? Is it that all the interest you paid because it was an unlawful agreement should be given back to you? Or is it, well, you didn't really suffer any harm because you weren't paying any more, this was just an issue of transparency? So there are lots of wobbles going on out there. So, in summary, on Friday, one of three things is likely to happen. First, the Supreme Court upholds the Court of Appeal ruling on commission disclosure arrangements. Now, to be honest, that shakes everything up in the air. There may be political intervention, we don't know when. If not many people who've had car finance, in fact, virtually all of them, will be due a payout, we don't know the scale.
9:48 Martin Lewis? Discretionary commission will probably go on hold because it's a subset of the wider, you know, discretionary commission's 40% of cases, this is 99% of all car finance cases. And we will have to wait and see what the regulator says about how it is going to interpret the Supreme Court decision. And my suspicion is if this does happen, the Supreme Court will put it to the regulator to say how this should be interpreted. Second option, the Supreme Court rejects the Court of Appeal ruling in part or in full, in which case discretionary commission arrangement cases will still go ahead via the regulator as they were planned to, and it could even launch a system where people don't have to apply to get their money back if they were mis-sold, it might just tell firms you have to pay out automatically.
10:31 Martin Lewis? And the third one is the Supreme Court comes up with something novel, and we just haven't even prepared for that one, that's my unknown unknown. So look, I mean, hopefully I've explained it to you, it is big picture, there are proper ramifications right across the economy for that one, so it is going to be huge news on Friday, especially if the Supreme Court upholds the Court of Appeal ruling. I do suspect we will see the regulator, the FCA, and the government, the Chancellor, getting involved, though they may not do it on Friday, they will probably want time to digest what is happening. So this one is gonna play out, whatever happens, this one is gonna play out, the Supreme Court ruling is the start, not the end of this.
11:20 Martin Lewis? Right, let's get into the questions and answers here, I need to explain to you the process. We had in combination on X and on Facebook over a thousand questions, producer Matt is with me, and you've shortlisted them down to about 50, haven't you, taking into account the range of topics people are asking, so we've got questions on most of those topics, is that fair?
11:43 Speaker 00 That's fair, I've also printed them out, used the guillotine to get them into nice little strips, put them in a box, and I don't know if you can hear, but they're all here, ready to be drawn.
11:54 Martin Lewis? So we're doing this by lottery, so you've got 50 questions, and we're never gonna get through all of them in the time that we've got, so let's, let's try and do sort of some sort of big ones now, I mean, they're all in a box, and then we'll do some quick fire towards the end, while I'll just answer them quickly, even if they're not quickfire ones, yes, because this is being all made up on the fly.
12:12 Speaker 00 Drawing.
12:14 Speaker 00 Louise.
12:15 Martin Lewis? First question, go for it.
12:17 Speaker 00 Should my husband draw from his private pension to take advantage of the personal allowance, even if the money is not needed yet? Thinking of drawing the max tax-free available, after he's transferred 10% of his allowance to me, and putting it into a stocks and shares ISA. As I still work financially, we do not yet need to draw from the pension, but feel we are wasting the tax-free personal allowance.
12:39 Martin Lewis? Okay, so I'm presuming that your husband is, duh, has no other forms of earnings at the moment. I think that's what the question is. Let's just do some term definition at the start. Most people in the country are able to earn £12,570 from any form of earnings each tax year without paying any tax on it. So that could be earnings, money coming from your pension, it could be money from earnings, it could be money from interest in savings. That is what the personal allowance is. Now, you're, I think, saying to me, he's not using his personal allowance should he take money out of his pension to do it? Well, we need to be very careful here.
13:18 Martin Lewis? When you take money out of your pension, 25% of it is tax-free, so wouldn't count towards your personal allowance anyway, and the other 75% of it is taxed at your marginal tax rate. So if you took that 75% bit of it out, that would count towards your personal allowance. So taking the tax-free element, which is, I think, what you said in the question out, would be somewhat pointless, because you want to use that tax-free element when you're paying tax, because otherwise you're not getting the benefit of it. Now, the real question when it comes to pensions and taking money out is how you take it out.
13:59 Martin Lewis? I use this a bit like a Swiss roll analogy, okay? So, I want everybody to picture a Swiss roll. You've got a Swiss roll in front of it, you've got sponge and you've got jam. The jam is the good bit, that's the tax-free amount you can take out of your pension. The sponge is the taxable amount. Now, normally, if you just take money out of your pension, and you can literally do that with many pension funds, and private pension funds, we're talking not final salary ones, money purchase ones. If you take money out of your pension, and you take a slice of it, you get a slice of Swiss roll. So what you get is you get a slice where 25% of what you take out is tax free.
14:42 Martin Lewis? And the other 75% is taxable at your marginal tax rate. So if you were to take £20,000 out, 25% of that £5,000 would be tax free. The other £15,000 would be taxable. So you could use that to use up your personal allowance. But you would have taken some of the tax free money out too. So you see, you would actually need to be taking well over £12,570 out in order to use your entire tax free allowance. The other way that you can take money out of your pension is using a drawdown or an annuity.
15:21 Martin Lewis? Now, if you do that, what you can actually do with your Swiss roll is you can separate the jam, the good bit, from the sponge, the taxable bit. So you could just take out tax free lump sum in the form of the jam. So if you were to move your money into a drawdown, which is basically just a way of investing your pension in a product, once you're taking it out of the actual pension itself, you get the 25% tax free lump sum and the rest goes into a drawdown or an annuity. You can do a separation. Now, for many people, when they're taking money out early, they're still higher rate taxpayers. So they just want the tax free amount to come out. Yours is the opposite way round. So it needs a little bit of managing.
16:00 Martin Lewis? So I'm going to give you the most important tip when it comes to taking money out of your pension. I've given you a broad brush, but you need someone to go through this in detail. And you can do that for free via PensionWise, which is part of the Money Helper site. And I would strongly urge anybody taking money out of your pension to get the free one-on-one guidance available from PensionWise before you do anything or you could cost yourself a fortune in tax. So even though I've given you a basic primer on this, don't listen to me because I haven't got your full details. And I was slightly confused about your phrasing of the question.
16:45 Martin Lewis? Go and speak to PensionWise and they will give you proper time and talk to you one-on-one about what you do with your pension.
16:52 Speaker 00 When you're taking the money out.
16:53 Martin Lewis? Right, that's the first one done, Matt. Time to, time to put your hand in the little box.
16:59 Speaker 00 Let me draw another question. We've got Ben. Ben says, have a great holiday.
17:05 Martin Lewis? Thank you.
17:06 Speaker 00 Don't fall victim to crime at the ATM or point of sale when you're offered the chance to let the merchant do the foreign exchange. I withdrew 600 euros in cash for an ATM in Spain last week and was offered an exchange rate equivalent to 562 pounds. When I declined their offer, my UK bank only charged me 521 pounds. That's 41 pounds less, literally daylight robbery.
17:28 Martin Lewis? Well, it's not a question, but I like it anyway. Yeah, this goes back to the basic rule to anybody who is going abroad. If you are going abroad and you are using your UK debit or credit card, you should be using a specialist card, something like the Barclaycard Reward Card or a Chase Card or a First Direct Debit Card, one of those that gives you near perfect exchange rates because it doesn't add a foreign exchange loading. That's what you need, a specialist overseas card. But even if you're not using a specialist overseas card, when you go to the cash machine abroad, you always want to pay in the local currency. So if you're in Europe, pay in euros. It will try and bully you, force you, cajole you, persuade you to let it do the conversion. It is doing that not because it's good for you, but because it's good for it.
18:13 Martin Lewis? And that's what it wants you to do. Because if it does the conversion, the rates that they tend to use are absolutely abominable. You hear from that example there, 40 quid worse on taking out 600 euros. So the golden rule there always is if in Europe, pay in euros. If in America, pay in dollars. If in Poland, pay in zloty. And if in Vietnam, pay in dong.
18:37 Speaker 00 Excellent. I like the fact you've got dong in there.
18:39 Martin Lewis? Always, always need to get dong in when I do foreign currency. I sometimes do ringits as well, which I quite like, or colons. Colons are good if you're in Costa Rica and you're paying for food. It needs to go in your colon.
18:51 Speaker 00 Right, next one. Let me draw it out. We've got Paul. Paul is asking the risk or benefit of overpaying on your mortgage or investing in the stock market. When is it appropriate to do either and why?
19:06 Martin Lewis? What an interesting question. So I normally talk about this in the light of savings. Let's just do the basics here.
19:14 Martin Lewis? If you are overpaying your mortgage, there are two primary benefits. First, a reduction in interest. And actually, overpaying your mortgage is pretty similar to saving at the mortgage rate. So if you have a 5% mortgage and you pay a thousand pounds off it, it's like a gain of fifty pounds over the year, similar to putting a thousand pounds in a savings account that's paying 5% interest. So we've got quite an easy example to see. What your interest rate is matters. If you've got a very low rate mortgage, you would generally want to save rather than overpay the mortgage. If you've got a high rate mortgage, you would generally want to overpay the mortgage rather than save, assuming there are no early repayment penalties and you've got a cash emergency fund set aside.
19:58 Martin Lewis? The second benefit of overpaying your mortgage is for those who don't have much equity in their property. So let's say you originally got a mortgage with a 5 or 10% deposit, which means that your loan to value, the amount of your property's value that you're borrowing, is only 95 or 90% lower is better when it comes to loan to value. Well, in that case, by overpaying your mortgage and decreasing the amount that you're borrowing in proportion to your house's value, when you come to remortgaging again, you may be able to get a better deal. So those are the two benefits, reducing the interest and potentially being able to get a better deal if you don't have that much equity in the property. Once you have less than 60% loan to value,
20:40 Martin Lewis? so that you own over 40% of the property, if you like, then you don't really get the reduction in interest rate benefit. So that's how it would work for saving. It's really clinical and easy. If your mortgage rate is higher than the after-tax amount that you could earn on savings, you are generally better off to overpay. Then we talk about investing. Now, investing is a risk-based decision. So what you have to do to think about this is, am I guaranteed or very likely to have better investment returns than paying off my mortgage? So.
21:23 Martin Lewis? If you have a 5% mortgage, I mean, to have that as a guaranteed return, which is what you're effectively getting when you're paying off the mortgage, you need a pretty good investment. Something is going to have to do pretty well. So there's quite a high risk to not using the money to pay off your mortgage at that level. If you've only got a 1% or 2% mortgage rate at the moment, well, you might want to invest it. But there's another problem here. Even if you are going to invest it because you have a 1% or 2% mortgage, then at some point, your fixed deal that you're on is going to end. And when it does end, mortgage rates at the moment are in the 4% or 5%, so that mortgage rate is going to get higher. Now, what you could do, and what I would advise anyone who's got a mortgage, let's go back to the savings analogy, because I think this helps.
22:07 Martin Lewis? If you'd asked me about savings and you'd had a very low rate mortgage, what I would say is, put the money in the highest interest savings that you can get for now, making sure that it will be accessible at the point that your cheap fix ends, so that at that point, you can then overpay the mortgage or just get a new mortgage for less, because you're going to use it at the point that you get the new mortgage, you're going to use that savings to reduce what you're borrowing. And that will be very beneficial for you, so that you get the high interest now, but the money is accessible at that point. Well, that's much more difficult to do with investing, because the whole point about investing is you should be investing for a longer time period, and you should be investing when there isn't going to be a sudden call on your money.
22:52 Martin Lewis? So it would only be a case of investing if maybe you've got a 10-year fixed rate mortgage, so you had enough time to invest it in the meantime, and you thought it was going to grow by a compound rate of over 5% a year. All in all, while I am generally in favour of investing, I think putting the money that you want to use to clear off your mortgage debt in an investment is a high-risk decision. High risk doesn't mean it won't work with hindsight. It might work very well with hindsight, but equally, at the time you need that money, you may find that you have less capital than you put in, and that all of that is making your mortgage more expensive. I would say it's most likely if you have a very low rate fixed mortgage that's going
23:35 Martin Lewis? to last a long time, that would make investing more attractive, because you have enough time for it to grow. It's less worth it if you've got a higher mortgage for five or six percent, or you've got a low mortgage that's due to end in the next year or two and you'll want the money in order to be able to reduce the amount that you're borrowing. And with all of that, I add the extra caveat that if you don't have much equity in your home, the benefit from getting a cheaper mortgage rate when you remortgage because you're borrowing less also means it's even less worth investing at that point. But I do tend to come from a relative risk averse strategy. That's how my brain works. Other people may say, go for the risk. Right, Matt, what's next?
24:12 Speaker 00 Okay, I'm not going to draw one out of the hat. I'm going to get a caller on instead. Alan is on the line. He's in Basingstoke.
24:18 Martin Lewis? I think that's fair. I think it would be, it would have been very bad if we didn't do our callers because they weren't drawn out of the hat when you've set them up to talk to me. Alan, hello, how are you?
24:26 Speaker 05 Good afternoon, Martin. Good afternoon, team. How are you doing?
24:29 Martin Lewis? We're good, thank you very much. So what is your question?
24:32 Speaker 05 So my question is, if you use a Klarna or a, an other pay over three or five month service when you're doing your shopping, does that affect your credit score negatively?
24:46 Martin Lewis? Well, as I always say, there is no such thing as a credit score. Each lender will do its own individual scoring of you on its wish list of what is a perfect customer. And the credit scores that we tend to get from the credit reference agencies are just their indicative score of what a typical lender would think. So having done that caveat at the start, I'm going to phrase it in terms of can it affect your credit worthiness? And if you see what I mean, rather than credit score particularly. So the first thing to say is they have to be reporting to the credit reference agencies. Now, I believe Klarna do that. Some of the others don't, but we've just started a regulatory process that's going to take a year before full regulation comes into place on buy now, pay later lenders.
25:30 Martin Lewis? And by the end of that regulatory process, they will all be reporting to credit reference agencies. Now, different individual lenders, when you apply for credit, will have different views, but we tend to find that many mortgage lenders are negative on you having buy now, pay later, especially if you have a lot of buy now, pay later, and you're using it on a regular basis to get credit and to get products. So my general view would be, if you have important, big applications to make, you should avoid using buy now, pay later, or at least avoid using it as a regular and systemic way of getting your products. Does that make sense?
26:13 Speaker 05 Certainly does, yeah.
26:14 Martin Lewis? Do you use it, Alan? I mean, because many people, the issue for me with buy now, pay later, I'm not anti it. If you know you're borrowing and you want to spread the cost over three months and you're absolutely sure you can repay it, then it's a really good and cheap and easy way to do it. One of my problems for it is, people get it without realising that it's a debt. So they're getting into debt without making a conscious, active decision about the pros and cons of getting into a debt, because it's just sold as a flippant thing that you can do. Are you a buy now, pay later type person?
26:43 Speaker 05 I don't use buy now, pay later. It's just I've seen it on more and more sites that I visit.
26:49 Martin Lewis? It's ubiquitous, isn't it? It's everywhere nowadays, and they push it very hard. I mean, the reason they push it so hard, and the reason it's free, is because they found that websites that put buy now, pay later on, people buy more stuff. So retailers are very keen to have it, because it increases the fact that people buy it. And that is, I think, somewhat because of the marketing, that people almost see it as a bit of free money and easy, and they don't have to think about it. Some people like it, because they can, you know, if they're buying clothes that they want to try on and then send them back, they don't actually have to shell out for it, because they cancel it and get the money back. So there's lots of pros and cons to it. I'm not anti buy now, pay later. Many people think I am, because I've been strongly calling for regulation, and I was involved in the campaign to get it regulated. I just think there need to be protections in place. I mean, you still can't go to the ombudsman if you have a problem with buy
27:32 Martin Lewis? now, pay later. You will be able to, once it is fully regulated in about a year's time. But that's an issue for me, because, you know, if you've not been paying and it's destroying your credit file, if you miss, by the way, you miss a buy now, pay later payment, and that goes in your file, that will absolutely unquestionably be a negative, and be a real problem for you for borrowing in future. So it is not without consequence is probably the best way I can answer it. Thanks for calling.
27:56 Speaker 05 Brilliant. Thanks very much.
27:57 Martin Lewis? Cheers, mate.
28:01 Martin Lewis? Oh, I tell you what, I'm finding this interesting, these random drawn ones, because I'm not mentally prepared for them. So I hope no, I may be going round in circles, that's because I'm thinking while I'm talking. Let's do another one!
28:10 Speaker 00 Okay, into the box I go, and I've got one. @matahugh on X says, "Why isn't finance taught at school to set people up for success in life?"
28:22 Martin Lewis? Well, it is on the national curriculum. If it's not too self-aggrandizing, I led the campaign to get it on the national curriculum in, I think, 2014, but that was a Pyrrhic victory. So what happened effectively is, many of the big banks and others who'd been putting money into resourcing financial education, pulled the money out, understandably, because it was on the national curriculum. And at the same time, we had the move towards the academyization and free schools, that meant that those schools didn't need to follow the national curriculum. And in fact, now we're at the point where less than 50% of schools need to follow the national curriculum. And financial education is not in the compulsory part that all schools need to follow. So then we had a big issue that there were... it was on the national curriculum, but very few schools were teaching it, there weren't
29:05 Martin Lewis? any resources, the government weren't putting resources in. I then, and I've talked about this before, I won't go into into full details, I then, after having a bit of an argument with them, I agreed I would do a textbook. So there is a textbook available, it's curriculum mapped for all four UK nations, you can get it from the Young Money website, I did it via a charity, but it was ridiculous that a private individual had to fund the textbook to get it in schools, but it is in schools, and there's teacher training guides too. So some schools do teach it, but nowhere near enough. Now, there is a curriculum review being done at the moment by the government. I have met the head of the curriculum review to champion the case of financial education, and the real push that we are doing is trying
29:47 Martin Lewis? to get it in the compulsory element, because you are absolutely right. If we look at the scale of some of the huge misselling campaigns that we've seen in this country, you know, £40 billion paid back on PPI alone, it's not 1% of that, it's not 0.1% of that, it's 0.01% of that that would be enough to fund financial education if we had... Better financial education, we perhaps would have far fewer of these misselling scandals. And we would set up our young people who we educate into debt when they go to university, or at least educate into what we called that. And we, so many of our young people, when they get out into our competitive consumer economy, are not tooled up to deal with it, make mistakes that haunt them for years.
30:31 Martin Lewis? So I absolutely agree with you, we need financial education and we need to get the politics right and we need to help teachers, resource teachers, train teachers and give them what they need to make it easy. And I'm doing my best to try and get there. Right, Matt, we're doing well, I'm on a roll now, what's next?
30:46 Speaker 00 What's next? Okay, I have pulled out a question from Sarah. If my partner and I don't want to marry but have joint assets, is it best to write a will or is a civil partnership more secure?
30:59 Martin Lewis? Oh, well, I mean, I would absolutely go for a civil partnership. A will is about what happens when you die. It's not about what happens when you're alive. And if you're buying a house together, what's the agreement that would happen if the two of you split up? All of these things are very complicated. There are many tax advantages to marriage, but there's also a consistency advantage in that you get absolute rights and know where you stand. Now, for those people who don't want to get married, that's where a civil partnership comes in. A civil partnership is a legal agreement that gives you exactly the same rights as if you were married without the baggage. Now, many people like the baggage of the religiosity or the paternalism of marriage, but many people don't like it.
31:41 Martin Lewis? I don't want to get into the pros and cons of that, but a civil partnership gives you that. Let me just run you through some of the advantages of marriage or civil partnership. You may be entitled to £1,260 worth of tax breaks if you're married or in a civil partnership through the marriage tax allowance. That's where a non-taxpayer is with somebody who pays tax at 20% and you can move tax across. Your spouse or civil partner won't pay inheritance tax on anything that you leave them. And the big part of that is an even more important inheritance tax boon. You can pass on your unused inheritance tax allowance to your spouse, which means between you and your spouse, if you have children and you leave them your house, you have a
32:24 Martin Lewis? million pounds of assets that you don't pay inheritance tax on if you're not married or in a civil partnership. You don't get that. It's half that. You can freely move savings and investments between spouses or civil partners. So you can take advantage of both your tax-free allowances. You can do the same with capital gains tax. There are far more protections if the relationship ends within a marriage or civil partnership than just cohabiting. And if you just got a will, because you're living together, that does not give you any cohabiting protections, though there are cohabiting agreements that you could look at. You may get a big estate pension if your spouse dies, but that probably won't apply to you because you can tell I've searched a blog that I wrote on this to go through the head signs of it. I'm not quite that
33:08 Martin Lewis? capable of reading them all off otherwise. You may get a big estate pension if your spouse dies, probably doesn't apply to you because that's for older people. You can inherit your spouse's ISA allowance. And the final one on my list, which you wouldn't do because you were talking about getting a will, is if you die willless, an unmarried partner may get nothing. So if you ask me, as a 53-year-old man who's sitting there and who's looked at this for a long time, should you and your partner just get a will, or should you get a civil partnership? Well, if this is your long-term partner that you're hoping you will be with for life, I would absolutely get a civil partnership with them, especially if you're planning to have children. It makes things simpler, easier, and gives you both more rights and is very tax advantageous, too.
33:52 Speaker 00 One from Ray. I think he's taken this "ask me anything" a little bit too literally.
33:56 Martin Lewis? Okay. You left some of those in, did you?
33:58 Speaker 00 I did. He is asking, "What is your second favourite cheese?"
34:04 Martin Lewis? Oh, second favourite cheese. I will answer this one. Curfili. No, okay. First favourite cheese, Gorgonzola. I like a Gorgonzola. That's my number one cheese. And what am I going to throw in as second? Oh, I've got one. Yeah, we discovered one. You might not have tried it. It's very good if you haven't. Try a Taglio. I like a Taglio. A little bit posh, a little bit unmarket. Maybe you weren't expecting that in a money-saving podcast, but I do like a Taglio.
34:35 Speaker 00 Do you know what country it's from?
34:36 Martin Lewis? It's from Italy. Taglio is an Italian cheese. Worth a try.
34:42 Speaker 00 Drawing another one, we've got Mrs B. I have two sons, they want to move out and rent, not buy. I see that as wasted money, as they could have saved it towards a deposit instead. Is renting a waste of money?
34:57 Martin Lewis? No, I don't think renting is a waste of money. First of all, it pays for you to live somewhere and that's important. I do think many years of property porn television have tended to make it feel like renting is a dirty word. It isn't that simple. If you rent somewhere, you have flexibility of where you can live, you're not locking yourself in, and that can be quite useful. Also, if we get really clinical financially on this, if you were to buy a property and property prices were to crash, or there were to be a problem with that property, for example, you bought a property that had cladding on it before the cladding scandal and everybody realised that would then be impossible to get a mortgage on it afterwards, or impossible to be able to sell it, so you were locked in,
35:42 Martin Lewis? you would be a lot better off if you had rented. Equally, if the market is on an up and house prices are rising rapidly and you're renting not buying, then you're missing out and causing yourselves problem in the future. So there are pros and cons to both renting and buying your own house. Now, if you ask me over a long-term basis, is it good for a young person to save up so that their finances are in a good position, a deposit for a property on a mortgage where they're planning to live over a longer period to give themselves some stability in owning, then yes, it is a good aim. But I don't think that means that renting is throwing money away
36:26 Martin Lewis? and that renting should be a dirty word. It depends on your life stage and your choices. So, all of that needs to be factored in. But generally, yes, it is better to try and own your own property, though I'll be honest with you, I didn't get my first property until I was 33. And I think that that decision wasn't necessarily bad for me, it suited my life at the time.
36:50 Speaker 00 Tony's asking, how much longer do we have to wait for you to be ready to go into government, either as a minister or a peer? I know a few years ago, you wanted time with your family.
36:58 Martin Lewis? You're going to have to wait an awfully long time. It's not going to happen. I do not want to be involved in politics. It's way too nasty. We have an adversarial system where you have people set up to oppose you. I would be as deeply unpopular as many other politicians sadly, because you have to barow all those vested interests and you tend to please nobody when you're trying to do the right things. And it's not right for me or for my family. You talked about a peer. You are quite right. I did apply for the House of Lords. People was going, you applied? There are different ways you get in the House of Lords. There are political appointees, but many people in the House of Lords are cross benches who apply like a job. And I applied, I was rejected. I believe I was rejected because I said that I'd want to go home to put my daughter to bed at night and then come back.
37:43 Martin Lewis? And I don't think that they thought that was that suitable. They dispute that. I should be honest on that. I've actually moved on from it now. And I'll be really honest with you. I don't think I will apply again, although I can apply again for the House of Lords. I think that to spend three days in that chamber, waiting to hear people speak for a long time, is less productive than the work that I currently do now. And I do, a lot of the work I do now is, you know, working with my money mental health charity and working on campaigns with my money saving expert team that are for the consumer. And I think I probably have more impact doing that than I would in the House of Lords. So I would not apply for the House of Lords again. So I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. It gave you a serious question for what you wanted, but that's the true answer.
38:28 Martin Lewis? Right, Matt, what's next? Are you dipping into your box?
38:31 Speaker 00 I'm not dipping into my box because we have a caller. Aaron in Maidstone is here. He's got a question for you.
38:38 Martin Lewis? Hello, Aaron. Welcome on board.
38:40 Speaker 06 Good afternoon, Martin.
38:41 Martin Lewis? What's your question?
38:43 Speaker 06 Slightly more personal question if I may than usual.
38:47 Martin Lewis? Well, it's ask me anything, but if you're asking my instag leg measurement, we're not going there, sir.
38:51 Speaker 06 Oh, that's blown that one.
38:56 Speaker 06 Right, ready?
38:57 Martin Lewis? Yeah.
38:58 Speaker 06 I've been volunteering for Soup Kitchen for a few years.
39:01 Martin Lewis? Good for you.
39:02 Speaker 06 When was your key moment in life which moved you towards helping others less fortunate than yourself?
39:09 Martin Lewis? That's a very good question. Uh, there is actually, there is actually a, a seminal moment. So I'd already started being the money saving expert. I had the website set up. It was growing very quickly and I enjoyed that. But when I first set Money Saving Expert up, I had this, this philosophy. I called it the adversarial consumer society. And basically the line then was a company's job is to screw us for cash. Our job is to try and screw them back. And it was all very black and white and quite, quite militant. Um, uh, you know, and I didn't say companies were wrong. I always used to use the analogy, you know, I'm a Man City fan. If Man City are playing Man United, uh, I don't want Man United to score, but I don't think they're wrong for trying to do so.
39:54 Martin Lewis? And, and that was sort of the same battle between consumers and companies. Um, so what I did was about helping people, but you've used helping people less fortunate. And, and at that time I wasn't quite sure I'd realised, this was as in my early thirties, that a lot of what I was doing was, was for people who were capable and, and could read and were happy to, you know, not, not read in that sense, but could understand instructions, go through it and had the confidence to take people on. Didn't have issues calling people up on the phone and all of that type of stuff. And then that, so I set up the website in two thousand two, three. I remember very plainly in about two thousand and five, two things happened.
40:35 Martin Lewis? The first is that I went to a party of a friend and somebody came up to me and said, love your website. And I went, thank you very much. It's very good.
40:46 Martin Lewis? And they, they said, uh, I said, do you use it? And they say, yeah, I use it. I don't use it for me. I'm a, I'm a mental health worker and I spend loads of time helping my clients with their finances because it's catastrophic. And that got me quite interested in the mental health element, which is something I've taken up since, and realising that there are many people who are not capable of helping themselves, whether on a temporary or permanent basis, through to mental health and mental capacity. And at a very similar time, I'd started the bank charges campaign about unfair bank charges, because back in those days, you used to get a charge of thirty five pounds a pop for going beyond your overdraft limit, even if it was only for a penny. And then that charge would mean you got other charges, because you were now even further over.
41:28 Martin Lewis? And I met a woman who had had her benefits payment was late, and her direct debits were going out of her bank account. But because the benefits payments were late, the direct debits bounced. She had charges of two hundred pounds because of the bank charges, because the direct debits bounced. And then charges on charges, by the time I met her, were up to three thousand pounds. And this is a woman who was on benefits because she was caring for her child. She had a child with disabilities, and she was three thousand pounds in debt because of the systematic destruction of bank charges. And I got quite angry about it. And that was the point that I started to change what the site did, so that it was always
42:12 Martin Lewis? still, cutting your bills is the first priority. But instead of what it used to be, where my website and my work was about, you know, their job is to screw us, our job is to screw them back, I changed the sub-name, and the sub-name that still lasts now from the site, I'm not trying to talk about the site, but that's sort of my philosophy of what I do, is cutting your bills and fighting your corner. Because I started to realise, we need to help the people who can help themselves, but you also have to help the people who can't. And that's one of the reasons I set up my money and mental health charity. Funny, sitting in the room with me now, just fact checking for me, is the wonderful Sally, who just got married. And so I can't remember, Sally, what's your new last name? So you got married last week, so I'm trying to Sally Richardson, who works on my campaigns
42:54 Martin Lewis? team, and it's why I have a campaigns team, which we just work, it's none of that is about campaigning for for the site itself, it's all about campaigning for consumers and I've got a great team who do that. And that's been the gradual change over the years, but they were the two points that started it. Yeah, I'm gonna listen, and you're doing great work yourself. How's the soup kitchen going? Are things easing? Are less people? I wish, I hope you're gonna say yes.
43:15 Speaker 06 More people, but we don't discriminate, although we do it for the homeless, we do it for people with mental health issues, people that are losing their jobs and just in a tricky place in Greece. You don't discriminate, we help whoever comes along for food or chat, whatever they need, sometimes a hug.
43:31 Martin Lewis? Oh, well done. I'm just lovely. And well done for all the work that you're doing and all the millions of other volunteers and carers out there who don't get enough praise. I mean, I'm very lucky, I get more praise than I know what to do with. That's part of being in the media, but you're doing it without the praise. So if I may give you this, well, you're on.
43:49 Speaker 06 Thank you.
43:50 Martin Lewis? Good luck to you and to all of your colleagues. Well done.
43:53 Speaker 06 Cheers, Martin.
43:53 Martin Lewis? Keep going.
43:56 Speaker 00 Okay, drawing one out, we've got David. Anything? Well, here goes. Where does your lap go when you stand up? If you're travelling at the speed of light and you look backwards, can you see anything? And how do you know whether a worm is laying on its back or its belly?
44:12 Martin Lewis? All right, well, if who's being a smartass, I'll be a smartass back. Give me those one by one.
44:17 Speaker 00 Okay, first one. Where does your lap go when you stand up?
44:20 Martin Lewis? Well, it just becomes the top of your legs. If you were to wear a lap pack and you were to tie it around your lap and stand up, it would be the top of your thighs. I don't see why the one is that difficult. Your lap stays there. Next.
44:29 Speaker 00 If you're travelling at the speed of light and you look backwards, can you see anything?
44:33 Martin Lewis? Uh, yeah, because you're probably in a spaceship, so you'd see the back of the spaceship. That's simple. Next.
44:37 Speaker 00 How do you know whether a worm is laying on its back or its belly?
44:40 Martin Lewis? Why do you think it has a back or a belly? They could turn sideways. It could be both on its back at the front bit and its belly on the second bit, because they can twist around. David, I think you're looking at this from a narrow species perspective.
44:53 Martin Lewis? Okay Matt, so we've done lots of big questions where I've done full answers. I want to try and get through some more questions, so let's try and do quick fire. Now to anybody listening, some of these might need more detailed answers, but I'm just going to try and answer it quickly to try and get more of your questions answered while we can. Matt, let's start drawing out of the hat as quick as you can.
45:13 Speaker 00 Okay, first one, Donald. If I pay for next day delivery and it doesn't come the next day, am I entitled to a refund or compensation?
45:20 Martin Lewis? It would tend to involve what the contract and what their operation and what their caveats were and why it didn't come. I would always though, if we get away from your rights and go to your expectations, I would always make a complaint. And remember, if you're ordering something online, it is the firm that you ordered from who you have your contractual relationship with. It is not the delivery company, they've been subcontracted. Your relationship is with the company you've paid. So I would get in touch with them and politely say, it didn't come, I've paid extra to have next day delivery. I would like that money back, they should give it you back. What your rights are depends on the underlying law and the contract and what they actually said. So I can't give you a firm answer.
45:57 Speaker 00 Next one, Keith. Is it good to get credit cards even if you don't plan to use them?
46:02 Martin Lewis? Well, if you've got financial discipline, credit cards tend to be the best way to spend because you get section 75 protection. That means the credit card company is jointly liable with the retailer. And also there are credit cards that give you cash back and rewards when you spend on them. Just make sure you pay them off in full. If you're not going to be using a credit card to spend, then the only reason you would have it is to try and build or rebuild your credit score. So that would involve putting a £50 to £100 a month of normal spending, not an excuse for spending anymore, on the card. Doing that, paying off in full so there's no interest over a year. And that can help you, give you, improve your credit worthiness when you apply to lenders. But if you've got a great credit score and aren't already looking to apply for any other lending and don't want to use a credit card for rewards, then there's no point in getting a credit card.
46:47 Martin Lewis? Next, I love this, keep going.
46:48 Speaker 00 Do or did you play video games? That's from unknown.
46:52 Martin Lewis? I did play video games as a kid. One of my proudest moments as a child was Crash Magazine for the ZX Spectrum. I got in their rankings for the best long jump on Daley Thompson's Decathlon. I've since met Daley Thompson and I enjoy talking to him. He's very full of banter. He tends to take the mickie out of you when you talk. So you end up having one of those sort of male conversations where each making fun of each other. But I couldn't believe I'd met Daley Thompson when I used to be the long jump, long jump control for him. Now I do actually play games on my phone. I'm into F1 Clash. I probably shouldn't advertise at the moment. I'm into F1 Clash because I find it a good way when I'm trying to wind my brain down and not think about work. I find the stimulation from a game can, can move me away from that. Next one, Matt, next one.
47:29 Speaker 00 Next one, Stephen.
47:30 Martin Lewis? Just like a game.
47:31 Speaker 00 Stephen has a five-year-old boy. My brummy came out then. What's the best way to get started for his money life? We don't have tons of money. Where's best to start?
47:43 Martin Lewis? Well, any money that you can put aside for him. If it's not money you're going to want him to have when he's young, then I'd be looking at investing it. I'd probably put it, you know, something like a junior ISA so it's locked away till he's 18 because otherwise it would be his money and he could get access it. And I'd be looking for something which you could put in an investment that will hopefully grow pretty well over that longer period. As for lessons for him, one I would give is when you go in the supermarket, say, why do you think there are sweets by the till? And he'll say, oh, because they're all good. And you say, well, no, it's because the supermarket's job is to make money. So they know that people like sweeties. So they like to put them near the tills so that people will spend more when they're in there. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's good for you. And just start to talk about money, counting money, showing digital forms of money, giving some independence of spending, a little bit young at five. But
48:25 Martin Lewis? any form of conversation that you can have is always a great start. Don't hide money away from children. That means they don't engage and envelop it as part of the absorption that they have, their young minds have. Talk about it. Be honest. I mean, maybe don't talk about any, any life struggles that you're having with it at this age, although when the teenagers are old. Next question.
48:44 Speaker 00 Fee is asking, why is it that single people are routinely worse off than couples? It feels so unfair. Council tax, holidays, everything seems to be designed for two.
48:54 Martin Lewis? Well, council tax is a government scheme. It isn't actually divine for two. Remember, you get a 25% discount if you are a single person in the home or living with under 18s or living with full-time students or living with other people who are discounted for council tax purposes. And people always say, why isn't it a 50% discount? Well, because a household doesn't necessarily have two people in. It might have five people in. And so exactly what the discount should be is a little bit complicated and confusing. But basically, because council tax is a terrible system. It was set up. It's got so many flaws and holes in it. People will know from past programmes, I've been campaigning on it, but no one is brave enough to touch it. The single person discount is 25%. They'd have to change legislation to change that, and nobody really wants to do that. So I can't see that one changing in the coming
49:37 Martin Lewis? future. As for why it's more expensive for a single person, well, this isn't an excuse. I'm not justifying, but it's called economies of scale. Generally, in this world, the more things that you do at once, like bulk buying, the cheaper it gets. So if you're doing it for one person, it tends to cost more, I'm afraid.
49:52 Speaker 00 Carl, with the rise of new online banks such as Monzo, how protected are we if using them compared to the traditional banks such as Lloyds?
49:59 Martin Lewis? Depends what you mean by protection. If you're talking about Financial Services Compensation Scheme protection, you have exactly the same compensation in that you're protected up to £85,000 per person, per financial institution, if Monzo or Lloyds were to go bust. Although, what happens in practice more often is they just port all the savings part of it to another bank, and they operate it that way. In terms of other protections, you know, security and online security, well, they tend to be pretty swift when it comes to the new tech firms. I would think they're similar, but it's not something that I've done a study on. But Monzo is a bank, so it has the same bank regulations as other banks. Revolut, for example, does not have a UK banking licence, so you don't have the same protections in the UK as you would
50:44 Martin Lewis? with a bank. And so knowing a new bank has the same protections as old banks, a payment system that isn't a bank has lesser protections.
50:53 Speaker 00 Next. Next, Craig is asking you, is cash is king dangerous? Specifically, he's talking about inflation erosion, a false sense of security, and a risk of a lack of compensation with theft.
51:07 Martin Lewis? Absolutely. I mean, people often say, shouldn't I just put my money under the mattress? Well, no. I mean, when you put your money in a savings account, you've got that eighty five thousand pound protection. We've just talked about it. Put it in your mattress, or even the best home insurance policy would only protect you up to about five hundred quid cash if it was stolen from your house. So you have very little protection. When you pay for things in cash, then again, you're limiting your protection. Paying a credit card, you've got section seventy five protection for items costing between a hundred pounds and thirty thousand pounds, which means the card company is jointly liable with a retailer. Pay for lower transactions on credit cards or pay on a debit card and you have
51:47 Martin Lewis? chargeback protection. That means at least if something is delivered, you can get your money back. Even via a bank transfer, far less protections. But if there were to be fraud or push only scams and you pay by bank transfer, there at least is some form of recourse. Paying cash, you have absolutely no form of protection. You also don't get the rewards that are available when you're paying on plastic. So I do all my spending that I can, apart from trivial spending on on plastic these days. You're far better protected. As for money in cash, I think you were also talking about savings because you were talking about, yeah. I mean, if you put your money in savings in the bank, then you have to factor inflation. At the moment, the best savings outpay inflation, so they are actually growing. But we had many years where inflation, prices were rising quicker than savings interest,
52:30 Martin Lewis? which meant in real term, your purchasing power on money you had saved was being diminished. So savings were losings. So yes, there are lots of issues there. One more of these quick far, I'm not sure I can keep going anymore.
52:42 Speaker 00 Okay, one more. Richard is asking about student loans. He said, it would be good to understand what the average cost for a parent to put your child through university on top of the grants and funding a student can get, which I understand is means tested. As a parent, the numbers are quite scary, so it'd be good to know how best I can prepare for this when I have around a year before my first child goes to school.
53:04 Martin Lewis? Well, you're doing it nice and early and it's good to be thinking about it. You are absolutely right. While much of the political discussion focuses on tuition fees, tuition fees are not really an issue for most students. Now, before anyone writes in and says, what are you talking about? They're an issue for graduates and university leavers. Most people, first time UK undergraduates, they, if they have to pay tuition fees, it is paid for them by the student loan company and they will pay it back afterwards if they earn enough in proportion to what they earn. So nine percent for current English students, nine percent of everything they earn above £25,000. It's expensive. It works far more like an extra form of taxation. You know, nine percent higher marginal tax rate above £25,000 than actually paying off a debt.
53:50 Martin Lewis? The practical issue for most students is having the money to live off while you are at university. Now, I'm going to focus on the English system. It changes in some of the different countries, but I'll come to those in a moment. In England, the amount of maintenance loan, that's a living loan that you get for most under 25s is based upon family income, which is a proxy for parental income. So the higher your parental income, the less a maintenance loan you get. Now, for me, that means there is an implied parental contribution. Because if your child is only getting 50% of the full loan that's available to those on the lowest incomes, that full loan is designated of the minimum amount that you would need to live off. Then, and their only reason they're getting less is because of your income.
54:35 Martin Lewis? Well, it's implied by the state that that means parents need to make up the difference. So let's just go through how it works. The loan that you get starts to be reduced from family income of just £25,000. So that's total family income of 25 grand. I mean, that's two people on minimum wage. So it really isn't very much at all. Until you get up to around £65,000, by which point your child would only get half the full loan. Now, for 2025 starters, just to put it in context, the living at home loan is about nine grand a year. Living away from home is about 10 and a half grand a year. And living away from home in London is about 14 grand a year.
55:18 Martin Lewis? So if you half that, that's four and a half thousand pound maximum parental contribution living at home. It's about £5,250.
55:27 Martin Lewis? Living away from home and it's getting on for seven thousand pounds per year. Living away from home in London. Multiply those all by three and you see we're starting to talk for someone who you know is a got family income of seventy thousand pounds. Of needing between fifteen and twenty one thousand pounds. To be able to support your child while they're at university. Obviously, if your income is less than that, let's say family income forty thousand pounds, the amount is smaller, but you'd still need to put some money aside. And it would still be proportionately difficult from that amount of income. So the earlier you think about it and the earlier you start saving. Towards that most important part, which is the living cost for your child when you're at university, the better.
56:10 Martin Lewis? And there are parental contribution calculators out there that can give you an indicative example of how much money you would need to save. I should note in Wales, there is no parental contribution because the only thing family income changes. Is how much of the funding you get is a loan and how much of the funding you get for living while you're at university is a grant. There are, in my view, parental contributions in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Because even though there is some grant and some loan, the total amount you get does depend upon family income. And can be reduced with half family income, but the parental contribution is much smaller there than it is in England. So basically, for those living in England who want your kids to go to university, of course, the system could change.
56:50 Martin Lewis? Well, depending on your income, you could be looking at needing between, let's make it really rough. Fifteen and twenty five grand once they get there. It's a lot of money. I know it will scare many people. But the sooner you think about it, the better. And we need to be far more upfront about the fact that is a parental contribution. It's not talked about enough. Parents should be told the day their kids are going to secondary school. That they may have to be able to put this money aside, of course. The child can contribute by going, getting a part time job and they might be able to be even be grants or other things available for them. But ultimately, the reduction in the living loan you get when you go to university is based on a proxy for family income. Which is a proxy for parental income and therefore there is an implicit parental contribution.
57:34 Martin Lewis? The sooner we start talking about it, the better. And I think that is a good point to end the quick fire.
57:43 Martin Lewis? And that is it for this week. If you have enjoyed it, please tell your friends you've been listening to the Martin Lewis podcast. I do quite like this Q and A format. I think we're going to do more of those in the future. We do tend to put out a new episode every Thursday. Do subscribe to keep up to date and your pockets will be pleased with you. As I said at the start, I'm taking a wee break for the summer now, but don't worry, just to keep you up to date, we'll be doing some best of podcasts while I'm off, putting out stuff we've already done before that's still up to date that you might enjoy listening to again, or maybe if you knew it'll be your first time. Take care.
58:31 Speaker 07 Martin Lewis is the founder of MoneySavingExpert.com. But of course, other consumer and price comparison websites are available. You can get in touch with Martin's podcast production team by emailing [email protected] . The offers and rates mentioned in the podcast are correct at the time of recording. However, if you are listening on demand, it's worth double checking as details can date. Remember to subscribe on BBC Sounds and leave us a review however you listen.
59:05 Speaker 03 BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
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