Question Time: Can salary sacrifice cut student loan & savings tax cost? A Bridesmaid refund! And, state pension tax?

In our Question Time podcast, Martin Lewis gives you answers on anything and everything, including: can using salary sacrifice allow me to cut the amount of student loan and savings tax I pay? How will not paying tax if you only get the state pension work in practice? Help, I’m about to turn 50! Is there anything I should do with my finances? Plus, we have a bridesmaid dress return success story (including how Martin helped them find love), and would Martin rather do Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? or Celebrity Traitors? If you want to ask Martin a question, you now can! His Question Time podcast lets you ask Martin absolutely anything and everything (within reason!) – so if you’ve always wanted to know his favourite tube line, if he’s a snorer or not, or have a very complicated question about your personal finances, email it to [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

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• 0:38Speaker 02

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• 1:07Martin Lewis?

  It's certainly worth thinking at this point whether your pension provision is sufficient. Nothing is completely rock solid certain on the way that this will work. You are in a grey area, if we're being really honest.

• 1:18Speaker 04

  It's your fault that me and my chap actually met.

• 1:21Martin Lewis?

  It's a brilliant question. I hope you understood my answer. It's a bit complicated. Hello and welcome to the cunningly named The Martin Lewis Podcast. I do wonder what that's going to be about. This is our question time edition, in which I answer your questions about absolutely anything and everything within reason. This week, you ask me, can boosting your pension contributions cut the cost of student loans and savings tax? Then, an inspiring tale of a successful refund on a bridesmaid. Well, a bridesmaid's dress, anyway. How will not paying tax, if you only get the state pension, work in practice? We have a man who's hitting 50, who wants to know what he should be looking at financially. And we finish by you asking me what I prefer to do.

• 2:05Martin Lewis?

  Who wants to be a millionaire or celebrity traitors? Play the theme tune.

• 2:24Martin Lewis?

  Right, I've got podcast producer Matt, now better known as the curator of the questions. Hello, sir. What questions do you have for me today?

• 2:33Speaker 05

  Hello, I've got a really nice mix of questions and a really good success story.

• 2:38Martin Lewis?

  I hope I have a nice mix of answers for you.

• 2:41Speaker 05

  I hope so, too.

• 2:41Martin Lewis?

  That's the difficult bit. Right, what have you got?

• 2:44Speaker 05

  We'll start with one from Colin, if that works for you.

• 2:48Martin Lewis?

  Yeah, well, I have no idea what the question is, and Colin sounds perfectly legitimate. It depends what he's going to ask me.

• 2:52Speaker 05

  He's emailed in to [email protected]. Hi, Martin and Matt. Thanks for including me, Colin. He says, "Thanks for some really great advice. I feel like I've benefited from it." "If I heard you correctly, you've told us you can increase pension payments in your workplace pension to reduce your tax rate by taking gross pay below the higher tax level. The question I have is, could you do the same to reduce your income to below that that generates a student loan repayment? It seems that if you can, you can gain in both ways: improve your pension part and avoid the repayment to student loans."

• 3:26Martin Lewis?

  What an interesting question, Colin. And I think it's actually really worth talking through this, not just in the student loan scenario, but lots of other scenarios.

• 3:36Martin Lewis?

  Now, let's start with the higher rate tax threshold for paying tax. If you earn just over £50,000, £50,270 I think it is, then you start to pay tax at the 40% rate, which means all income above that, you will pay income tax of 40% on. But also, the fact that you're now a higher rate taxpayer excludes you from a couple of things. The first one is your personal savings allowance is reduced. The personal savings allowance is the amount of interest you can earn each year outside of an ISA and not pay tax on it. For a basic 20% rate taxpayer, you get £1,000. For a higher rate taxpayer, you get £500. So, if you were to increase your pension contribution

• 4:21Martin Lewis?

  so that your gross income after pension contribution was below the higher rate tax threshold, you know, let's say you earn £50,500 a year and you increase your pension by £1,000, so you now earn £49,500 a year, you become a basic rate taxpayer and therefore you get your £1,000 of interest from savings tax-free.

• 4:44Martin Lewis?

  Similar is for the marriage tax allowance. The marriage tax allowance is for basic rate taxpayers married to a non taxpayer. So similar, increasing your pension contributions could enable you to get the marriage tax allowance. Again, a slightly different one at a different level. But currently, if you're, if you get child benefit, that is clawed back in the high income child benefit charge, once you start earning sixty thousand pounds and it goes completely once you start earning eighty thousand pounds. But again, increasing your pension contributions lowers your gross income that counts for that figure and could mean you were eligible to get more child benefit if your earnings are between sixty and eighty thousand pounds.

• 5:26Martin Lewis?

  So, you're having done all that preamble, Colin, and kept you hanging on tenterhooks. How does it work on student loans? And the answer, I'm afraid, is not as well. So if we take the scenario that the current Plan Two student loan threshold, and Plan Two is the student loan that people in England who started university between 2012 and 2022 get, the current Plan Two student loan threshold is twenty eight thousand four hundred and seventy pounds, I think. So if you earn twenty nine thousand pounds, you're asking me, if I put a thousand pounds in my pension, so I earn twenty eight thousand pounds, does that mean I wouldn't have to pay towards a student loan? I'm afraid not.

• 6:06Martin Lewis?

  I'm afraid your pension contributions do not reduce your eligible income in the context of student loans. There is one way it would work, though, and that's if you were to make pension contributions via your employer through a specific salary sacrifice scheme. Now, many people make contributions not through salary sacrifice and some make through salary sacrifice. In salary sacrifice, instead of you putting money into your pension and your employer matching it, what happens is you say to your employer, and the employer has to offer this, I would like to reduce my income by a thousand pounds and I would like you, my employer, to put that thousand pounds into my pension for me.

• 6:50Martin Lewis?

  Now, the reason this is done... Is because that means that you don't have to pay national insurance contributions on your pension, which as a basic rate taxpayer is eight percent and as a higher rate taxpayer is two percent, and your employer doesn't have to pay its national insurance contributions. And some good employers will actually give you those national insurance contributions. This has been much in the news recently because from April 2029, the government in the budget just announced that they will be reducing the amount you can salary sacrifice. They'll be capping it to £2,000 a year on pension contributions. But going to your question, if you were to do your pension contribution via your employer through salary sacrifice and that reduced you from £29,000 to £28,000 rather than

• 7:35Martin Lewis?

  you making the pension contribution, then that does work in the event of student loans. It's a brilliant question. I hope you understood my answer. It's a bit complicated, but it is one worth thinking about in that particular scenario.

• 7:50Martin Lewis?

  Okay, producer Matt, second question in your format structure is a caller.

• 7:58Speaker 05

  I feel like doing a little drum roll or something, but you're wrong.

• 8:01Martin Lewis?

  What? Match breaking format?

• 8:03Speaker 05

  We have a caller, but she doesn't have a question. She has a success story.

• 8:08Martin Lewis?

  Ooh, how lovely.

• 8:09Speaker 05

  Sarah's in Halifax. Hi, Sarah.

• 8:12Speaker 04

  Hello, you all right?

• 8:13Speaker 05

  Hello.

• 8:14Martin Lewis?

  Hello, Sarah. Tell me your success. I'm delighted to hear it.

• 8:17Speaker 04

  It's a success story that's totally down to what I've learned through listening to the podcast and reading the weekly emails.

• 8:24Martin Lewis?

  Oh, lovely.

• 8:25Speaker 04

  So we got married in September this year, and in preparation for that, I bought a bridesmaid dress back in November 2024. So it was a large online retailer department store and got the dress. Person tried it on, fitted fine.

• 8:45Speaker 04

  So then we got it out in August, went away, got it out in August to have the final try-ons and the beads on the dress started to fall off due to faulty threads.

• 8:55Martin Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 8:55Speaker 04

  So I contacted the store and asked for a refund, a replacement, and they said, no, it's outside the six months returns policy. So I cited sad fart at them and they still declined.

• 9:08Martin Lewis?

  So just to interrupt, interrupt for those people who aren't sad farts like we are. Sad fart is mine the monic for remembering your rights. When you buy an item, it must be of satisfactory quality, that's your S, as described, that's your A D, so you've now got sad, fit for purpose and, so that's F A, last a reasonable length of time. Clearly, you've not worn it, the beads are coming off, it was not of satisfactory quality and did not last a reasonable length of time, therefore, under the sad fart rules, it is faulty. You carry on with your story.

• 9:39Speaker 04

  Okay, thank you. So they said, no, we're not doing a refund. So then I went to the credit card company to complain under section 75.

• 9:49Martin Lewis?

  Oh, and I can see why he married you.

• 9:54Speaker 04

  So they declined, saying, as I'd bought the dress for a bridesmaid, it wasn't covered. So I thought, right, that money's written off, I've done what I can. But then, on a recent podcast, you mentioned, Martin, going to the ombudsman.

• 10:09Martin Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 10:09Speaker 04

  So I went online, filled in their form, attached the receipts and the emails and the proof of what I'd complained about, which was very easy, and they came back fairly quickly, saying I needed the final decision from the card company. So I went back to the card company, asked for a final decision, saying that I need that so I can go into the ombudsman. And I also put in that, if I'd bought a present for someone and went to wrap it and it was faulty, I should be covered under section 75, which essentially is what's happened with the dress. So then I got a full refund and a goodwill payment on top.

• 10:44Martin Lewis?

  Well done you.

• 10:45Speaker 04

  So it's like, oh. And even more bizarrely, Martin, it's your fault that me and my chap actually met.

• 10:52Martin Lewis?

  Really? How?

• 10:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, um.

• 10:56Speaker 04

  Ten years ago or more, there was on one of your weekly emails, there was a mention of this fun online game you could play. So I signed up for it, started playing, and some of the people who I met on there became friends on Facebook. And through that, I met my husband. Well, he wasn't my husband at the time, but he is now.

• 11:19Martin Lewis?

  Where was my invite to the wedding after all that?

• 11:22Speaker 04

  (laughing).

• 11:23Martin Lewis?

  Oh, how lovely.

• 11:25Speaker 04

  Sorry, bit late.

• 11:26Martin Lewis?

  I'll tell you what's very interesting. I'm delighted to hear, and I hope, hopefully you'll live happily ever after.

• 11:32Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 11:33Martin Lewis?

  What is interesting for me is you are in a grey area, if we're being really honest. Because the grey area on section 75, and for those who don't know, section 75 says that if you even part pay on a credit card for an item that costs between £100 and £30,000, the card company is jointly liable with the retailer. And that means, just as you did, you can choose to go to the credit card company rather than the retailer. Now, I would say the retailer was wrong to say, you're not within our six months' returns. This was a faulty item, you had legal rights at the retailer. But as you probably know, the difficulty is, the only way you can then take the retailer on, if they refuse, is to go to court. And court is not the easiest thing, even if you do the money claim online, which is the online court route.

• 12:17Martin Lewis?

  Whereas if you go via the credit card company, then you can go to the ombudsman, and the ombudsman is easier than the retailer. So it's not that you didn't have rights with the retailer, it's that enforcing them can be trickier with the retailer, if they're fighting it, than it is with the credit card company, if they're fighting it. Now, what's interesting for me is, the rule on section 75 is always difficult if the purchase is for somebody that is not directly for the credit card holder. But what I find fascinating about your case, and you know, it's one that could be discussed, and if we did have juries for these type of things, it's a classic thing a jury would discuss, is...

• 12:54Martin Lewis?

  Of whose benefit is a bridesmaid's dress for your wedding? Is that for your, is that for the bridesmaid's benefit because she's wearing it? Or actually, I think there's a perfectly arguable situation here that to have the bridesmaids dressed appropriately at your wedding is a direct benefit to you. And I think it's that grey area where the firm probably settled up going, it's a grey area. We don't know what the ombudsman will rule. It's going to cost us, be, cost us quite a bit to go through the ombudsman process. It's probably just easier to settle up than to have us go into that situation. Now, of course, I don't know any of that happened, but that's my, that's my intuitive interpretation of why they settled. Does that make sense? You see what I mean?

• 13:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I wonder if I hadn't cited the ombudsman, if they would have actually paid out or not.

• 13:42Martin Lewis?

  Well, I'll tell you something very interesting. I once spoke, and this person is going to be furious at me saying this. It was in a different industry, it wasn't financial. But it was the head of professional services at a regulated sector that has an ombudsman. And they said to me that once people say they're going to the ombudsman, because there is a fixed cost for the firm, if you go to the ombudsman, they look at it again and in, in over 50% of the cases, they settle. So literally the threat of going to the ombudsman because of the increased cost. So I would actually always, before I go to the ombudsman, I'd tell the firm, I'd like you sort this in seven weeks, in seven days, or I'm going to the ombudsman. So that's sort of a preemptive, I'm going to go to the ombudsman.

• 14:26Martin Lewis?

  When you go to the financial ombudsman, they have to pay. You know, the firm has to pay because you've gone to the financial ombudsman. So you can almost do it in a preemptive way. And because it's a credit card, even though it's a retail transaction, this would have been the financial ombudsman. That is all absolutely fascinating. I'm so delighted you got in touch. Thank you so much.

• 14:41Speaker 04

  And thank you so much for all you do. Because you've helped so much over the years and also helped us find each other.

• 14:49Martin Lewis?

  Hey. Matt, can we put some romantic music on this, please? Absolutely. Cheers. Thank you for calling.

• 14:56Speaker 04

  All right. Thank you.

• 14:58Martin Lewis?

  Take care. Bye. Cheers.

• 14:59Speaker 04

  Bye.

• 15:09Martin Lewis?

  Oh Matt, I absolutely loved that one. That made me very happy.

• 15:12Speaker 05

  Same, I feel good off the back of that.

• 15:14Martin Lewis?

  Quite right. So where are we going next?

• 15:17Speaker 05

  Got a question off the back of the Budget. And Jinx has sent this one in. I have a tiny private pension, £100 a month. That on top of the state pension I get today puts me over the threshold for paying tax. So I pay tax and have £7 deducted each month. Is that the tiny amounts the Chancellor is talking about?

• 15:37Martin Lewis?

  Yeah, so let's just backtrack on this. I suspect this is someone who's seen my interview with the Chancellor that I was on my TV show and I put on social media. And it was a really interesting one because I asked the Chancellor, we know that from 2027, someone on the full new state pension will start to pay tax even with no other earnings. And that's because from April 2026, the full new state pension is only about £25 below the personal allowance, the amount that you can earn each year before you pay tax on it. And as the state pension must rise by a minimum 2.5% because of the triple lock and the personal allowance is frozen until 2031,

• 16:21Martin Lewis?

  by definition from 2027, someone on the full new state pension will be earning more than the personal allowance. And certainly in 2028, 2029, that will continue to happen and be even more so. So my concern, when I asked the Chancellor about this, she'd mentioned something in the Budget about not having to do self-assessment. And I wanted to understand from an administrative basis, how she was going to protect. And I asked a question, because I had 6,000 questions come in. I asked a question from one of my viewers. You know, my father is an 85-year-old with onset dementia. Is he going to have to do a self-assessment return in 20... And the Chancellor...

• 16:59Martin Lewis?

  Answered and then I caught something in her answer. So I said, sorry. Are you saying they won't have to do the self assessment return? Or are you saying that people won't have to pay tax? And she said, no, I'm saying that people who get the full new state pension and have no other earnings will not have to pay tax in the terms of this parliament. Now, what was fascinating, and I think in the budget, that's what she thought she had said, but nobody picked up on it. Everybody thought she just meant they wouldn't administratively have to do a self assessment. But what she actually meant was they wouldn't have to pay tax. So I was a little bit gobsmacked at the time and the interview's gone everywhere on the back of it. And then I followed it up by saying, what about an edge case of someone who has the full new state pension?

• 17:44Martin Lewis?

  And £50 a year, so nothing, private pension. And she said, no, the guarantee is only for those people who have the full new state pension. So Jinx, I'm afraid to say that in your case, that you're a tiny bit over the threshold. Because you have other income, £100 a month, you will have to pay tax. Now, where this gets really interesting, and I just, two things the Chancellor did say that I think is very important to reiterate. One, she was talking about from 2027 onwards. And two, she said, we are working through how we will do this. So the exact way it will work has not been formulated. But in my head, this did bring up a few issues.

• 18:28Martin Lewis?

  The first is, and this might get a bit technical, and I think Jinx is potentially in this situation. You could have somebody who has the new state pension, and but doesn't have the full new state pension, they're a few years short, has a private pension that tops it up a little bit, is earning over the threshold, but less than the full new state pension. But because it's a mix of state pension and private pension, would have to pay tax on it, that does feel a little bit unjust, that you could have a state pension with whose Put a tiny bit into private pension savings and therefore actually gets penalised and has to pay tax from it, even though they're earning less in total than a full new state pensioner.

• 19:10Martin Lewis?

  You equally have the problem that there are some people on the old state pension now who get the basic state pension and the second pension, the SERPs pension on top, who are already over just on state pension income, over the personal allowance, and what is going to happen to them. So I'm getting, I've had a lot of questions on this because obviously it was my interview with the Chancellor that then went everywhere and everybody realised exactly what the Chancellor was saying. But I need to be honest that I do not at the moment know exactly how this will be put into place, and I don't think the Treasury knows at the moment exactly how it will be put into place. So there aren't any answers and I don't see anything coming in before April 2027 anyway.

• 19:53Martin Lewis?

  So my answer to you, Jinx, is based on what I know at the moment, yes, you will have to pay tax, but nothing is completely rock solid certain on the way that this will work.

• 20:04Martin Lewis?

  Okay, so we're at that point of the show, you've just asked me a technical one. I think this is where you ask me your silly question.

• 20:11Speaker 05

  Martin, you're always correct. Actually, you're not, this podcast you haven't been.

• 20:15Martin Lewis?

  No, I got you wrong, really.

• 20:16Speaker 05

  Yes, I win. I beat Martin. A fun question. So actually, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a little call out now. So you listening, send in a question for Martin, a fun one, one where we get to know him a little bit better, you know, we ask about food.

• 20:33Martin Lewis?

  You asked me about whether I prefer to fight 10 duck sized men or one man sized duck. I can't quite, and yes. This is, this is the, this is the light relief section of the podcast that we want to throw in. So if you have ridiculous and silly questions you would like to put to me and challenge me so I have to try and come up with something on the spot that's a little bit outside of the money area, do get them in and those ones I'd definitely address to Dear Matt.

• 20:58Speaker 05

  Yes, please do. Send it to [email protected]. So I've come up with my own one.

• 21:05Martin Lewis?

  Okay.

• 21:07Speaker 05

  Would you rather?

• 21:08Martin Lewis?

  That means we're short. Can you tell that? That's a producer there, everybody listening. That's Matt going, "No one's sent one in, so I have to come up with one myself because I like doing this in the format point." So help him out.

• 21:17Speaker 05

  I do actually like to get to know you a bit more and ask you these weird questions as well.

• 21:20Martin Lewis?

  So the weird thing is, we've not actually properly met.

• 21:24Speaker 05

  No.

• 21:25Martin Lewis?

  I mean, you came to my TV show when it was in Manchester and I didn't get to say hello to you.

• 21:29Speaker 05

  No, did Rosie tell you?

• 21:30Martin Lewis?

  I didn't even know you were there.

• 21:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I was actually, I wasn't going to tell you this, but I will tell you this. I was sat next to your uncle.

• 21:38Martin Lewis?

  Yes.

• 21:39Speaker 05

  And you came up and had a little chat with them. And me, I was there with Lauren, who, Lauren does our socials. And we did a little wave and completely blanked.

• 21:49Martin Lewis?

  I didn't know it was you.

• 21:50Speaker 05

  Completely blanked.

• 21:51Martin Lewis?

  There's so many in there, I didn't even notice.

• 21:52Speaker 05

  Did you think I was a fan? Did you think I was a big fan?

• 21:54Martin Lewis?

  Well, you are, so it's fine. So, but Matt does this from Manchester and I do it from London, so we've not met. Give me your question, Matt.

• 22:01Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 22:01Martin Lewis?

  We're going on too long.

• 22:01Speaker 05

  Who wants to be a millionaire?

• 22:03Martin Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 22:03Speaker 05

  Or Celebrity Traitors? Which one would you rather do?

• 22:06Martin Lewis?

  I've already done Millionaire.

• 22:07Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 22:08Martin Lewis?

  I did it, I think, in 2008 or 2009 with Angela Rippon.

• 22:13Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 22:14Martin Lewis?

  And we got to the £250,000 question. Okay. And do you want the question?

• 22:23Speaker 05

  Go on, if you can remember it.

• 22:25Martin Lewis?

  So the question was, which one of these comes from the Greek for pebble worm? Is it anaconda, conga eel, crocodile, or iguana? There you go. This isn't a mastermind question, so we won't.

• 22:46Speaker 05

  It's hard, isn't it?

• 22:47Martin Lewis?

  Well, we went through a long discussion. Angela, and the problem with you do something with Angela Rippon, and I've worked with Angela for many years. One of my first jobs was with Angela, is she's very authoritative and she went straight away, it's anaconda. And I'm going, but isn't that the South American animal? I couldn't quite get there. And then I got towards later. And now, in those days, it wasn't time. So we did it for about an hour.

• 23:06Speaker 05

  No.

• 23:06Martin Lewis?

  This question, I felt like me, we're talking about this for about an hour. And then we got on and my big thing was I didn't think that an A was a Greek ending. I thought an A was a Latin ending from my memory of that at school. So I wasn't sure. And then Chris, I think, said, because it was Chris, hey. So it was Chris Tarrant and he said, final answer. And I went, final answer. And I went, no, no, no. I don't think it's right. And let's just take the money. It's for charity. Let's take the money. We took the money. And the one I had suspected it was, it was. So give me your guess. What do you think it is?

• 23:38Speaker 05

  Iguana?

• 23:40Martin Lewis?

  It's crocodile.

• 23:41Speaker 05

  Ah.

• 23:43Martin Lewis?

  And it was crocodile. So we got the, I think it was £125,000. So we did well. As for Celebrity Traitors, well, it's public that I was asked to do the first series and I wasn't really into it at the time. So I said, no, regretted it later. And I don't know if I'm allowed to tell you about the second series. But actually, you know what? I'm not doing it. So I'm not under contract. And I'd love to do the second series and I have been asked, but unfortunately, my schedule does not allow it because I've got my live telly show on at the time they're filming it.

• 24:10Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:12Martin Lewis?

  So love to be doing it.

• 24:13Speaker 05

  It's so good.

• 24:14Martin Lewis?

  I know. It's really gutting. I'm watching that whole first one, knowing I could have been in there but wasn't. And I was like, oh. Yeah. So I'm not, so I've done Millionaire and I would like to do Celebrity Traitors one day.

• 24:25Speaker 05

  Do you think you'll be good at traitors? Do you think if you played it, you'd be, you'd spot the traitor?

• 24:30Martin Lewis?

  I tell you what, honestly, and do get in touch with your thoughts on this. My slight worry about it is if I was a traitor. You know, because my whole reputation is about being trusted and trying to do the right thing. Would it be damaging?

• 24:43Speaker 05

  Or would people know that it is just a TV show?

• 24:45Martin Lewis?

  Yeah, some would, someone. That has gone through my head, but I want to do it anyway. My daughter loves it. So there we go. Right, let's go on to our next question.

• 24:55Martin Lewis?

  Now, I suspect at this point, Matt, you have another caller for me.

• 24:59Speaker 05

  I do. We have Peter in Ludlow here. Hi, Peter.

• 25:04Speaker 06

  Hi, Matt. Hello, Martin.

• 25:06Martin Lewis?

  Hello, Peter. What's your question?

• 25:08Speaker 06

  So, my question is, it was my birthday last week.

• 25:13Speaker 05

  Happy birthday.

• 25:13Speaker 06

  And I turned...

• 25:14Speaker 05

  Happy birthday.

• 25:14Speaker 06

  Thank you. Thank you. I turned 49 and it's got me wondering about what are the things I should have done or should be doing by the time I'm 50 in regards to my finances.

• 25:26Martin Lewis?

  Have you done a bungee jump yet?

• 25:28Speaker 06

  I haven't. No.

• 25:29Martin Lewis?

  Okay. Add them to the list. Right. But your financial, I think, is probably what you're asking me about, yeah?

• 25:36Speaker 06

  It is. Yes, yes.

• 25:38Martin Lewis?

  Oh, what an interesting question. So, I'm 53, so I'm in a relatively similar boat to you, a few years older.

• 25:46Martin Lewis?

  There's nothing hard that is happening at 50, but there are start of the time that, you know, was now working up towards your 17 years away from state retirement age. I don't know when you would like to retire in itself, whether you will stop working, whether you won't stop working. And we start to get into the perspective, sorry, this is going to sound really depressing, where things that rely on being cheaper because you're going to live a long time or be a long time with a good health span, start to get more expensive, if that makes sense. So, now, there are some easier ones to look at here. Term assurance. I don't know if you know what term assurance is.

• 26:25Speaker 06

  No, I don't.

• 26:25Martin Lewis?

  It's a life insurance product that you would get to protect your loved ones or perhaps to protect your loved ones in the event that you were to die. Now, the simple one to explain is level term insurance. That's when you get a fixed amount of protection that will pay out if you die within a set time. So, for example, I don't know. Do you have children?

• 26:45Speaker 06

  I do. Yes.

• 26:46Martin Lewis?

  How old are they?

• 26:47Speaker 06

  They, so one's at university, he's just started this year, and the other is sixteen.

• 26:52Martin Lewis?

  Okay, so actually, what's quite interesting there is your dependents, they're nearly not dependents anymore. You've only got five or six years of that. And I presume you have a partner as well, who you would want to protect? And I don't know, who's the primary earner, you or your partner?

• 27:07Speaker 06

  It's sort of a bit even, it's possibly me, but only just.

• 27:10Martin Lewis?

  Okay, well, that makes it all quite simple, because you'd probably, the standard rule is you would earn ten, you would protect ten times the highest earner's income. So if you earned ten thousand pounds a year, and I hope you earn more, but if you earned ten thousand pounds a year, then it would be a hundred thousand pounds that you would protect. And even if your partner only earned five thousand pounds, you'd still look to protect a hundred, ten times, because the general way the family income is used to looking at, and that's what you'd go for, and it can be quite expensive, and you don't need to do those, but that's a rule of thumb. That's where you'd start, and you'd check whether you had death in service. Now, the reason I mention that one is a lot of level term policies, you have a fixed cost, and the longer you leave getting one, and I'm not sure you necessarily need one, you'd need to look at your own finances and what would happen if you were to pass away. The longer you leave to getting one, the more expensive it gets.

• 27:55Martin Lewis?

  Now, you have other things like private medical insurance, if you were going to get that, that gets a lot more expensive as you get older, but it's quite difficult to do anything about that because premiums are reviewed each year. Critical illness, income protection, I think the two big ones though, and I'm sort of, I've been thinking as I've been talking, if that makes sense.

• 28:15Martin Lewis?

  Mortgage, where are you on the mortgage situation?

• 28:18Speaker 06

  So, we were, we fell in the mortgage when the budget catastrophe happened. So, yeah, we had to refix our mortgage just after the Liz Truss budget, and that cost us hugely. And we, that's actually part of the reason why I'm asking this question is that when we did that, we looked to extend the term of mortgage, and I was told that a twenty-five year mortgage would mean that I was beyond state retirement, and therefore I couldn't extend the term longer than, than sort of, than we wanted to. So, we've got about seventeen years left of the mortgage.

• 28:58Martin Lewis?

  That, by the way, is not a hard rule, that's a lender rule.

• 29:01Speaker 06

  Right.

• 29:01Martin Lewis?

  So another lender may not have done that. I mean, there are people who have mortgage terms that extend into their 80s these days. And absolutely, it's something I'd have gone to a mortgage broker with. But obviously, you were with one lender. How long is the term on that? When did your fix end? I presume it's a fix.

• 29:15Speaker 06

  So we've, we've, we went on to a tracker and then we refixed when the, the, the figures made sense. So we, we didn't want to get burnt again, sun going to university. So we ended up fixing for five years, just so we knew what our income was, or what our outgoing is going to be over the next, sort of, while he's at university.

• 29:35Martin Lewis?

  Which makes sense. And I often say, one of the things about fixing is, don't look back in anger. Don't look back and say, oh, if I hadn't, you made a decision based on financial security, knowing exactly what you were going to pay and on budgeting ability. And I think that's quite useful. So the mortgage term was sorted on, so you're doing well. The final thing is pension provision, of course, and where you are on your state pensions. There is one interesting thing that will happen at 50. It's the only thing I could think of off the top of my head that actually changes at 50. And that is, once you hit 50, you're eligible to talk to PensionWise to get one-on-one guidance about what you're doing on your pension situation. You're still a year from it at the moment. But it's certainly worth thinking at this point whether your pension provision is sufficient.

• 30:19Martin Lewis?

  And I'm upset that you've got mortgage costs and you've got two dependent children and all of those things, that they stretch the family finances. But you still have quite a long time left to be able to get that pension money in. And a pension is still a relatively efficient way to save for your retirement living, you know. And it's worth doing that. I can't go into the details with you on that. It's a regulated area. But it's absolutely worth having a look at your pension and checking whether you're going forward. Is there anything else you were thinking of that I may have missed?

• 30:47Speaker 06

  So it was more when you, so I was looking at things like car insurances and things like that, where it says. When you're over fifty or over fifty-five, you suddenly get these new products which turn up, which are meant to be better. And yeah, I don't know if it's marketing.

• 31:04Martin Lewis?

  I think most of it is marketing. I would still, for car insurance, follow exactly the same processes. I would combine my comparison sites, I'd add in the ones that they miss. I would look at, you know, checking the price of comprehensive as well as third party and adding a second driver to see if it helped. And there might be a couple more products that are now available to you because you're an over fifty, but that doesn't mean they're the best products available to you. So for me, I think a lot of that is a marketing spin and specialised policies. And, you know, people tend to think that the specialised over fifties policies are the best buys. Well, they're often just commercial companies who are using that as a marketing type of boon on top of it. And it isn't something you should automatically be plucking for unless it has something very specific in the terms you're going, you know.

• 31:47Martin Lewis?

  And I think there are differences, you know, certainly between a fifty-year-old travelling and an eighty-year-old travelling are not the same type of travelling insurance needs that you may well have. And, you know, fifty-year-olds tend to have less pre-existing conditions than eighty-year-olds, just by the nature of the way that our health works.

• 32:01Speaker 06

  Oh, that's excellent. You make my life as being a grown-up much easier, so thank you.

• 32:08Martin Lewis?

  Thank you very much. That's lovely to hear. I don't think we've got anything hard in there, but I think it's an interesting discussion for people to think about once they hit the big five-oh. And the scary thing, you know, what about hitting fifty?

• 32:20Speaker 06

  What's that?

• 32:21Martin Lewis?

  Once you hit fifty, you're nearer a hundred than not.

• 32:23Speaker 06

  Oh, well, my dad always says, you can't do anything about your age, you just keep getting, sort of getting older until you stop. And I don't really want to stop, so.

• 32:33Martin Lewis?

  Let's not stop. Let's celebrate not stopping together. Thank you so much for your call. Cheers.

• 32:37Speaker 06

  Thanks, Martin.

• 32:38Martin Lewis?

  That's it for this week's Question Time. Don't forget to subscribe so you know when we release a new episode. We put out a new Question Time every Monday alongside the regular podcast on a Thursday. Aren't you lucky? Two doses of money-saving tips and tricks a week. Make sure you do send in your questions, just email [email protected]. Ta-ta.

• 33:18Speaker 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.

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