Isa investing bestsellers revealed - but is cash still king?

Welcome to this is Money Podcast sponsored by Trading 2-1-2. Download Trading 2-1-2 app and open a cash isre with promo code TIM to get the 12-month bonus promo rate of 4.68%. Terms apply. I'm Georgie Frost and joining me and Simon Labelstey is Lee Boyce and coming up. Ice a season is in full swing as savers and investors race to beat the clock to fill up their allowance. But where are people putting their money? Simon reveals the ice a best sellers of 2026. Also today, fresh warning sounded over Britain's midlife pensions crisis, but it's not too late to build a healthy retirement pot. We'll tell you how. Plus, McDonald's launches trading cards with selected meals and some of the rarest are already listed on eBay for huge sums. And just what is the fastest way to make 10 grad? Five experts, including our very own Mr. Lambert, have been given 500 quid to put into betting crypto stocks furniture invented. But who will win? Don't forget to set up the date with all the latest breaking news just to get this as money.co.uk or download the app. But first, with the deadline fast approaching, a lot of people will be topping up their ice as if they can to make the most of the £20,000 limit and making some last minute investment decisions. But they're doing it at a pretty uncertain time. So where is the money actually going right now? And should you even be investing at all or holding back? But firstly, welcome to you both Lee. Isa 101, the user or loser principle? Yeah, exactly. You get a £20,000 limit. You can split that between cash, so save as accounts or stocks and shares, Isa. There are also other Isis, but a lot more niche. They're the two main ones. We've got until the end of this financial year to use the most of your allowance, so that's £20,000 limit. Roof Freshers on April the 6th. So what you have now is a lot of people like last minute trying to fill up those tax-free pots to basically get your money shielded from the tax man and any interest earned, any gains made tax free. So it's become a very, very important cornerstone of people's finances. So, do you write? Now we know that the rules are changing soon related to cash and also the amount of cash you can hold in her, stocks and shares, Isa, but that's not coming yet, has it? That won't come in until the next tax year, so April 20, 27. And that changes for under 65 only. So over 65s will still be able to use the full cash Isa allowance, but under 65s will not be able to use the full Isa allowance in cash. £12,000 is going to be the limit on the cash element of that. You've still got that £4,000 limit, but it just means that the extra £8,000 would have to go into stocks and shares. And you're still free to use the £4,000 limit for stocks and shares. So it's just going to limit the amount that under 65s are going to be able to hold in savings accounts in an Isa. That matters that date because I just asked the question, should you be investing in savings or should you be holding back, and we still got that £20,000 cash Isa limit for under 65s. But Simon, what are investors doing with their Isas right now? Are we seeing some overall trends in where the money is flowing, especially given the global context that we again find ourselves in? Yes, we are. We are seeing some trends in terms of where that money is going. And I'll talk through them in a second. But firstly, I think it's really important to note that even though it's the cash Isa allowance that's changing, and that's not coming in for a year, it has never been more important to invest in an Isa. Right? So don't think, oh well, I'm not holding cash. I've still got an investment Isa. I've still got my £20,000. That doesn't bother me. It's really, really important. And that is because of what has effectively been a sustained raid on investors that goes back way into the last conservative government. So if you invest in an enormous account, you are liable for tax on your profits, which is capital gains tax, and you are liable for tax on your dividends through dividend tax. Now there is a tax-free allowance every year for both of those things. But that tax-free allowance has been hacked back to a level at which people are being caught out in a way that they were not before. So the capital gains tax allowance is only £3,000 now. It used to be £12,300. And we have former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who the last time I checked happened to be a conservative minister to thank for that one. So that was a massive attack. And that means that previously, you could make £12,000 worth of profits a year. That's a lot. A lot of people don't make £12,000 worth of profits a year. With three grand, if you've got long-term holdings in shares, funds, investment trusts, ETFs, perhaps you've got some shares you had in the work, shares save scheme or something like that, it's much, much easier to hit that three grand number. On top of that, the dividend allowance. That's only £500 a year now, tax-free. Above that, dividend's a taxed. And that used to be £2,000 before Mr. Hunt got his hands on it. And it's worse because Rachel Reeves has delivered a double whammy of her own. So she's raised capital gains tax rates for basic rate tax payers. The capital gains tax rate used to be 10%. It's now 18%. Okay? And for higher rate tax payers, it went up to 24%. So and also for dividend tax, that rate is going to rise after April again. So it's really, really important because if you don't invest in an iser, you're going to get taxed on your profits and your dividends. And that is going to eat into your ability to grow long-term wealth. And that's going to be more, probably, than deciding where you put your money, you know, between this fund or that fund. On fair point, so I'm at a fair point. But generally, though, taking a look at some of the areas, where are people looking at the moment, particularly, and we've spoken about this, a lot of skepticism about the US. How significant is that? Well, we're seeing people shift away from the US. There's still a lot of money going into the US. There's still a lot of money going into, you know, American dominated tech and into the American dominated global stock market. But we are seeing more of a shift towards the UK, towards emerging markets, towards Europe, and notably also towards gold. So we've got the top four funds, trackers, stroke ETFs, investment trusts and shares in the ISIS. For example, you know, AJ Bell, the most well active fund is the Artemis Global Income Fund, followed by the Vanguard Life Strategy 60% Equity Fund, Bluewell Growth Fund, Artemis Smart, Garpe, European Equity, Fidelity Special Situations, and so on. In terms of ETFs and trackers, most of it's still going into the global index. So, for your world, Vanguard for your world, HSBC, for your world, Vanguard for its global all-cap and so on. Then if you look at investment trusts, interestingly, you've got 24-income fund at the top there, City of London Investment Trust, Greencoat UK Wind, Invest Go Bond, so you've got some bonds there, Fidelity Emerging Markets, Temple Bar Investment Trust. And then, you know, we've got the similar data from some other platforms as well. So for example, the Hargley to Lands Down Artemis Global Income is the top fund, Vanguard all-world is again the top tracker. Greencoat UK Wind, the top investment trust is really interesting that actually, there's this renewable wind fund that's featuring in both of these lists. Then again, with Fidelity, we've got the top one there is the Fidelity Cash Fund, that's people moving their money to cash. Then you've got Special Situations Fund, trackers again, World Index Fund, gold makes an appearance here, silver makes an appearance here as well. We've got Scottish Mortgage, very popular still, Fidelity Special Values, that's a value-oriented investment trust, Fidelity China Special Situations. Again, quite interesting, people putting their money into China. And then in terms of shares as well, we've got some big names featuring amongst those on our lists, we've got Legal and General, Microsoft, Amazon, NAC West, Legal and General feature again here. Legal and General is actually a very big company. Rebels Royce, Lloyd's Banking Group, Pearson, Barclays, Fresnillo, the minor, but a name that keeps popping up interestingly is Relax. Relax is a company that has been largely decided to have switched from being an AI winner to an AI loser. It's the former Reed Selvia and it deals with basically very high quality information and data that's used in professional situations. And it was considered that companies like this basically could benefit from AI because they hold these large proprietary databases of like really important information, the kind of information that people are willing to pay for. That's been really shaken up over the last few months and there's this trade that's emerged where there's a decision that software as a service companies and some of these big data companies are now considered to, their data is not considered to be worth what it was, and lunch is going to be eaten by new versions of chatbots and LLMs and so on and actually they now could be AI losers. There seems to be people thinking that actually companies like Relax, companies like the London Stock Exchange Group might have been oversold on that and actually the information that they still hold is still incredibly valuable and people will pay for it for years to come. Right. There's a lot in that, Simon. Lee, Simon mentioned a lot of words. There was just a lot of words. There was a great down of what people would invest in, but how I was going to say it. You ought to not invest. That might have sounded like a lot of words. To be fair, you did ask me the question of what people would invest in. And Simon, you answered it beautifully. That is no criticism. It's exactly right. Or I'm thinking it's for someone listening who is not a seasoned investor who does just think, oh, I just stick my money in a in a global tracker, but actually would like to be a bit more hands on Lee. How was that to go about? I want to go. And also the question is, do you at this moment? Well, that is a difficult question because obviously the last couple of weeks has been incredibly testing time, geopolitically, which has had a massive impact in markets. And there will be a lot of nervous, especially novice investors who are going to be worried seeing that down red arrow on the portfolio, potentially as an obvious investor, you have spread your risk around the globe, taking out one of those global trackers that Simon mentioned there. I would say the more kind of investment trust and individual share picking is probably more for an experienced investor who is probably more used to the peaks and troughs of what goes on globally, financial crisis pandemic, going back in further into history. So it's about holding you nervous, we've said on this before, investing is for the long term. But I was going to point out here, Georgie, that there was some research out at the beginning of the month suggesting that isosavings are going to be worth more than a trillion pounds this year. It's going to tip over the trillion pound mark, showing just how successful the ISO product has been. But interestingly in that, there's 115 billion expected to go into ISOs this year. 85 billion of that huge surge cash rises with pretty much the rest of it going into stocks and shares, which just stayed quite flat. People are cash stuffing this financial year. They were already doing it before this global, this geopolitical situation unfolded because of tinkering from the treasury where there was lots of rumours about what the chance was going to do to the ISO limit, the cash rise to limit, to get people investing and it's kind of blown up in their face because people have actually gravitated. So what was cash thinking this was the last chance to properly fill up the cash rise, and they might feel the same again next year. So I think that that's a really interesting thing. People appear to be holding their nerve in terms of stocks and shares investing. This came out at the start and a month, so could have skewed even differently now. Lots of people are still interested and way more so in putting it in cash despite all of the data showing that historically investing will give you higher returns. But it's very difficult to say that at the moment. It's people are nervous. I've had lots of conversations with various people from various jobs over the last couple of weeks who are novice investors who do have that information that they think are tips and do have this tendency to look at a couple of hours a day at what's happening to their money, which I think is a very dangerous game. A lead you're spoken about, suction shares are as cash is, but just to wrap this one up, best cash is to rates out there at the minute. I suppose you don't want to leave it too long if you're opening a new one up as well because the deadline is faster approaching. What rates are we looking at, Lee? Yeah, you don't want to leave it too late, especially with some of the providers, smaller building societies, for example, with that's where you're heading. Bigger banks tend to be a little bit easier to deal with in terms of last minute, but don't leave it to the last minute. I think anything that's got April after the number is probably leaving it a touch too late. I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that. You don't want to be panicking at the last minute trying to do whatever that you're where you're trying to head with your cash. You can still get more than 4% a number of providers and you can go and check them out at our savings tables on this is money. That's both easy access and fixed rates. Now I think I spoke about this recently, Georgie, but the big battle has come from the saving, sorry, the investing platforms. So the trading two, one, two, the hard grieves, the e-thoros of this world, they've all and IG as well. They've all offered quite good cash-eiser rates with bonuses and stuff attached to them to try and attract people in to become a customer. Essentially, it's almost like the current account switching battle. You know, but banks are paying a couple hundred pounds for you to switch bank account. At the moment, lots of the best rates cash-eiser-wise are being offered by these investment platforms as almost like a shop window get you in and become a customer. But you can still find banks, buildings, societies, nationwide launched a number of buyers recently that pay above 4%. You know, that's a big name. And whatever you do, you might have your money in one of your in your cash-eiser with one of your big banks that you bank with. So if your current account is with X bank, you might have your I-ser with X bank. They quite often do, they don't offer best buy rates and they offer some of the worst rates that you can ever find and you will drop into those rates if you're not proactive. I would definitely have a look at what rate your I-ser is currently paying. If you are one of those people in the bank and making sure that you are getting their very best I-ser-rate, if you're taking the lazy cooks way of basically sorting your I-ser out because you've left it last minute. Lazy cooks way alike that. All right, another day, another grim piece of pension research that latest from legal in general who say that there are five million British workers who are suffering a mid-life pension crisis which could lead them facing hardship in retirement. Bad news for us here. I think we're all, I don't know how I would do our leave but I won't ask you it's rude. And saving is most prevalent among 40 to 54 year olds and even worse for those in that age group who are single, renting their home or working part-time. So what is going on? And is it too late to do anything about it? Simon, we have discussed this in the past haven't we? This particular age group. Where is going on? Well, this particular age group is my age group. So I can tell you what's going on and what LNG have found here is that basically there's a chunk of people who were too young to fully reap the rewards of generous final salary pension schemes. Defined benefit schemes. And they were too young to benefit from being auto enrolled right at the start of their career. And they will have only been auto enrolled if they change jobs. Now most of those people will probably have changed jobs and ended up being auto enrolled but it might not have been until well into their 30s for example. And there's a reason why these two things matter. So firstly final salary schemes. Just a quick, you know, basic explainer of these. These are, that's the common name for something known as a defined benefit pension. And a defined benefit pension is great. You only get them in the public sector now because private sector companies started getting rid of them in the 2000s up to the point where basically as hardly any private sector schemes that are still open and I don't know if there's any private sector schemes that are open to people who join a company. And what that involves is the company says that it will pay you a set amount in retirement for every year that you have worked there and been a member of the pension scheme. So for example that might be one 45th and it used to be based on your final salary. So what you earned on the day you left that company which is great for most people because usually when you're out of company your salary goes up over time. So your salary is going to be the highest at the point when you retire. Not guaranteed but that's likely to be the case. It's now shifted to a thing called career average where it averages it out over what you earn at that company if you were your career. But so say you worked somewhere for 30 years and you were accruing it at 145th. Well that would mean that at the end of those 30 years you'd get 30/45. So you'd get two thirds, two thirds of your final salary and it's on the employer to pay you that. It's a promise, it's a binding promise, it's very, very difficult to get out of and there's protection if the company goes bust. So if you had that and you had years of building that up at a company you're probably going to be okay. You might not have as much income in retirement as you'd hoped for but you're going to be okay. You've then got to find contribution pots. These are different. You have to save into it, your employer saves into it and at the end of it you've got to put a money that you have to turn into a retirement income. So you dependant on how much you put in, how much your employer puts in, the performance of the stock market over time and then also what then happens to the stock market when you retire. Also enrollment at least means that people are put into those defined contribution schemes early. And the earlier you start with these things the more you benefit from compounding. So you might only be putting in a very small amount at the start of your career but you put some money in, your employer probably matches it. You get some tax relief, goes in a pot, gets invested, spends 40 years growing, you get a decent retirement pot at the end. If you're in that middle chunk of people, this midlife bunch, well as I said you probably didn't benefit from the good thing, the defined benefit pensions and you probably didn't get into your defined contribution pot early enough. And that means that there is this chunk of people that's been identified for whom there's definitely going to be a crunch when they reach retirement age in the they're either not going to have the income that they hope for, they're not going to be able to retire, they're going to have to work out some other way of paying for retirement, and it's much worse if you don't own your own home, because at least if you've paid off a mortgage by the time you reach retirement, you don't have those housing costs built in. If, on the other hand, you're renting, then you've still got to find the money that's going to pay for that rent every month. Right, a tough one then, Lee. Do you, if you're 43, let's just say, work hard to pay off your mortgage, would you pay in your pension? Well, it's two very difficult, different goals. I mean, it's always going to depend on your individual circumstances, but you should never neglect your pension. You know, at the end of the day, it's one of the best tax breaks you're going to get, and we've had talks this week from Labour, from Torston Bell talking about the triple lock being under threat, the triple lock is the guarantee on state pension, that the pension will go up by 2.5% CPI average earnings growth. That already, we're having rumors of that looking like it could be under threat in the next Parliament. So you have to take control of what you're doing, and actually I was looking at this research, Georgia was reading this research, and it does make for quite worrying reading. No, I'm not faulty yet. I'm still a year and a bit away. But this research from NRG is saying, for average pension fund for 47-year-old, this is the data that it crunched from the report it did. The average pension fund for 47-year-old is £27,000, and the median retirement fund figure is just for much. For much? For 27-year-old. For a 40-something year-old. Yeah, and the median retirement fund figure is just £4,000 for renters at that age, and £6,000 for part-time workers. And that is researched. It did, among 25 to 54-year-olds, and it found that 9 million people in total could be under-saving and risking hardship in old age. There's still that kind of comfort blanket of the state pension, and thinking, you know, probably not as much out age, but maybe a touch older than us, that it's going to give you enough in retirement. It's just simply not true, not if you want a properly comfortable retirement. And the onus now is on us as Simon said, you know, with your private pension, and you should look into what your company is offering, you should look at whether it's going to match your contributions, in some cases, if you've been at a certain place for a certain amount of time, it might be that they offer even more generous than that, and you should just make sure that you're taking control of your retirement. I mean, this is going to be a hot topic over the next few decades. It's been all sorts of reports that lately, suggesting that a state pension age might be pushed up to 80. There was one this week suggesting that a state pension age is going to be pushed up to 75. You've got to make sure that you've not got your head in the sand, and I would say if you are someone in their 40s or 50s, and you think you've left it too late, you've just got to crack on with it and get what you can, and do what you can with it, and make the most of that tax break, and make the most of, you know, auto-enrollment. I mean, auto-enrollment has been, I would argue, a relative success. You know, it has got people in their 20s and 30s. I was just about the generation that has been that prime spot of being auto-enrolled and just taking control of it, and I've taken a more of an active interest in it as I have got older and once I have hit those life goals of buying a house, for example, you know, you start taking it a little bit more seriously. But the earliest start, of course, as we always say, the easier it is, and there was some interesting figures in here, actually, that Tanya Jeffries' our investment of pensions, and it's a put in here, originally, there was this LNG research, is talking about this MRR, minimum replacement rent, which is basically, is talking about income target figures for your pension, and what it should pay out. Pensions UK estimates that the minimum of a single person needs to get by 13,400 pounds a year, or 21,600 pounds, for a couple, but LNG also facts in the cost of rent, and uses a target replacement rate, the amount your salary at a time, and should you aim to replace. I was looking at this pension's commission, it was from the early 2000, and the replacement rate was updated a few years ago, but it instituted for fiscal studies, and I thought it was interesting just to read it out, so you can kind of get an idea of what you might potentially need for retirement. It says it finds that people are ending up to around £17,000, and you need an income worth 80% of their previous wage. From £17,000 to £31,500, it's 70%, from that level to £45,000, it's 67%, from there to £90,000, it's 60%, and if you earn £90,000, plus it's 50%. It's a real rule of, kind of broad rule of thumb that. It does give an indication of what you might need, and I know I say this, I've said this a million or one times, I was in a podcast, Georgie, but go away, crunch those figures, look at compound incanaculators, look at where you're going to be, age 55, age 60, age 65, age 70, and your current trajectory. If you can spare an extra 1% to put it into your pension, and it's not going to hit your lifestyle detrimentally, I would go away and have a look at that. As a priority, I think that saving into your private pension is going, and building up a big enough pot is going to be crucial, if you want a good standard of living when you hit retirement age. Yeah, and I will bang the drum for self-employed people, because we really are on our own, but I was interviewing a financial advisor, many moons to go. Listen, look, it's really hard to find a figure of how much is a good pot. I know people say, "Oh, it comes down to your salary," and you're, "Darada, but sometimes it's nice just to go, how am I on the right path?" Like, is it something we say, "Hey, Lee, how much you got in your pot?" And you, I do. I always are, "Oh, guys, we're friends. How much have you got in your pot?" I had a friend that was a, that was self-employed for many years. He worked for a company now, and I banged onto him for ages about opening the tip, and I, I'd openly tell him how much was in my pension, and how much the returns had been over that past year, because there's nothing better than being open and honest about your finances, and trying to actually give a real life, living an example of why it's important to put money away in a pension. When it feels so far away, that's the thing. At that conversation, we're probably in our early to mid-30s, and I think there's that tendency to go, "Oh, yeah, I'm going to be retiring for 30, 40 years." So, I'll kick that down the road, and I'll do that next year. And that's, you know, a completely logical way of thinking, and I totally understand it. But I think the more we can be open and honest with our close friends and family, and kind of really, you know, reiterate how important this is, I think they're better. 100% free the pension figures. That's what I said. I'm going to normalise chatting with your mates how much they've got in there. But actually, this financial advisor said to me, "Oh, well, I would say for someone in their, who just turned 50, half a million." And I thought, "Oh, that's punchy." And so that's what I had in my head is, that's what people, people should have to, and if you haven't. So I've sort of been embarrassed to say to people how much I would have in, because I don't have half a million in my pension top, even though I didn't, I wasn't able to save, because as you know, I had a big major back injury. And so I had a pause in my pension. Actually, I was reading some standard life research about how much pauses cost people in retirement, and the average that they people pause their pension contributions for, is two years, but one in seven pauses for about five plus years, which can cost, you know, tens of thousands of pounds. And so the advice there is just get back on it. Simon? Yeah, and actually, Alan G talked about this. They gave a strategy for building 187,000 pound pot, even if you've got nothing. So if you, and you were starting at 47, so Alan G estimates, 47 year old paying into a pension for the first time could contribute auto enrollment minimum of 8% over two decades, and save 116,000 pound fund by age 67. Right? Now, if you increase your personal contribution rate by 1% each year, so 12% of your salary was going into your pension, your fund could reach 187,000 pounds they reckon. Now, that's not going to buy you a particularly luxurious retirement, just to be clear, okay? That financial advisor, in essence, was kind of right. Because if you look at those pensions UK figures and you look at the cost of a moderate retirement, and then you multiply it up by, you know, what's considered to be a safe amount of money to take out your pension each year is about 4%. So you need to times the the income amount that you want by 25. You soon start to reach some disturbingly large numbers. You know, if you want 40 grand a year of retirement, you can need a million. That's a lot, right? Yeah. Most people aren't going to get anywhere near that, but 250,000 pounds is achievable, right? And if you can over the lifetime of working lifetime, if you've got 250,000 pounds, now you could look at it. I'm about to give some advice that any financial advisor listening to, actually, I'm sorry, I'm about to say something that any financial advisor listening to this will vehemently disagree with and say that I am completely wrong and it's irresponsible of me to say this. And they are right because you need to be careful about how much you take out of your pot because if you're doing it and keeping it invested, the problem is it's all very well if it if the market stay pretty good, but if they go down, you've got this risk where you're taking money out as your pot's going down and you're you're depleting it even quicker. But you can look at it as a safe amount to take out of your 250,000 pound pot is 4% a year, right? That is the safe amount that you can take out. But you can also look at it as if you go, right, well, 250,000 pound pot, how long am I gonna be retired for maybe 20 years? So say you retired at 65 or 70, 25 years, 25 years, it's say 25 years, right? Well, that's 10 grand a year, isn't it? I mean, you'd have to be really lucky to make it be 10 grand a year, but it's not inconceivable that you could spread 250,000 pounds over 25 years and get 10 grand a year. And if that you have that 10 grand a year, on top of a state pension of 12,000 pounds, well, that's a substantial difference to the amount of money that you're getting every year. So I guess it comes back down to the bit where, like Ellen Gia saying, if you are in this position, don't stick your head in the sand, do something about it because you'll be in a much better position if you do something about it than if you don't do something about it, and it gets to 20 years' time and you've still got a number that's closer to zero than one that's gonna get you a reasonable retirement. Right, I was just thinking, though, that the reason that was so surprising to me and perhaps the reason that Lee was talking with the conversation Lee was having with his friend, I think is a lot of people just don't realize the magnitude of the figures that they're gonna have to deal with. So they think, yeah, it's fine, I'm just dealing with it. Another day, another day, another day, it will take some time to get figures that will give you that decent lifestyle that you want in retirement. You've got a revolution, which is very quickly on that, is that you hit that first, say, 20,000 pounds, then you hit the 50,000 pounds, then you hit 100,000 pounds in your pension pot, the compounding starts to really take effect. And then all of a sudden, it feels like not such an unachievable goal. You've mentioned that half a million pounds at 50,000, is people way off if you take that LNG research at Facebook. A lot of people aren't, and a lot of people will be hitting those targets. And again, that's the message I would tell people, especially if you're in your late 20s, early 30s, that those targets, they start to kind of, you knock down those dominoes pretty quickly, you want the pot starts getting bigger. So just stick with it, it might feel like you're getting nowhere at the beginning, and then it starts to kind of feel a little bit brighter, and then all of a sudden, you're like, wow, okay, and potentially return. If you get an annual return on your pension of 5%, and you've got six figures in there, and you're continuing to contribute to it, all of a sudden it doesn't look unfeasible. Plus, the magic of compounding, which means earning returns on returns that you've already made, means that if you save or invest for 40 years, instead of 30 years, you double your money. Exactly. Only two things have made me as proud in life, my pension pot, and getting a B in physics A level. Anyway, moving on. Get happy meals, it's true. Forget happy meal toys and sunglasses. Do you remember those? Lee, you won't, but I do. 1992, they were out. Anyway, McDonald's has tapped into the surge of interest around trading cards, and this week launched packets of their own designs with selected meals, and already some are being, that's why we're talking about it, obviously, being listed on online market sales for sale for more than 40 quid, and in some examples, north of 150 quid. Now last month, of course, everybody knows this. US Influencer, Logan Paul, sold a rare Pikachu card for nearly $16.5 million after apparently 41 days of furious bidding. So could we see similar prices, Lee? I might be getting a bit carried away with that, but we don't need to delve into US Influencers, and trading cards. Is this, they've always had a bit of an appeal. Haven't they, certain trading cards? But what's this surge of interest? Last couple of years, there's definitely been a massive shift in people who have gotten into trading cards once again, and they kind of really came into the loan in the late '90s with Pokemon, and you were talking about Pikachu there. And I know when something's gone really kind of crackers is where my mum says to me, what did you see that Pokemon card that sold for 16 million dollars? Wow. I mean, when my mum said that, who has absolutely no interest in the news whatsoever, I was quite surprised. That's where you know. So I've looked into this before, because my nephew's quite into Pokemon cards and trading cards, sports trading cards, and I went to a trading card show with him about 18 months ago, and I was fascinated by the characters that were there. Of course, the usual kind of people you would expect at that kind of event. But there were some really well-dressed people that clearly this is their business, or at least their side business, in which they are spending thousands and thousands of pounds, essentially buying and selling trading cards, hoping one's going to grow in value, and all that kind of thing. And it's kind of followed me around since that trading card thing. I went to an event back when the NFL was in London, I went with a company called Watnot to go and watch the NFL. Now Watnot is a little bit like eBay, but with live selling, which eBay's now actually started to do. And we did it at kind of unveiling that. So we had some cards to open up to pull the cards up, basically, see if you got anything good. And I pulled a signed card. So you get players, so I had an NFL player that had signed his card, his rookie card, and you hope that that rookie guys, the guy that might be playing his first season, you've got his signature card, you keep it in good condition, you hope that his career absolutely kicks off, and that will be worth a fortune in the past. Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, cards from that era, when they first kicked off their kind of early cards are going for big money. You think basketball players are Michael Jordan, those really old cards, they go for a really big buck. So there's kind of like two elements to this, you've kind of got the sporting card, sporting trading card, and you've got the sort of Pokemon Disney cards, and that kind of thing. And I'll give you one more example, tops who make a lot of the sports trading cards were taken over by a big US company called Fanatics a couple of years ago, and they opened a store in Piccadilly Circus, probably about a year ago, and I actually went along last month with a friend, we were in London, we popped along the queue to get into the shop, was absolutely phenomenal. And inside their people were spending so much money, you think cost of living crisis, people have got money to do this, and it's become a massive thing on social media, to basically buy expensive cards, open them on social media, and then on Instagram and stuff, and people watch those videos and see if someone's going to pull a rare card, and some of these cards can go for absolutely huge amounts of money. So this is where McDonald's comes into it, it's being quite clever, it's kind of known that this is a kind of a phenomenon that people are back into, and they started doing these adult happy meals, right? So the last one that it did a couple of months ago was actually about a month, six weeks ago, was friends characters, there were six to collect, these friends characters that you got with an adult happy meal, far more expensive than the child's happy meal, you're talking seven, eight pounds, to get one of these, rather than sort of three, four pounds for a happy meal, and you got a character. Trading cards have replaced that, this is a thing that started this weekend, it's going on until the end of April, and there's 24 cards to collect, and if you've got children, you'll know this, they've done it in a kind of list of kind of common cards, slightly rare cards, rare cards, and then they've called legendary cards as the last category. So they're in blocks of six, and there's six legendary cards that are, technically the rarest ones, and these are the ones that are going on eBay for quite a lot of money, and the ones that people are looking for. There's also 10 Ronald McDonald gold cards that will pay you 10,000, they'll give you a 10,000 pound prize if you find one of those. So it's very gimmicky, and you'd have to be pretty, very hardcore, interested to be going to eat McDonald's every day, dropping seven, eight pounds to get a pack of trading cards for four cards that you get in that. It won't be dropping seven or eight pounds if you eat in McDonald's every day, I assure you. No, but to get this business, no, no, no, no, no, no, quite. But that's the way you can get hold of them. So in the name of research, yesterday, - What can I say, Simon? - Oh God. - Get your phone out, Simon, get your phone out, I feel like we should livestream this. I don't know if any of us knows how to livestream. So let's just get your phone out, and film this momently. - Okay. - Give it your best social media influencer vibe. - Okay, all right. - And you're gonna have to describe this like a great sports commentator, 'cause we are just listening to this. - Right, okay, I've- - So leave the moments yours. - I've already sort of opened the packet, so I wasn't wasting time on the podcast, and I'm gonna rush it so you can hear. So I'm looking in here, great first four cards. Okay, we've got a McDonald's pizza card, that's a retro one, straw dispenser, that's another retro one. Apple pie tree, retro one, and then a character card, but nugget buddies, and I've got three six chicken nuggets with that one. Come on, so I can go get some more McDonald's. Right, pack two, here we go. I'm going fast. Get that russle, it's there, it's there. - You're like, it needs more, Lee. - Come on, it needs more boxes. - I'm not that easy. - I'm not that easy. - Right, we've got a fry scoop. Look at that, that's quite cool. Number two. - Does that mean free food? - You've got to collect numbers one, two, three, and four, to get a free medium selected meal. Oh, look, I call that as hamburger. I've one, I've one of free hamburger, I've got a cheeseburger, I've got all mayo chicken with that one. Ooh, and then I've got another fan card, there's a gherkin card, and then milkshake dip, look at that. That's quite fun. Right, last one, come on. I've got a runner with a dough card in his dough. - Ten thousand. - Can you feel it? Can you, oh, my. (gasps) Now he won't believe this. - I'm absolutely baffled as to every, he's got tens of thousands of pounds in free food. - I've got no idea what's happening. Oh, I've got another, I've got a free fillet fish, fillet fish, or four nuggets, but I've got it. - I've got it for a fish for my five. - I've got a legendary card. I've got one of the ones on eBay that's going for, that've been listed for 40 pounds. Here we go. - Yeah. - Here we go. - Ten thousand. - And then a molten apple pie, which, you know, actually, I think I've had an apple pie once, but then it was molten. So I kind of like the way they're poking fire themselves there. - It's probably something. still hot. Yeah, probably is. So that legendary card, I should point out here, they're going up on eBay for big bucks, but because it's so early, we're not seeing what they're actually selling for. So of course, on eBay, I could go and put this card up for £1000 on eBay. You know, I can go and do what I want with it. What I'm going to go and do is I'm going to go and list it on eBay for £5 and then I'll let you know this time. Let's work how much it sells for. How's that sound? Yeah, I feel like we had a lot of words from Simon at the start and feel like we've equally had a lot of words from you now. So I'm a bit confused. What the hell do you actually have? So we've got a Philly O fish. How much are you going to hang on a minute? Right. Oh, how much free food do you have from those packs? Okay, so I should point out here that I bought two meals yesterday to get two packs of cards and for some reason they gave me three packs. So they gave me a bonus pack winner. So out of those, I have got three, six free chicken McNuggets. I've got a free hamburger, cheeseburger, or moe chicken and I've got another one which is a Philly O fish or four chicken McNuggets. I'll need to go and work out if I've got enough of the numbers to go and get a proper meal, but you have to claim it via an app and I'm not getting them at Donald's app. I don't don't eat in there. So anyway, I've got a ledger D card. That's the exciting thing. Right. And this Philly O fish card might be my favourite. I mean that is, that is pretty cool. It's a little fish with a net looking happy. It's put a smile on my face Georgie. That's all I can say. And I hope the listeners too. I mean, when you think it couldn't get more exciting this show, we are even going to crank it up a notch because Simon's taking part in a very exciting experiment. Can we call it basically to find out the quickest legal way to £10,000. The male and this is money have given Simon and four other experts, 500 quid to put to work. Simon, all friendly Bounder, it's not. You better win. What's this about? This is the race to £10,000 and I would describe it as a challenge, I think is the way to describe it. And we have each been given £500. And the challenge is to try to turn it into £10,000 or as close to £10,000 in the shortest possible time that we can. So firstly, I should say this is obviously not guidance on what to do with your money or how to invest. Trying to turn £500 into £10,000 in the quickest possible time is a recipe for losing money fast, not making money fast, particularly if you're going to be doing something like buying and selling shares, which is what I am doing. I'm not even sure whether buying £500 worth of McDonald's would end up in £10,000 worth of winnings from what Lee's just done on the podcast now. But it might do. You never know. So anyway, there's myself, there's a crypto trader, there's a sports better. Note the high risk stuff going on here. We've also got a fashion reseller and an antique dealer. Okay. So aim of the game, try to get to £10,000 as quickly as possible. Don't lose all your money. And that's it. So I obviously this goes against everything I've ever learnt about investing. So that's all out the window. So I need to be trading. How long have you got? Did you say, well, until we get there, you've got to try to get £10,000. So if someone gets to £10,000 in a week, we've got a week. If someone, I mean, obviously, just keep going on and on. Yeah. I mean, they will come a point where we just tot it up and see who's winning and maybe call time again. Two not. Yeah. Look, so, okay, right. I work this out. Okay. Now a reasonable return from the stock market would be seven percent a year. Okay. That would be considered a decent yet decent average return from the stock market. In some years, you get better. In some years, you get worse. Now I could turn £500,000 into £10,000 using the stock market. But at that rate of return, it would take me 43 years. Jessica Bid, my colleague who is running the challenge, has told me I do not have 43 years. So I will need to take a bit more risk than that. Currently, we are on effectively day one of yours, truly, investing his money. My strategy, I think, is to try and buy stuff that's going up that morning, buy stuff that's got good results. I've seen this from when we did a share picking game a couple of years back where basically try and get in early in the morning, take your profits, move out. That was how the winner did it. I obviously need to spread my risk a bit, but you don't want to do it too much. So maybe across five shares. But then that's £100. And then even if your share goes up by 20%, you've only made 20. So I've got to try to work out how I do this. As we speak, I'm down £2.6 p. Could be worse. Okay. Could definitely be better. I think that my money is on the fashion reseller and the antique dealer. I think this is going to prove that if you want to try to make money out of stuff quickly, then it helps to be dealing with real stuff. And obviously it's not quite time dependent as well. You are in re-talking about stock market quite a difficult time. Crypto, a lot of people might put money out of crypto. Like, you know, have this been a few years ago, crypto might have done it with some random crypto with some kind of mean coin. And you still get in that stuff. Exactly. Even when things are down and even when things are bad opportunities present themselves, the pendulum swings too far the wrong way. And so on. And people are always after an opportunity to try and make a quick buck with a mean coin or a penny stock. Oh, I should say also that we are also up against the monkey with a pin, which is the modern day version of a monkey with a pin, which is a monkey. It's not real monkey. It's a toy monkey that we have used to randomly select ten penny shares. And we'll see how nice it goes as well. Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, you can come to the site, come to this is money where you'll find the race of £10,000 and follow it there and we'll keep people updated. Can I just say? Can I just say no? No, no, if it's the time of, but I am strongly rooting for the monkey. I really am rooting for the monkey. And the second thing I was going to say, imagine if I had pulled that Ronald Gold card and £10,000 and the race to £10,000, which is high jacks by me saying I'd won it via Ronald's trading card game and me buying it off you for £500, £400, £400, £7, £4,000, £2,000, £2,000, £6. On the plus side, you may be rooting for the monkey, but a conversation with one of our colleagues in the sports department yesterday, so he told me that the entire sports department was just rooting for me to beat the sports betting guy. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Simon, is that the week? That's the week is actually a not great stat that I'm going to give you. And the not great stat that I'm going to give you as I build up to it is 1.7 million. That is the number of British households whose heating bills are estimated to have doubled since the Iran War work broke out. These are people who are on heating oil, so they're off the gas grid and they have to buy a heating oil for their heating and the price of that has doubled. We're seeing some really quite astonishing figures coming out of it and they are the kind of, you know, the first victims of the spike in the cost of living and the volatility that this could cause for the UK in terms of the cost of living. All right, then. Thank you very much, Simon. Thank you, Lee. And thank you for listening. You can keep up state with all the latest breaking money news. Just go to this is money.co.uk or download the app. And if you have any comments or questions to the team or anything you'd like and took into, Simon, you can email us up podcast at this is money.co.uk or come to this is money.co.uk/podcasts to find podcast pass and join in the debate and read a comment. And if you like our podcast, why not readers? We're if you found us. It helps other people find us too.