Why the Price Cap rise is voluntary! £87bn of lost pensions & accounts. Reclaim student loans

Pipsy podcast on suomessa suomessa. Katsomassa suomessa suomessa suomessa. Eläinvakuutuksemme tarjoavat sopivan turvan kaikenlaisiin tarpeisiin. Sinä valitset vakuutuksen laajuuden, me tarjoamme maksuttaman etä elänlääkäriin sekä nopean suora korvauksen klinikan kasallaan. Luöllisää, akriapistefi. 6.7 billion pärsin, s®ich retirementneet jäälinhtiä, CKK Next - - jackeilitvi auchit saisi cub developmentsen! Su Milhijuu妹time位itaensioidمل retrievea läpistä päämpi glubästräminen. Niin ei katsee neéralse hope мик�äviäirää läOTT retrieve Robbie - - mein pu разработ whoaopetta suisilorella. Katso, おま mene pitää valmistaa sparklingjauita, su杯ossa rimmäisiä kuone kuin lähadminisiä. Siellä on miksi erittäini pizzaan. Mä olet jälkeen katsominen, kun minun päräviä on jälkeen. Se on saa katsominen, kun ei ole saa katsominen. Mutta se on tärkeää muistaa, kun on katsominen ja kuonea, kun on katsominen. Sitten on! - Joo, jotenkin on tärkeää! - Joo, jotenkin on tärkeää, kun minun päräviä on jälkeen. Se on tärkeää, kun minun päräviä on jälkeen. Sitten on tärkeää, kun minun päräviä on jälkeen. Martin, se on tärkeää, kun minun päräviä on jälkeen. Pensionistajan on jälkeen. alkey, praying on liian plein. Aiken j usein, että Goe extensions agensä autoromimen sen ♫ Olet myöää sitä pidän beltanson sääntää pietyntä tapeena käästyn chưaat. Hei, itonne purple j Resources meet 0 - ― Se ei! ― Mä ensin minuun generot täällä, joka opiskeakin. Kylpolkoηkguitarit tarvita valeille myös ratenä. ― Ja jos on, mutta onko tullut! ― Onko, se on jatko. ― Onko, että on se, että joten se on tullut, mitä olet. ―Oletko, että on kylpolkoηkguitarit, että on tullut. ―Kos, joten on tullut, että on tullut, mutta onko se, että on tullut. ―Skallit, mutta onko se, että on tullut. ―Telus, että teilusten maten. ―Telus, koska se on tullut, että se on tullut, mitä se on tullut. 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Minä olen järjestelmässä, että olen järjestelmässä, että on järjestelmässä, että on järjestelmässä, että on järjestelmässä, että on järjestelmässä, että on järjestelmässä, ja on järjestelmässä, ja on järjestelmässä, että on järjestelmässä, että on järjestelmässä, että on järjestelmässä, että on järjestelmässä, että on järjestelmässä, mutta on järjestelmässä, mutta on järjestelmässä, mutta on järjestelmässä, mutta on järjestelmässä, mutta on järjestelmässä, scramble by chemotherapy that I forgot about a building society account. One day passing the building society I vaguely remembered once having an account there. I went in to ask and it turned out there was £31,000 I'd forgotten about and it's still in there. Wow! It is, it is a wow. Just a slight aside, it will go. Oh, it was just gonna say like imagine. It's like when in the pool. Doesn't it imagine just to. remembering when to in all of a sudden you find you've got £31,000 you didn't have. That could be life changer. You would be more. And this is exactly what we're going to go into because there. I mean, just go, I just want to do the number again. 87 billion lost assets. 87,000 million pounds. The only thing about this particular one when you mean you read it is the it's the last bit. It's still there and I'm sitting there going. Yeah, well, look if you. So building society account from 20 years ago the rate's gonna be absolutely pants. -Juuri, että niitä on jokin. At least to somewhere where you're earning a top easy access account, somewhere like whether it's Chase or Trading 212 and putting it in a cash isre or doing something with it, maybe thinking about investing it so it grows even quicker. But hey, anyway, you've got another, I think. Yeah, this is from Raw's, who says my 83-year-old stepdad had a letter recently from Scottish Widows out of the blue asking if he had contact details for his ex-wife as they were trying to contact them both about a policy they'd taken out when he married her over 50 years ago. Members, he put £200 in a policy. After doing some research online, as my stepdad didn't have any details for his ex-wife and he's been married to my mum for 35 years, we found out the cheat passed away. The policy has now been transferred to my stepdad after he obtained a copy of her debt certificate and recently they have brought back saying there is £16,000 in there. Wow. Just, I mean, so hopefully with all that we have hwetted people's appetites enough to understand that there is a real chance, especially the older you are, especially if you've moved house many times, which is absolutely one of the clues here. If you didn't update your contact details, if you've changed your job, if your pension provider specifically here or your investment company has merged or renamed, you are potentially likely to get money. Just to say on the pension, the average value of a lost assets is £9,500. So we need to try and get people their money back. Yeah. So we're talking big, you know, these are big numbers you're marting with that we're not going to know. They're so what should people be doing there and about finding these pensions and investments? Well, let's, we'll start with pensions. We'll start with pensions. To find your lost pension for free, you want to try and dig out any of your old paperwork and try contacting your ex-employers first because it would tend to be through your ex-employer to find out who the scheme is. If you can do that, then you're getting in touch with them, you're providing ID and you're going through. And by the way, you might also in some cases, though it's more difficult and because of the way that pensions work, they're not necessarily always forwarded on. You might want to claim it for a deceased person to or to see if there's a way to track it. If you don't have any luck, there's a free pension tracing service on gov.uk that includes over 200,000 schemes. What that will do is you'll use it to locate the scheme that you were in, whether it's changed name, who the employer was, you put your details in and it should try and locate that for you. Then you're going to contact that scheme and ask, here's my details, here's when I was with you as best as you possibly can. Do you have a pension in my name? And they're going to try and reconnect you. You will almost certainly need to provide ID to show that you is you because clearly you don't want other people taking your money when it comes out there. So that's the first place I would try. For bank accounts, something separate, my lost account, which is a joint venture from UK Finance, the Building Society Association and NSNI, which is the state back financial institution that includes premium bonds and there are lots of people out of touch with their premium bonds too. So you can go to my lost accounts website, you can select from a range of financial institutions, you think you might have had an account with and they will send a letter with your information to see if it comes up with a match. If there's a match, they'll write to you with the next steps. If you don't know the bank or building society it might have been with, it will recommend doing a search of the largest five, which is HSBC Barclays, Lloyds, NatWest and Santander. The only slight difficulty with my lost account is it has to be denoted a lost account, which is a sort of technical thing for the amount of time you have been out of contact with it. So if it's slightly shorter but you're not in touch, it won't find you on my lost account. And now I'm going to do the catch your service, which is an argument I should have done first, but I've sort of, I've gone through the two more official services first, if you like. And then we get a Fintech firm called Gretel that was set up in 2022. And the way it makes its money is banks, building societies, investment firms and others have a legal duty to try and find and reconnect with people who have lost accounts. And what they do is they pay Gretel as their way of fulfilling that legal duty and because they can do it via Gretel more cheaply than they can do it by themselves and they're subcontracting it out there. So what you can do is you can go and create a Gretel account, you use your email address in the password, you'll need to enter your name, date, a birth, phone number, post code, it'll send you a verification email, all the usual stuff. Once activated, Gretel will run a soft search on your credit report. In fact, your credit score will be a soft search so you'll see it on your credit file, but it won't impact your ability, lenders won't see it. To find any previous addresses, ask you to confirm these. Then it will run a search for missing bank accounts, investments, shares, pensions, life insurance and child trust funds, which I need to come on in a moment with initial results in a few minutes and you'll be able to see the search matches on your dashboard. It will then search every 14 days for new contacts. Now, I need to explain it's not perfect because it's only about the ones that it works with, but it does cover a particularly wide range and it is a pretty good catch or service that I have had quite a lot of success from. So if you just want the easy route, but it's a profit-making company that's paid through rather than the official sources, I would go through Gretel. Final one, sorry I'm monologuing. No, no, no, no, this is good. This is good. I'm writing it down as you run. You're going to go do Gretel later. I can tell by the way you responded to that. Absolutely. Trust Funds, now the child trust fund is the predecessor of the junior ice, so it was a tax-free savings account, but the state started it off with 250 quid for most young people. Right. If you had a child trust fund, if you were born between the 1st of September 2002 and the 2nd of January 2011, are either of your kids in that age group? No, they're too young. They're too young. So they wouldn't have had one and the state no longer put money in. Now the key is over 750,000 child trust funds have matured IE, the child is now 18, because you'll be 18 to 23 on those dates. And they are likely holding a collective 1.6 billion pounds in 750,000 accounts that have been lost track off. So there are 750,000 young people aged between 18 to 23 who are sitting on an average of 2,200 pounds, but don't know about it, because it would have been state money. Now the average is 2,200. How much you have in depends on whether your parents added money to it, whether it was an investment, which would have tend to outperform saving. So some people might find 300, some people might find 5,000 for this. Go on to HMRC's tool. You need a government gateway ID just to find your child trust fund. If you're 16 or older, you can do it yourself. If you're 18 or under, your parents can do it for you. So if you're under 16, your parents have to do it for you. You put your details in. You put your national insurance number in and it will tell you who your child trust fund provider is and then go and see how much money you've got. Unbelievable. Three quarters of a million 18 to 23 year olds, we started this by talking about generational issues. But three quarters of a million have potentially 2,200 pounds. I don't know about. I think that's blown my mind more Martin than the 87 billion. Because I think the 87 billion, that is a lot of money that has been caught and caught lost. But I sort of, you can sort of understand how that happens or whatever. But this is cash that's there that you can sort of access now. You can access now and pro almost everybody who's lost track of it, your account will not be good because you haven't been managing it. You've not chosen to put it in the right place. It's automatically matured and gone into a sort of default account on the back of it. And you need even if you don't need access to the money now, you want to be making sure that it's in the right place. But it all stemmed back from it. It was a good and brand policy. This 250 pounds sort of to kickstart every child on an equality basis, although of course parents could add to it. So there was still an inequality that was built into that. And it's just because people didn't really sort of take hold of it or notice it in some cases that it's just got lost track of. And so, as I say, let's just do the crucial dates. Just of September 2002 to the second of January 2011, if you know somebody of that age and you have the right appropriate relationship with them to say it, or if you're of that age, then you should be checking on gov.uk, find my child trust fund if you're not aware where that money is. Yeah. It could advise some Martin. Anything else to add on this stuff or are you ready to move on to your big topic? No, I think we're done. I think we can move on to the big topic. Although, yeah, the only thing I would say is if you do find stuff, do let us know. Yeah. You really could get in touch. Martin Lewis podcast at bbsy.co.uk, I'd love to hear it. It always gives me a little bit of a thrill when I know that, you know, we've done something and it's worked. Right, then. Here is our main topic, energy bills. No matter what, you were on with the Adrenaline Fort, let it go last, and you were predicting for the new energy price cap, here it is. The rise is going to be about 13%. Now, I say about 13%. It could be 12%. It could be 14%. But it's going to be somewhere in that ballpark unless something radical happens. And we've just heard from the chancellor. There is not going to be any intervention in the July price cap. So people are going to see, those people who are on the price cap anyway are going to see that prices rise by 13% in July. So here are the scores on the doors. Last week, it draws by 13%. Nailed it, Martin. Can you please give me the lottery numbers for the weekend? There we are. There we are. 13.4%. It was exactly if we're going to be really, really accurate. You know what, let's be really accurate and lucky next time you get closer. No, no, I think you'll find that 13.4% rounds down to 13%. And I was just doing it to the nearest percent. I'm still scoring that up as an absolute win. So it's probably worth explaining to people how I knew. It's because I'm really, really clever. No, it's not. It's because. Well, first of all, I rely on analyst predictions, but it's actually important to understand how we know what's going to happen in the price cap because it's important for where we go in future. Energy prices under the price cap, which of course only applies to those default standard tariffs people are on in England, Scotland and Wales, they do nothing, tariff, they I haven't switched tariff, they might fix ended and I didn't do anything again. The energy price cap is set based on a mix of policy costs, which is about 60% of it, policy costs, admin costs, profit for the companies, etc. and 40% of it is the underlying wholesale rates, the sort of world markets in gas and electricity. But that 40% is the main delta, the main changeable factor in the energy price cap. So it's by monitoring what's happening to those wholesale prices that you can predict the price cap. What's important to understand is the price cap works on a time lag. So the July price cap, the wholesale rates that matter are mid February to mid May. So it's actually looking two to five months back and is working on a big time delay. So when we did that show, which was two weeks ago, the assessment period of close the day before. So we had all the data of wholesale rates in the three month assessment period. So once you plug that into the algorithm, that is a published algorithm by the regulator off gem to set the price cap, the only variables left are rather going to be any policy changes. And we do see those, there was a 10 pound policy change in there, 10 pound a year added on annual bills within that. But that's relatively trivial this time round. The previous price cap, the April, the main change came from taking policy cost off bills, 150 pound policy cost off bills. So this time, as there'd be no pre-announced policy changes, and it's sort of those of us who talk to off gem relatively frequently, you know when something big is going to come, you could assume that the main change was going to come from the wholesale rate change. We already knew that so 13% was a pretty safe prediction. I mean, and the reason I said it could be 12, it could be 14 is because of potential policy changes. Yeah. And that's right. So this is also crucially why, if I go on, and I often do, it's also crucially why we're now looking at the October price cap. So the truth about the July price cap is the July price cap, less than till the end of September, that's three months, but it's the lowest use period of the year. We only use about 15% of our energy in that 25%. It's a quarter of a year, that 25% of the year. So the actual impact of a 13% rise on a typical bill, slightly nonsense, it's an average figure, let's call it an average bill. It is about 12 to 15 pounds a month. So about 45 quid over the three months, not good, nobody wants it, but not catastrophic. The real issue is the October and the January price caps, the high use period. Now it's important for people to understand, remember I said that time lag, yeah, that time lag means we are already in the assessment period for the October price cap. Now, which seems really weird, because we haven't even got to the start of the July price cap. And we're all do, I'm now talking about October. And we're getting on for two and a half weeks through the 13 week assessment period. And it works based on an average. So literally, if you think about it, every day matters. Even if prices dropped, I should make the big point. The last two and a half weeks prices, the wholesale rates have been really high. They've been really high. And that doesn't go away. If prices drop now, you've still got, even if they drop like a stone today, two and a half of the 13 week period has been high. The problem is we don't think they are going to drop, certainly not without any substantial change in the Middle East. So the current prediction for October, and it is somewhat crystal ball gazing as you can understand hopefully by the time period I'm talking about. But the current prediction coming from the analyst for October is another two to three percent rise on top of the July rise. And that's for everything. And I know what questions we've got coming through for everything is really important to understand. We've got the current price cap rising 13.4 percent in July predicted to rise two to three percent in October. And I should note, even if the Middle East conflict ended today, because it will take time for gas to come through, it is almost inconceivable unless of some major worldwide issue that we haven't predicted that the October price cap will be less than the current price cap. So even if it might, it doesn't go up from the July price cap, it's inconceivable that it'll be less than the current price cap. So it's going to be higher. And the likely predictions, it's going to go up and then the January price cap, which is even more crystal ball gazing, it is likely to stay the same. So prices, if you're on the price cap, the default tariff, you are going to likely pay substantially more than now until at least next March. Yeah. Well, let's stay with that sort of crystal ball gazing theme a little bit with Dave's question here. He says that the price cap always seems to rise as you've been explaining there. Will there be a time where it will be reduced as stiff? So I think I just need to be really factual here. The price cap does not always rise. I know it feels like it does. In fact, I'm going to try and do an audio graph if I can because I've just scrolled and I've got it in front of me. Let's go back to winter 2020, 2021, because the price cap currently changes every three months. It used to change every six months. That way the companies pushed the regulator to change it every three months. I opposed it. I think it was a mistake. You know, people want, if you've got a price cap, they want to sit locked in for longer. I still think it's a mistake. Now moves every three months. Let me just try and give you the numbers based on the typical use as now, not the new typical use figure coming in July of what the price cap was. So I'll try and do the pattern. So this is for 2020, 2021, 990, then it moved, 180, then it moved, 1220. So we're now in winter, 21, 22, then it moved and this was the start of Ukraine, 1,880. They were in the midst of Ukraine, 3,370. But this is when the energy price guarantee was put in that actually kept it subsidized bills. So people only pay 2,500. This is all on typical use, which is of course totally meaningless, but it gives you scale of magnitude. Then it moved 4,060, then in spring 2023, 320. Now it's moving every three months, then 1,980, 1,830, 1,930, 1,690, 1,570. That's the cheapest we've had it, which is in summer 2024. Back up, 1,720, 1,740, 1,850. Back down in summer 2025, 1,720, then in autumn, 1,760, 1,760. Then in April this year, down 1,640 and now for the summer up 1,860. So it does go up and down. It does go up and down. The idea it only goes up isn't correct. And you know, if you contrast where it is right now 1,640, of course, it's going to be going up with the highest at 4,060, it does move down. And I think the trajectory until the Middle East conflict was actually downwards. So the Middle East conflict has changed that. My hope is by next spring we will go back to where we were. I mean, it's not, I'm not great shakes. 1600 quid typical bill, even if we go back to where we were, it's still very expensive when it used to be 990. I don't see us getting below the 1500 pounds mark, though. Yeah. Okay. Not in the minimum. Did that make sense? Did that graphic, did you could you hopefully follow it? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The big side didn't realize there's actually quite that much of a spike, actually, obviously you remember that it's spike around that time of the Ukraine war, but when you hear the numbers, like, it didn't actually spike. So that's the complete complexity. So I was giving you the price cap, but the price cap was capped by this energy price guarantee. So what the basic rule was, if the price cap is above £2500 on typical use, then we're going to keep the unit rates of what £2500 on typical use would be and that the state subsidised the difference. So, but had we not had that, the price would have gone up to £4,060. And we've got lots more of your energy questions to answer later on in the pod. Tell us, which is all about the times you've found money when you've forgotten about it. Maybe it's down the back of a sorefoil or in a pension fund, you've forgotten all about. We've had lots of people messaging Martin. Have we, she's been on, saying, when my dad came home at night, he would empty his pockets of change on the stairs. Without him knowing, my mum would take a pound of his coins, put them in a post office account that she opened. And when she died, my dad found that the account book was there and it was worth £17,000. Goodness me. £17,000. A lot of change. It's a lot of change. It's domestic nudge economics that soft economics trying to get people to be in. I like this one from Basil. Basil, once bought a coat in a car boot sale for £5 and I found £9 in the pocket. Wow. You're almost profit. Look at that. What's not to like? That is win-win there, Basil. That is literally money creation. That's the magic money coat right there. And I was assuming he was a nice quarter as well, Basil, because you made the choice. We bought it, yeah. You're here in a car boot. And we've got Polly on the lane. You're from your Volvo and near your Ville. Hey, Polly, you're right. Hi. Hi Polly. Where did you find your stash of cash, Polly? Well, I'm. I was changing a centered drawer liners in my underwear drawer. And I listed it up the old liners. I thought, "It's about time I changed them." And I found a white envelope and it was stuffed for the cash. And it had my handwriting on the front and my husband's handwriting. It had been like 40 pound petrol, 35 pound school trip. I thought, "Why don't I have this come from?" And we'd moved south over a year before and then we sat and thought about it. We'd sold some large bits of furniture that wasn't gonna fit in the new house. Sold a big sofa, big four-seater. And a guy came and paid cash. We put the cash in the envelope and forgot about it. And we were just about to go on holiday. So this has always been known now with Nicodraw cash. So we spent the Nicodraw cash on, husband was playing a lot of golf when we were away. And I got new headphones. I could listen to podcasts on the beach. - Including the multi-lubis money podcast. - Absolutely. - And now when we go away, we say, "How much have we got for Nicodraw cash?" People don't know what we're talking about, but it's now known that, your holiday spends is now known as Nicodraw cash. - So I think there's a few things we need to interrogate here. I'm very tempted to go into the scented draw things. Right? - Yeah. - Do the scented draw, I'm probably going a little bit too intimate here, but do the scented draw things only go in the Nicodraw? Or do they go in all draws? - Oh God, no, they only go in the Nicodraw. - Okay. - Oh, nice. - There'd be too much, wouldn't it probably be too much work, otherwise? - Well, it's a big old wooden tall boy. So, you know, they're not the smoothest of surfaces. So you put liners in there and they're often scented. And I thought, "God, they've been in there for years and years." If I hadn't listed it up, I might have saw that piece of furniture and lost Monika draw cash as well, but it happened. - No, I mean, it's literally the smell of money, wasn't it? I mean, it's absolutely. But let's be plain here. You're talking, obviously, quite a lot of money. How did you forget? - Oh, well, I'll tell you how we forgot. This house move was when we moved into the summer set levels and we moved in on the day that the levels were closed for flooding back in the bad floods of 2013. We moved in on Christmas Eve and we were the last vehicle across the flooded land before they shut the gate much in there. You know where Prince Charles came and there was a white car underwater and it was all horrible flooding. So we moved house. We had a house and we had a business to reopen. We had a lot going on. So we were, you know, for us to forget something like that is perfectly forgivable. It was a very stressful time. But it was great and we enjoyed living there. We'd actually just moved house again. And I checked all the draws this time before we moved house. Before we got rid of any furniture or anything, I checked all the draws in case I'd done it again. And I just like it being, yes, your nickers were in draws. It all seems to work. Absolutely. Nicaridra all cash is away to go. Well, Paulie, we now have hundreds of listeners, thousands of listeners across the country checking their nicaridraurs instantly to make sure there's no spare cash to them. Paulie, thank you very much for sharing your story with us and letting us hear all about your nicaridra on the national road. And there are obviously so many jokes we could do relating to that. So if you come up with those jokes, please feel free to write them down and keep them to yourself. Yes. OK. We're rising above the tier on five. That's a good one. Keeping the, you know, keeping the decorum high. Right, shall we return to some of those? I'm going to do one more. I just want to do ash. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one. Found £300 walking up a farm track as a kid went to the post office to spend my riches on sweets to find a distressed older lady crying about losing her pension money she had just drawn out. So I found it, but I lost it very quickly. Think I ended up with a five or a tenor as a finders rewards, but you ended up being a good person, Ash. Yes. And you could do the right thing. Yeah, well done, you. Yeah, good man, Ash. You might not have one in cash terms, but you definitely one in the in moral terms. Exactly. Yeah, sleeping well at night. Lords more energy bill questions. Yeah, Martin. Shall we go with Shane then? And he's talking about the price cap rising again. What are the key factors people should consider before deciding whether to fix or stay on the standard variable tariff? The only key factor I would be considering right now is whether you should get whether you can get off the cap price cap. So if you can, I would get off it. Let's just go very plain. Let's go back to what I said earlier. The energy price cap where it is now is going to rise 13.4% on average in July. And just worth noting, by the way, when I'm talking about those averages that we're going into, it's actually the gas unit rate. The standing charge is saying about the same. The gas unit rate is going up 28%. The electricity unit rate is going up 6%. So the more you use and the more you use gas, the even bigger your rise will be. 13% is an average of the two. So anyway, it's going up 13% in July. It's predicted to go up further in October, but it is almost unthinkable. It won't at least be higher than it is now, even if the Middle East conflict changes. And then much further out, it's going to stay pretty high in January based on current predictions. But that is a crystal ball. You can currently lock in. There are three companies offering fixes, cheaper than the current price cap. So if you are on the price cap and I need to be very plain, this only applies to people on the price cap, I also need to be plain. If you're not on a fix, if you're not on a special deal, you are on the price cap. When I do this question, when I do talks, I ask people who is on the price cap, they don't know. The answer is unless you know you're on a fix or a special deal, you are on the price cap, 60% of you. So you can do a fix right now that locks in your rate for the next year at up to, depending exactly how you go and get it, up to 4% cheaper than the current price cap. Now that's not a huge saving, but once the price cap goes up 13%, then think of the difference, and it's going to stay that rate. So I need to be plain. The rise in July only applies to firms, bog standard tariffs. Fixes are not price-capped, they will not rise. So if you are on the price cap and you can get off it, get off it. Now the reason I say if you are is people on pre-payment meters and payment in receipt of bills, I'm afraid there are no cheap fixes you will be able to get to. The cheap fix is available, some need smart meters, some don't need smart meters. Very important, don't just go to your own energy companies fix. There is a huge difference between the amount that energy companies are charging for the cheapest fixes at the moment. When I say lock in a cheap fix, I want it to be a cheap one. I want it to be one that's cheaper than the current price cap, which if you're on the price cap and you do a comparison, you'll be able to see. Even if it saves you one quid, it's cheaper. So you want to lock into one of those, and you have to do it very comparison site because your cheapest depends on where you live and how much you use. There's no point me listing tariffs for you, and you preferably want to go to a whole of market comparison site by default. But if you don't, because there's only one of those, and I'm not allowed to mention it, if you don't, the really important thing to understand is many of the cheapest deals at the moment do not pay comparison sites. And most comparison sites, either the total of market, hide the tariffs that don't pay. So if you go on a comparison site, check somewhere, check on the menu or check on the bottom. If there's a button that says, and it will set with this level of volume and intensity and aggression, so you find it, show all tariffs. So there's a button that says show all the tariffs and tick the button that says show all tariffs. So you're actually getting a whole market comparison because otherwise right now, especially some of those cheapest fixes, we'll be missing. Martin, do you ever thought about doing the SMR? Oh, it was out, yeah, I was quite in that. Because that was that was very soothing, I could, that was very nice. I think it could be a market in that. It could be, I mean, it'd be a very, very strange market. Yeah. I mean, a perversal market, but it would be a market. No, sadly for me, the mastermind is coming up soon, but let's see if we can squeeze in Ania's question first. I'm on a variable with a utility warehouse. Yeah. And last week asked them to switch me to fixed, but they say they can only do this if I agree to have a smart meter installed. Is it legal for them to ask me to do that? I don't want a smart meter, but I want to switch off variable. Yes, it is legal. You can make having a smart meter a requirement of a specific tariff. You can't do it on the price cap, but it can be a requirement of having a specific tariff. And if utility warehouse are doing that, then it is legal for them to do so. I should note, utility warehouse are a multi-utility provider that in normal times tend to offer their cheapest rate if you also get their other products. So you tend to have to have your phone with them or your mobile with them or something like that in order to get their cheapest rates. They're not coming up particularly cheaply in the comparison sites at the moment. They are not one of the three companies that have the cheapest fix out. E-cotridity outfox, Eon, other ones I'm talking about. Both outfox and Eon will let you get a fix cheaper than the price cap without needing a smart meter. I should say I'm not anti-smart meter. I think smart meters can be pretty useful. You can see what you're using. So you're able to monitor your extra to yourself. You don't have to do meter readings for yourself, which makes the system a monthly direct debit much easier. There is a problem that too many smart meters are broken. And I've been pushing the government to try and change the way that it incentivises companies instead of stopping them just to install them, but incentivising them to actually make them work as well. But I'm far less anti-smart meters than the caller sounds. But if you don't want a smart meter, there are fixes where you don't need them. We will do more energy questions in the pod. I know there's about lots, lots more and many more subjects. People are talking about I'm fixed longer away. If I'm on a fix should I get off? That fix and fix again. I'll do all that in the pod. But But Stefan now, play that music. I don't like it. It's going to be fine. I don't like it. It's not going to be fine. Stefan, welcome. You're a money mastermind virgin, but don't worry. It's just a simple three option, multiple choice quiz. Let's see how you do. Now everybody, I want you to picture a man with, let's say, a regular job on Fridays. He's incredibly excited as he's sitting in for a colleague and has a sexy new temporary assignment. Yet, Jeopardy, awaits. He will be running his reputation up a flagpole to be machine gun faradat. The outcome could be career carnage. Do you hear that Stefan? Career carnage. Oh, gosh. I do hear it. Luckily, in order to do it, he gets a huge danger money bonus. Not really. This is the BBC. It's not actually happening, but let's go with it because it helps the question. So imagine this man is 38 years old, went to university, let's say to study law, maybe it a Welsh unit, let's say Cardiff. That means he'd almost certainly be on a plan one student loan. If it's not clear yet, I think we know who we're talking about. Now plan one, just to say, the annual repayment threshold of plan one is £26,900. Write that down. Is it down? 26,000, yeah. And with all, as with all undergraduate plans, you repay 9% of everything earned above that. Yep. Yep. So here is the question. This man, he's a fictional man, any resemblance to characters who maybe I'd be talking to a totally coincidental. He earns a steady £18,000 a year, which is £1500 a month, which is below the plan one threshold. But because of the danger money, he gets a one-off £12,000 bonus in one monthly pay packet, taking his total annual earnings to £30,000. My question is how much of that bonus would be taken for his student loan? Are you with me? Yes. So, I'm going to give you multiple choice, but let's just check you've got it. Yeah. So basically, thanks to the £12,000 bonus, his annual income would have been £30,000, but all that 12k came in one month. Correct. So, this 26,900. 26,000 is so. So here are your options. A, as it's based on the yearly income, and he earns £30,000 total, he will pay 9% of the £3,100 above the threshold, which is £279. B, it is taken on the monthly amount, not the annual amount. The monthly threshold is a 12th of 26,900, so it's £2,240. The monthly income is £13,500 that month, 9% of the extra is £1,013. Yeah. See, it's taken on the monthly amount, but at the tax year end, he can ask for a refund of the difference so that he only paid 9% above the annual amount, so he is due there for a £734 refund. So, in the simple terms, in A, it's based on the annual amount, in B, it's based on the monthly amount, and C, it's taken on the monthly amount, but refunded based on the annual amount. Here's my logic for the answer. So you with it? You've got the question. I've got the options. My sense is that it's going to be the most complex option possible, so I'm going to say C, that it is on the annual amount, but it takes it on the monthly amount and you can claim a refund. Are you locking that in? Coming up the tension test. It is locked, I'm locking that in, please. So, Stefan, you've locked your answer in, you're saying C, it's taken on the monthly amount, you can get a refund based on the annual amount. So the first thing to say is when you pay your student loan, the amount that's taken through PIE is based on the monthly threshold. How much do you earn above a 12th of the annual threshold is what is taken, so the answer could be B, or it could be C. But I'm afraid, unfortunately for you and unfortunately for many people repaying their student loans, in this case you would not be due a refund, you would have to pay it on the monthly amount, give him a. Oh. I'm afraid you got it wrong, you're not for bomb. But actually, this is really important. There is a new one sin here that people need to understand. There are five million people I would estimate who've overpaid their student loans in the last five years, one million according to the freedom of information who've over a million who've overpaid it in the last year alone. And the biggest category by far is almost the scenario I gave you. The biggest category by far is you repay the loan in some months despite not earning enough in the tax year. So if we change the question slightly and say that the bonus was £7,000, not £12,000. So your total earnings were £25,000, which is less than the annual threshold. But you would have still in the month you got the bonus because you had that, you know, that freaky one-month income. Yeah. They would have taken £563 off you, which is 9% above the monthly threshold once you have the £7,000 added onto your normal, £1500, you know what I mean? Yeah, I've got you. You would have been able to reclaim it. Because your total earnings are under the threshold, but we have this bizarre cliffhanger that even if you earned only £1 above the annual threshold, but you'd had all that income in one month, then you would have been paying on the monthly proportion and paid way too much. So that is unfortunately for you and unfortunately for people listening how it works, but really, really big this. One million and 74,521 people in 2024 or 25 tax year, the most recent year I have the data for overpaid loan in some months despite not earning enough in the tax year. If that is you, you can go back and reclaim it. And you can reclaim it online for all the past years that this happened with, although you need to go on, you can only do it for a tax year that has now ended. So you can be doing this up to the most recent tax year. They might just be in for the 6th of April 2025. It might not, it just depends on your account. A couple of other reasons you may have overpaid your student loan. They put you on the wrong student loan payment plan. So by default, they put you on plan one, which is your student loan, even though far more people are on plan two, which is for anyone who started university between 2012 and 2023. Its podcast produced Simon here. Martin sent me a note saying he should have specified plan two is for those who started between 2012 and 2023 in England and Wales, the other UK nations are on different plans. Back to it then. The plan one threshold is you repay 9% above 26,900. The plan two is you repay 9% above 29,000, 385. So if you were wrongly on plan one and earning 29 grand, you should not have repaid your student loan, but the money would have been taken. Reason number three, you started repaying your student loan too early. You're usually only eligible to start repaying in the April after you left your course. Most people leave in July, the next day, April. So it's nine months. But if your employer didn't have the right information about when you left university, they could start taking money too soon. That happened to 37,000 people in the last tax year we know. And the last one, which is quite common, but less of a problem is you had money deducted after the loan was fully repaid. You will get that money back automatically, but for anyone in the last couple of years of their student loan and they're going to pay it off, you're allowed to shift the direct debit. But really important people understand that. You can get that money back, whether you should get the money back or not. Generally, if you're one of those people who won't clear the loan in full in the 30 or 40 years before it wipes depending on the system, then you want to reclaim the money. If you're a higher earner who's likely to repay it in full, then it's less important that you take the money back. But it's always worth thinking, even if you are going to earn enough to clear the loan in full, could you have better use of that money in the short term? In other words, say to pay off expensive debts or not. I've done that relatively quickly, but hopefully it made some sense. No, absolutely. I think it affected lots of people because if you work in something like sales or whatever, you get a percentage of a commission-based system. You might get a month where you get a bit of a windfall or whatever. So it's definitely going to affect lots of people out there. Hello to people on PAYE. If you're self-employed, you'll be doing it through a self-assessment tax return, which just looks at the total annual amount. But if this is a PAYE issue and yet it affects millions, Martin, even though I've got the question wrong, it's been a joy spending an hour and a lot of time. I've enjoyed it. Thank you. Thank you very much, Martin. We're in the podcast extra bit and that means I am joined by PPS, podcast producer Simon. How are you Simon? I'm excellent. I'm having one of those perfect days at work where it is somebody's birthday and they brought in chocolate cake. Oh, very nice indeed. We're not in the same place. I won't be getting any chocolate cake. We are both fans of the cricket. We were expecting the recording on Five Live to be disrupted by the cricket, which is annoying from a podcast perspective, but we do like the cricket. However, it was rained off during the hour that we were recording. I can't work out whether that was a good or bad thing. It's good because it meant we didn't have the sort of lots of. And there's been a wicket, which we wouldn't have wanted anyway because England were batting, but it's also bad because the cricket was rained off. Where do we stand on this? Well, so I think it increases the chances of them playing a bit later tonight. Ideal scenario for me. I get home. There's still half an hour of the cricket to go. Fair. I mean, it's a. You're probably in the studio, am I meant that there isn't a screen with it on. You know, I can't listen to Five Live's Sports extra while I'm doing it. So it was slightly lost. Anyway, we need to talk about energy bills. We should get off that and we've got lots more energy questions that I want to get through. So you've got a whole host in front of them. How about division of labor? You asked some our answer them. We can do it that way round or the other way round. No, no, less definitely stick with that way round. I think it's for the best. We got one from Annie. She asks, what about when your fix expires mid July? So it's currently the fourth of June. There's the most important rule to understand on any fix is they're not allowed to charge you early exit penalties in the last 50 days of your fix. So from day 49 onwards, early exit penalties don't exist. So if your fix ends mid July, I think we're probably depending exactly when, we're probably within that period. It is very tricky. If you can get yourself a cheap fixer to decent price right now, you can get, you know, a 4% less than the current price cap. There is a small risk that if things got even worse in the Middle East, those fixes may disappear. I mean, a few weeks ago, the cheapest fix was about 6% more than the April price cap. So fixed prices have come down slightly, but wholesale rates are not looking very good right now. So this just is, I don't know how cheap your existing fixes. When you go onto a comparison, you're probably going to find that it tells you the cheapest fix is more expensive than you're repaying right now. Now I'd say if the difference is a trivial amount over 50 days, you know, if it's a percent or two, you might just want to lock in right now, then you've got surety for the next year of what you're going to pay. If you're on a very cheap fix and you're going to end up paying, you know, a substantial amount of money because you're having to have a more expensive fix for the next 50 days, because once you lock in, you lock in and you're on a really cheap deal right now when you're getting rid of that, then there is a bit of a gamble to say I might wait a few more weeks and hope that the prices stay roughly where they are or get cheaper than they do right now. Craig, we're fixed until December, currently on octopus. Is it worth changing? Okay, so that is a very different decision. Let's just make sure you're on octopus, which might change it slightly. Octopus sometimes does have and sometimes doesn't have early exit penalties if you leave your fix. If you've got a December fix, I'm presuming it was one year long, therefore you got that fix last December when wholesale rates were substantially cheaper than they are right now. The rate at which companies set fixes primarily depends on wholesale rates on that day. So while the price cap has a time lag, the rate you can get a new fix act is much more immediate. So my suspicion is you are on a fix far cheaper than you would be able to get a fix today. So to come off that fix, you may potentially have to pay early exit penalties and you may have to pay substantially more until December. While I don't have a crystal ball and you would need a crystal ball to answer this accurately, my instinct does not like that. So I would stick on your cheap fix with a bird in the hand till December. The thing to understand here is that I have this duality of message, which is confusing. My message is if you're on the price cap, get off the price cap because you can fix cheaper than the current price cap and the price cap is going to get more expensive. But you're not on the price cap. You're already on a cheap fix. The fix is right now are not particularly cheap. They're cheap and they were a few weeks ago, but the wholesale rates are particularly high. Now unless the whole Middle East situation escalates to an even more horrendous level than it is right now, there is no reason that fixes are going to get prohibitively more expensive than they are right now between now and December. In fact, there's a decent chance that you're going to be able to fix far cheaper in later on in the year. Hopefully the Middle East conflict will have ended. In which case, there's no call to arms for you to fix right now. I think it's a confusion of the messaging because I'm shouting about get off the price cap before the price cap rises. People go, "I should probably get off my fix." No, it's a totally separate system. In the ecosystem you're in, there is nothing pushing you to get off a cheap fix to go to a more expensive fix. Apart from the idea that things would be catastrophic and even worse, well, we're already in the bad time. You know, we're in the bad time and things could always get worse in terms of wholesale rates. I wouldn't be getting off my cheap December fix now. I'd be sticking with the bird in hand till there, but I do need to do the caveat. I literally don't know what's going to happen because a lot of it depends on a big orange fella in the White House and he is not particularly consistent in the decisions that he makes. There that she asks a question that kind of follows a little bit on something he just mentioned. She asks why are octopus introducing exit fees on their new fixed deals? That is interesting because this is something I called out. Octopus, unlike most companies, doesn't normally charge early exit penalties if you leave the fix, but over recent months it has started to introduce that. I actually called it out on social media and got a response from Greg Jackson, who is the founder of octopus and the chief executive octopus he's been on the podcast actually. Give me a second by the magic of podcast. I will find that tweet. Right, I found the tweet. He sent me this on the 5th of March, but it's a pretty similar situation to the one that we have right now. He said, "Hey Martin, we had to do the same temporarily during the gas crisis a few years ago. We removed early exit penalties as things come down and I will do the same again here." With wholesale gas prices doubling and wholesale electricity up 60% for the next quarter at least, we need to move fast. Many simply companies have simply stopped offering fixes altogether. Also of course, existing fixes are not affected. Which subtext, it's a commercial decision. They're looking at their prices at the moment, realizing that they're going to offer a fix. They don't want people leaving them if prices drop substantially in future when the Middle East crisis, if and when the Middle East crisis ends and therefore they put them on to lot customers in a bit in the same way that other firms do. So that is your answer. It's a commercial decision. Chris has got in touch with the question. He's, and quite a lot of people are asking questions on this topic really. He's saying, "Hopefully we're moving in the next three months. Currently I have dual fuel with British gas. New home is electric only. Will I be able to move my British gas new fixed rate from dual to just electric?" Oh no. That is an interesting question. So lots of people ask me about fixing when they're going to be moving house. The most companies do have portable tariffs. Their fixes are portable. I.e. you can take your fix with you to the new property. The three general exceptions are doing it off the top of my head. Ovo, Scottish power and outfox. They just say you can leave with no early exit penalties if you're moving house. But you can't port it with you. British gas tends to allow portability when you're doing the comparison. They should tell you whether it's portable or not. What I don't know because you're having a change of status is if you were moving dual fuel to dual fuel, I'm almost certain British gas tariffs you'd be able to take with you to your new house. Because you're moving dual fuel to electricity only, if the fix you got was one where they didn't just offer it to dual fuel customers, they also offered it to single fuel or electricity only customers. My suspicion is they will allow the portability. If it was one that was only for dual fuel customers, which they can do, my suspicion is they won't allow the portability. So as you're on an existing tariff, you can't change it. If you were looking to get a new fix at this point, I would probably be looking in that circumstance to do separate fix for electricity and gas. And therefore, hopefully the electricity fix would be portable, depending on which firm that you went with. I'm sorry I can't give you a firm answer. I don't know their exact policy on portability of fixes to single fuel. I would hope it'd be okay. Just call them, speak to them. Matthew, you've got a question about how things are communicated. He's saying, why is the energy price cap presented as an average? Who exactly is average and how many people can genuinely relate to that figure? It's a complete and utter nonsense. It's not actually, don't say average, they say typical use. And the way they do typical use is they calculate units of gas and units of electricity. Now interestingly, when they announced the price cap, as I had mentioned on the previous show that they suspected they would, they are dropping the definition of gas usage down 17% in electricity down 7%, they do this by surveying exactly the amount that people are using and talking to the energy firms about usage, which does change, therefore, the figure. To be fair to them, they have been very clear in communicating that while the usage is dropping, they're using a light for light figure when they're talking about what's going on. Now, what I am pleased to say with off-gem is done. And I've been nagging them for years and that they've told me in meetings that they are following my lead on this. I always talk about the energy price cap as a percentage change, because I think that is the most accurate way to communicate it. They now are leading on the percentage change in their press release, but I'm afraid many of the reporting out there is leading on ridiculous figures. I mean, that number of times, including I need to say the BBC and the BBC News website reported on the July price cap is a 222 pound a year increase. That is utter nonsense. Those are completely fabricated figures for two reasons. One, the 222 pounds is based on typical use. So if you use less, it would be smaller. If you use more, it would be bigger and two, you have to include the fact for a typical user when you're saying that. But far more importantly, the July price cap only lasts until October. So to quote an annualized cost increase for something only last three months is utterly misleading. In fact, the July rise, as I mentioned earlier, is going to because it's low usage. It's going to add about 45 quid to the actual amount people pay over those three months for someone on the price cap on typical use. So I totally agree with you. I mean, the typical use of the price cap is a total of $1,000. use figure though, bizarrely the fact that the typical use figure is dropping is actually going to increase all our bills. They have to use the typical use figure to calculate how much they are allowing energy firms to charge on the unit rate, the rate for each unit to gas and electricity you use in order to recoup some fixed costs. And because they're lowering the typical use figure because people are using less energy to allow them to recoup those fixed costs, they actually have to put the unit rate up. That was that £10 a year of policy change I mentioned earlier, which is settling in it. So Simon, just read to me again the last bit about what they'd like to see because I think I think I remember what they said, but I'm not actually sure I agree. Yeah, so they went on to Matthew was wanting to know about I'd love to see a much simpler more transparent messaging, for example, electricity is going up or down by X-Pence per kilowatt hour. Yeah, I mean, and that is generally how I communicate it. There is a butt though. The butt is, this is regional and prices are not uniform across the regions. So you could do it by up and down per kilowatt hour and I will break that down and I absolutely accept that the sophisticated listeners to this podcast would be able to work with that. You know, if I were to say, I said it early, I said what's really happening is the standing charge is saying the same, but the gas unit rate is going up an average 28%, whereas the electricity unit rate is going up an average 6%. But we have seen times, for example, where we've seen on the price cap, the standing charge go up and the unit rate go down. So to actually try and communicate that to a mass audience in a short space of time is incredibly tricky. It's the type of thing I do on my show and I do when we're doing the podcast or I do when I'm writing something for my website. But if you're doing a quick clip for news to start talking about the gas standing charge is going up, the gas unit rate is going down by this much. It's people just don't get it, which is why I go for a uniform average percent. While it isn't that representative, you know, if you were a very high gas user, it all changes and low users. It at least gives a direction of travel. It's an imperfect system, but I think giving a percent is better than using a typical use figure, which is meaningless, because so many people hear this. It's going up 222 pounds a year and it just has no relevance to them. At least saying an average 13%, you can get an idea that if you pay £1,000 a year, you're probably going to be paying somewhere over £1100 a year. I think that's probably where we should end Simon. I think we did quite a lot there, didn't we? Perfect. We summed it all up. And Stefan did well on his first appearance on the podcast, although he'll be gutted because obviously he really likes his board games as he was saying, he'll be gutted to have lost mastermind. Well, he'll have to just roll the dice of a nice, a five-line presenter rotors and hope he comes up with you again. And Adrian doesn't have a monopoly on getting it wrong. Okay, enough puns. Let's leave it there. So yes, that's it for this week. We tend to put out a new episode every Thursday and Monday. The Monday's is our question time podcast where you can ask me absolutely anything and everything, open brackets within reason, close brackets. If you've enjoyed it today, please do tell your friends you've been listening to the Martin Lewis podcast. And why don't you and they subscribe? Then everyone's pockets will be pleased with them. And if you haven't enjoyed it and you've been listening this long, it's your own fault. 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 Martin Lewis podcast at bbc.co.uk. 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.