:00:00. > :00:11.Now on BBC News, it's time for this week's Your Money with Declan Curry.
:00:12. > :00:16.Hello and welcome to Your Money, your weekly guide to making the most
:00:17. > :00:20.of your cash, here every weekend on BBC News television and available
:00:21. > :00:24.all week on the BBC iPlayer. Five years of low interest rates.
:00:25. > :00:28.Savings expert Anna Bowes is here with tips on how to get more for our
:00:29. > :00:30.savings. All aboard! Nigel Cassidy looks at
:00:31. > :00:35.the new essential guide to travelling across Europe by train.
:00:36. > :00:39.And teaching school children about the dangers of loan sharks. The man
:00:40. > :00:47.from Trading Standards will tell us what adults should know, too.
:00:48. > :00:50.So how do we make our money work harder for us? Millions of people
:00:51. > :00:53.rely on the interest their savings earn at the bank to make ends meet
:00:54. > :00:57.and they've been getting next to nothing from their bank accounts for
:00:58. > :01:00.the last five years. Record low interest rates have cost savers ?117
:01:01. > :01:08.billion in lost interest over the last five years, according to the
:01:09. > :01:12.campaign group Save Our Savers. How does that affect you? If you had ten
:01:13. > :01:19.grand in life savings in the bank, you used to get ?240 a year in
:01:20. > :01:22.interest. Now you get ?100. Here's one reason the banks don't have to
:01:23. > :01:25.try too hard to get our money. After the big debt binge, we're saving
:01:26. > :01:32.again. The typical household saves just over 5% of their income every
:01:33. > :01:36.month. Savings expert Anna Bowes is here from the website
:01:37. > :01:45.savingschampion.co.uk. Welcome. Making your money work
:01:46. > :01:48.harder, that means what? You need to look for the best rates that are
:01:49. > :01:52.available, whatever those might be. Check they all appropriate for you
:01:53. > :01:57.is if you are locking them for the long-term, you will need access and
:01:58. > :02:02.that will cost you. You need to keep an eye on those rates because they
:02:03. > :02:06.do change. It is not a one-off thing, it is not about finding the
:02:07. > :02:12.best rate and relaxing, it is about watching like a hawk. If it is a
:02:13. > :02:19.fixed rate and a fixed term, it will remain the same. If it is variable,
:02:20. > :02:27.it will go up and down. Since 2012, or 2013, there have been several
:02:28. > :02:38.rate cuts. Even though there has been no official change to the
:02:39. > :02:44.interest rate, the interest rate has been cut for savers? Yes, and they
:02:45. > :02:51.may not be forthcoming in telling you. You need to be vigilant. We
:02:52. > :02:56.have a rate tracker service. You put in the name of the account and we
:02:57. > :03:00.will tell you what the rate is that you are earning and we will e-mail
:03:01. > :03:06.you when that changes and tells you what you could be earning elsewhere.
:03:07. > :03:09.There are accounts that have a special bonus when you sign up,
:03:10. > :03:15.which are tempting, but then that runs out. There are fewer of those
:03:16. > :03:22.at the moment and is a conditional bonus so if you have an easy access
:03:23. > :03:30.account, but if you make three or four withdrawals, the rate plummets.
:03:31. > :03:37.One way to earn more interest is to look at high interest current
:03:38. > :03:43.accounts. Santander is paying 3% but you have to do is put a certain
:03:44. > :03:53.amount in and have two direct debits. That is interesting about
:03:54. > :03:57.current accounts, but now they are back in vogue. They have made it
:03:58. > :04:00.easy to switch current accounts as well. Is there a penalty if you move
:04:01. > :04:06.money from one account to another, if your account has its rate cut,
:04:07. > :04:13.and you move to another, could you be penalised? If it is a fixed rate,
:04:14. > :04:19.you will not be able to move at all, they'll be heavy penalties was the
:04:20. > :04:22.if you do not have enough interest to cover that cost, they will take
:04:23. > :04:27.it from the capital. Check the terms and conditions. Earning more
:04:28. > :04:32.interest is one thing that another way to make your money work harder
:04:33. > :04:41.is to pay less tax because the less tax you pay, the more you keep for
:04:42. > :04:52.yourself. It is ice -- ISA season at the moment. Perhaps put more money
:04:53. > :04:59.in those. Thank you. The regular poll on interest rates and what we
:05:00. > :05:05.think will happen to them, suggests that people think that interest
:05:06. > :05:09.rates will rise this year by not by much all very quickly. Not that what
:05:10. > :05:13.we think matters. The only people that matter when it comes to
:05:14. > :05:15.interest rates are the nine people of the Bank of England who set
:05:16. > :05:19.borrowing costs. If you own a flat, but you pay a
:05:20. > :05:22.service charge for the upkeep of the building, this might interest you.
:05:23. > :05:24.The competition watchdog has launched an investigation into the
:05:25. > :05:28.service charges that some homeowners have to pay and the service they get
:05:29. > :05:31.for that money. The OFT reckons around five million people in
:05:32. > :05:34.England and Wales own the leasehold of their flat or house, but not the
:05:35. > :05:38.freehold, and have to pay that freeholder a regular fee. Rogue
:05:39. > :05:41.freeholders, or their agents, have been accused of overcharging, doing
:05:42. > :05:55.bad repair work, or not doing the work at all.
:05:56. > :05:58.If you prefer to pay that service charge or any other bill by cheque,
:05:59. > :06:02.the Government wants your ideas on how to make that quicker and easier
:06:03. > :06:05.to do. Here's one suggestion - banks should process photos of cheque
:06:06. > :06:08.rather than the actual slips of paper themselves. You've got a month
:06:09. > :06:11.to tell the Government what you think by sending a letter to or
:06:12. > :06:19.emailing the Treasury. Details on the Government website gov.uk.
:06:20. > :06:22.Travelling across Europe by train. For some, it's a happy if somewhat
:06:23. > :06:25.distant memory. For others, it's a dream yet to be realised. Small
:06:26. > :06:29.spanner in the works - Thomas Cook stopped publishing the European Rail
:06:30. > :06:33.Timetable last summer. Well, now it's been brought back by one of the
:06:34. > :06:36.people who used to gather all the facts and figures. Here's Nigel
:06:37. > :06:46.Cassidy on the book that takes the strain out of using the train.
:06:47. > :06:48.Thomas Cook may have ditched the role ways for the plane but for
:06:49. > :06:54.generations of interrailers, the train was the only way to travel.
:06:55. > :07:00.With all of the time stacked into your backpack, the world was your
:07:01. > :07:05.oyster. These guides have been out for 140 years, breaking only for
:07:06. > :07:09.World War II. You can find routes that work on only certain days and
:07:10. > :07:18.avoid missing that last connection. The hardest part is deciding where
:07:19. > :07:26.to go. Take Estonia, in the old Soviet Union, where the train is the
:07:27. > :07:31.preferred means of transport. There is a lot to see from these new
:07:32. > :07:35.trains. Keeping up-to-date with routes and times from every corner
:07:36. > :07:39.of Europe is a task best suited to true rail enthusiasts who gain
:07:40. > :07:46.satisfaction from enabling people to find and plan journeys like this
:07:47. > :07:49.from their armchairs. John Potter was so upset that the potential loss
:07:50. > :07:54.of the timetable, he spent redundancy cash and remortgaged his
:07:55. > :08:03.house to continue his life's work. This book has 50,000 trained
:08:04. > :08:10.journeys in. Each two pages takes several days to compile. It takes
:08:11. > :08:17.three months to finish off. In each figure here, it is compiled by
:08:18. > :08:24.hand. Every single page compiled by hand. One man who is pleased to see
:08:25. > :08:27.the Time tells bag is Marc Smith, a one-time senior rail manager who
:08:28. > :08:35.runs a website for people who want to use trains to get where they are
:08:36. > :08:37.going. The Internet is great but doing repeated specific enquiries
:08:38. > :08:42.online is sometimes like looking at a light scale map down the wrong end
:08:43. > :08:47.of a telescope. It is easier and nicer to have it laid out for you in
:08:48. > :08:51.printed form in a book like this. The Paris to Moscow express runs
:08:52. > :08:55.three times a week in winter, five times a week in summer. If you
:08:56. > :09:01.looked online at the wrong day, the might not find it at all but it is
:09:02. > :09:03.easy to find in here. Finding connections on the move can be
:09:04. > :09:12.tricky and data roaming is expensive. For those yearning for
:09:13. > :09:15.the romance of train travel, the book might be the answer.
:09:16. > :09:18.Schoolchildren in England are to get lessons, warning them about the cost
:09:19. > :09:21.and dangers of loan sharks. They'll get their info from a branch of
:09:22. > :09:24.Trading Standards called the Illegal Money Lending Team. Tony Quigley
:09:25. > :09:32.runs that across the whole of England. He's in Birmingham.
:09:33. > :09:40.Welcome to Your Money. This is about money management and debt. What are
:09:41. > :09:49.you telling children about the loan sharks? It starts off really at the
:09:50. > :09:56.very basic level about what money is about and needs and wants. As the
:09:57. > :10:03.plans are rolled out to older children, then we start seeing more
:10:04. > :10:10.sinister tales about real-life events where victims of loan sharks
:10:11. > :10:15.tell their story. You go into the detail about the costs of loan
:10:16. > :10:19.sharks and some of the unsavoury approaches that they may use to get
:10:20. > :10:24.their money back. Definitely. It tells real-life stories and some of
:10:25. > :10:33.the stories that are in there are quite horrific. Mike borrowed ?250
:10:34. > :10:39.from a loan shark when he was 17 and he worked out that he was still
:10:40. > :10:43.paying him at 36 years of age and he paid him in the region of ?90,000.
:10:44. > :10:48.What you are dealing with there is just extortion. The problem is that
:10:49. > :10:52.people who use loan sharks tend to do it because they have nowhere else
:10:53. > :10:57.to go, they do not feel they have an alternative. From our perspective,
:10:58. > :11:03.the lesson plans will talk about the differences between a day loans and
:11:04. > :11:10.credit unions, for example. And also savings but we start off with the
:11:11. > :11:14.emotional side of money as well as where money comes from and what we
:11:15. > :11:17.use money for. But we are hoping that even if we just stop one person
:11:18. > :11:23.from using a loan shark in a later generation, then this will have been
:11:24. > :11:26.worthwhile. For the benefit of adults who are watching now, if you
:11:27. > :11:32.are in trouble with a loan shark, what should you do? First, you
:11:33. > :11:39.should contact us. We have a national hotline where you can
:11:40. > :11:41.report it through the Internet. You can speak to one of the
:11:42. > :11:45.investigators because we know that loan sharks really a private
:11:46. > :11:52.pressure to people and one judge summed it up when he said, " being
:11:53. > :12:00.in the clutches of an loan shark is like murder of the soul. " The irony
:12:01. > :12:04.of this is that we take the money from the ill gotten gains from loan
:12:05. > :12:08.sharks through the proceeds of crime and we use that money to put that
:12:09. > :12:14.back into this education programme so that it is loan sharks who are
:12:15. > :12:17.paying to try and stop the next generation from using loan sharks.
:12:18. > :12:20.Thank you very much. That's all from Your Money for this
:12:21. > :12:23.week. News about savings, mortgages, pensions, loans, spending and saving
:12:24. > :12:34.are on the Your Money pages on the BBC's website - bbc.co.uk/money
:12:35. > :12:37.Thanks for watching this week. You can also follow on Twitter. More
:12:38. > :12:41.next week. Hope we'll have your company then.