08/03/2014 Your Money


08/03/2014

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Now on BBC News, it's time for this week's Your Money with Declan Curry.

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Hello and welcome to Your Money, your weekly guide to making the most

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of your cash, here every weekend on BBC News television and available

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all week on the BBC iPlayer. Five years of low interest rates.

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Savings expert Anna Bowes is here with tips on how to get more for our

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savings. All aboard! Nigel Cassidy looks at

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the new essential guide to travelling across Europe by train.

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And teaching school children about the dangers of loan sharks. The man

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from Trading Standards will tell us what adults should know, too.

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So how do we make our money work harder for us? Millions of people

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rely on the interest their savings earn at the bank to make ends meet

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and they've been getting next to nothing from their bank accounts for

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the last five years. Record low interest rates have cost savers ?117

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billion in lost interest over the last five years, according to the

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campaign group Save Our Savers. How does that affect you? If you had ten

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grand in life savings in the bank, you used to get ?240 a year in

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interest. Now you get ?100. Here's one reason the banks don't have to

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try too hard to get our money. After the big debt binge, we're saving

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again. The typical household saves just over 5% of their income every

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month. Savings expert Anna Bowes is here from the website

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savingschampion.co.uk. Welcome. Making your money work

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harder, that means what? You need to look for the best rates that are

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available, whatever those might be. Check they all appropriate for you

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is if you are locking them for the long-term, you will need access and

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that will cost you. You need to keep an eye on those rates because they

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do change. It is not a one-off thing, it is not about finding the

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best rate and relaxing, it is about watching like a hawk. If it is a

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fixed rate and a fixed term, it will remain the same. If it is variable,

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it will go up and down. Since 2012, or 2013, there have been several

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rate cuts. Even though there has been no official change to the

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interest rate, the interest rate has been cut for savers? Yes, and they

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may not be forthcoming in telling you. You need to be vigilant. We

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have a rate tracker service. You put in the name of the account and we

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will tell you what the rate is that you are earning and we will e-mail

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you when that changes and tells you what you could be earning elsewhere.

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There are accounts that have a special bonus when you sign up,

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which are tempting, but then that runs out. There are fewer of those

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at the moment and is a conditional bonus so if you have an easy access

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account, but if you make three or four withdrawals, the rate plummets.

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One way to earn more interest is to look at high interest current

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accounts. Santander is paying 3% but you have to do is put a certain

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amount in and have two direct debits. That is interesting about

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current accounts, but now they are back in vogue. They have made it

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easy to switch current accounts as well. Is there a penalty if you move

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money from one account to another, if your account has its rate cut,

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and you move to another, could you be penalised? If it is a fixed rate,

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you will not be able to move at all, they'll be heavy penalties was the

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if you do not have enough interest to cover that cost, they will take

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it from the capital. Check the terms and conditions. Earning more

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interest is one thing that another way to make your money work harder

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is to pay less tax because the less tax you pay, the more you keep for

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yourself. It is ice -- ISA season at the moment. Perhaps put more money

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in those. Thank you. The regular poll on interest rates and what we

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think will happen to them, suggests that people think that interest

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rates will rise this year by not by much all very quickly. Not that what

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we think matters. The only people that matter when it comes to

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interest rates are the nine people of the Bank of England who set

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borrowing costs. If you own a flat, but you pay a

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service charge for the upkeep of the building, this might interest you.

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The competition watchdog has launched an investigation into the

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service charges that some homeowners have to pay and the service they get

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for that money. The OFT reckons around five million people in

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England and Wales own the leasehold of their flat or house, but not the

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freehold, and have to pay that freeholder a regular fee. Rogue

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freeholders, or their agents, have been accused of overcharging, doing

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bad repair work, or not doing the work at all.

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If you prefer to pay that service charge or any other bill by cheque,

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the Government wants your ideas on how to make that quicker and easier

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to do. Here's one suggestion - banks should process photos of cheque

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rather than the actual slips of paper themselves. You've got a month

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to tell the Government what you think by sending a letter to or

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emailing the Treasury. Details on the Government website gov.uk.

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Travelling across Europe by train. For some, it's a happy if somewhat

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distant memory. For others, it's a dream yet to be realised. Small

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spanner in the works - Thomas Cook stopped publishing the European Rail

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Timetable last summer. Well, now it's been brought back by one of the

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people who used to gather all the facts and figures. Here's Nigel

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Cassidy on the book that takes the strain out of using the train.

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Thomas Cook may have ditched the role ways for the plane but for

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generations of interrailers, the train was the only way to travel.

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With all of the time stacked into your backpack, the world was your

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oyster. These guides have been out for 140 years, breaking only for

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World War II. You can find routes that work on only certain days and

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avoid missing that last connection. The hardest part is deciding where

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to go. Take Estonia, in the old Soviet Union, where the train is the

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preferred means of transport. There is a lot to see from these new

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trains. Keeping up-to-date with routes and times from every corner

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of Europe is a task best suited to true rail enthusiasts who gain

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satisfaction from enabling people to find and plan journeys like this

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from their armchairs. John Potter was so upset that the potential loss

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of the timetable, he spent redundancy cash and remortgaged his

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house to continue his life's work. This book has 50,000 trained

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journeys in. Each two pages takes several days to compile. It takes

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three months to finish off. In each figure here, it is compiled by

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hand. Every single page compiled by hand. One man who is pleased to see

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the Time tells bag is Marc Smith, a one-time senior rail manager who

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runs a website for people who want to use trains to get where they are

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going. The Internet is great but doing repeated specific enquiries

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online is sometimes like looking at a light scale map down the wrong end

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of a telescope. It is easier and nicer to have it laid out for you in

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printed form in a book like this. The Paris to Moscow express runs

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three times a week in winter, five times a week in summer. If you

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looked online at the wrong day, the might not find it at all but it is

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easy to find in here. Finding connections on the move can be

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tricky and data roaming is expensive. For those yearning for

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the romance of train travel, the book might be the answer.

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Schoolchildren in England are to get lessons, warning them about the cost

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and dangers of loan sharks. They'll get their info from a branch of

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Trading Standards called the Illegal Money Lending Team. Tony Quigley

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runs that across the whole of England. He's in Birmingham.

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Welcome to Your Money. This is about money management and debt. What are

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you telling children about the loan sharks? It starts off really at the

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very basic level about what money is about and needs and wants. As the

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plans are rolled out to older children, then we start seeing more

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sinister tales about real-life events where victims of loan sharks

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tell their story. You go into the detail about the costs of loan

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sharks and some of the unsavoury approaches that they may use to get

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their money back. Definitely. It tells real-life stories and some of

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the stories that are in there are quite horrific. Mike borrowed ?250

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from a loan shark when he was 17 and he worked out that he was still

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paying him at 36 years of age and he paid him in the region of ?90,000.

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What you are dealing with there is just extortion. The problem is that

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people who use loan sharks tend to do it because they have nowhere else

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to go, they do not feel they have an alternative. From our perspective,

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the lesson plans will talk about the differences between a day loans and

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credit unions, for example. And also savings but we start off with the

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emotional side of money as well as where money comes from and what we

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use money for. But we are hoping that even if we just stop one person

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from using a loan shark in a later generation, then this will have been

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worthwhile. For the benefit of adults who are watching now, if you

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are in trouble with a loan shark, what should you do? First, you

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should contact us. We have a national hotline where you can

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report it through the Internet. You can speak to one of the

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investigators because we know that loan sharks really a private

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pressure to people and one judge summed it up when he said, " being

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in the clutches of an loan shark is like murder of the soul. " The irony

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of this is that we take the money from the ill gotten gains from loan

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sharks through the proceeds of crime and we use that money to put that

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back into this education programme so that it is loan sharks who are

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paying to try and stop the next generation from using loan sharks.

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Thank you very much. That's all from Your Money for this

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week. News about savings, mortgages, pensions, loans, spending and saving

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are on the Your Money pages on the BBC's website - bbc.co.uk/money

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Thanks for watching this week. You can also follow on Twitter. More

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next week. Hope we'll have your company then.

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