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