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| DON'T believe the fake 'Martin Lewis' or 'MSE' ads |
| New. Top regular savings now pay 7% It's a big deal for those who save a little each month If you want to save a lump sum of £1,000 or more, look at the top easy-access or top fixed savings accounts. But if you're putting cash away a bit at a time, you can earn higher rates with regular savings accounts, which let you put up to a few hundred quid away each month. Full info in Top regular savings, but in brief... (All below have £85,000 UK saving safety protection.) Earn up to 7% with bank-linked savers - and get paid up to £200 to switch. The highest-paying regular savings accounts can only be opened if you're a current account customer of a big bank. Existing customers can grab them, and others should consider moving, as these two banks currently pay you to switch to them anyway:- The First Direct 1st Account* pays switchers £175, was rated 88% 'great' in our last service poll, and gives many a £250 0% overdraft too. Its regular saver pays 7% AER fixed for a year, if you put in between £25 and £300 each month. Withdrawals aren't allowed (closure is, but the interest drops). See crucial First Direct switch eligibility info & review. - The HSBC Advance account* pays switchers £200 and its regular saver pays 5% AER fixed for a year. You must put between £25 and £250 in each month and withdrawals aren't allowed (closure is, but the interest drops). It also has a 3% easy-access account you can access. See crucial HSBC switch eligibility info & review. High interest deals if you're a customer of Lloyds, Barclays, NatWest or RBS. These banks don't pay you to switch right now, but for existing account holders, they all pay more than the top open market deal. - Club Lloyds regular saver pays 5.25% fixed for a year, you can put up to £400/mth in. - Barclays Rainy Day Saver pays 5.12% AER variable on up to £5,000 easy access, for customers who jump through a few hoops to join its Blue Rewards scheme. - The NatWest and RBS regular savers pay 5.12% AER variable and you can put up to £150 a month in. Not got these bank accounts, or want to save more each month? Some regular savers are open to all... - Principality Building Society pays 5% AER fixed for a year and lets you put in up to £125 a month. You can skip months, and can access the cash early, but to do that you'll need to close the account. - Halifax pays 4.5% AER fixed for a year on £25 to £250 a month. You can skip months, and can access the cash early if you close the account. Plus, till Monday, you can also get £175 for switching to the Halifax Reward account (but you don't need to do so to access the regular saver). See crucial Halifax Reward switch eligibility info & review. Quick regular savings tips. There are a few points to understand to get the best out of these. - Combine a few to save more. Use First Direct, Principality & Halifax to put £675/mth away at an average 5.7%. - The one-year accounts move you to poor interest after. Be prepared to ditch, switch (& open another reg saver). - The interest rates are high, but it may feel less. You only get interest on money in there, so if you put £200/mth in, don't expect 7% of £2,400 after a year, as you'd much less in for most of the time. See how regular saver interest works. - Drip-feed cash in from top easy-access savings. If you have a lump sum, put it in the top-paying easy-access account to earn interest, then, put as much as you can into the regular saver from it, to get the best of both worlds. Can you boost interest further? Some specialised options in our Savings section pay big whacks too: - 50% bonus for many on universal credit or tax credits. See Help to Save. - 25% bonus for first-time buyers aged 18 to 39. See Top Lifetime ISAs. - Earn 5% on smaller savings. See current account savings. - Are Premium Bonds worth it now the prize rate is rising? See Premium Bonds. - Prefer to invest? Higher returns, but more risk. See Stocks & shares ISAs. |
| The Christmas veg price war has started - 19p carrots, potatoes, sprouts & more. See where to find 'em in veg wars. Related: MSE reveals Aldi is cheapest for Christmas dinner. New. 2.9% easy-access savings, with a 'but'... App-only Chip offers the new top rate of 2.9%, but it's not interest, it's a bonus, which means it doesn't compound year after year. And, while your savings are protected, the bonus isn't - see full Chip help. Next highest payer (but max 6 withdrawals a year): Coventry BS 2.85% AER. Top for unlimited withdrawals: Yorkshire BS 2.6% AER* if you've £10,000+. If you've less, try Tandem* or Atom, both app-only and paying 2.55% AER. Big name: Nationwide 2.5% AER* (max 3 withdrawals a year). Full info in Top savings. Chocolate 9p, Heinz Hoops 30p, pasta sauce 45p & more - via 10% off code for already reduced, past 'best before' food. MSE Blagged. Approved Food sells cheap groceries near or past 'best before' dates (NOT past 'use by' dates, which are about health). Min £22.50 spend, delivery's £3+. 'Massive thanks - I saved £500 on credit card interest.' We recently wrote that anyone paying credit card interest should check for a 0% balance transfer as deals may worsen. Andy did just that and is our success of the week: "Massive, massive thanks. Read your 0% balance transfer credit card note, did the eligibility check and applied. Just by keeping the same monthly payments, I'll have paid off the balance by this time next year and saved over £500 in interest. Believe it or not, I haven't used the card for a few years and naively thought I was just running down the balance." If we've helped you save money (on this, or anything else), please send us your MoneySaving successes. 1,000s of high-street coats, shoes, dresses £4.75 to £6.61 with code. MSE Blagged. Find surplus stock and non-branded items from high-street names (previously including H&M, Topshop, New Look and more) at Everything5pounds - where, bizarrely, not everything's £5 anymore... but it's still cheap, though do factor in delivery from £3.95. Urgent. Low-income pensioners only have till Sunday to qualify for £324 cost of living payment. More than 800,000 eligible pensioners are missing out on pension credit, yet start a successful claim by Sunday and as well as increased pension income, you'll get a £324 cost of living payment too. See who qualifies in Martin's pension credit blog. Premium Bond prize rate to rise to 3% from January. Yet someone with typical luck's likely to earn less than this. It's tough to compare now, as it's likely easy-access rates will also have jumped, but see our full Premium Bonds analysis. Ends 11.59pm Wed. Cheapest fibre broadband '£12.91/month'. Newbies can get this Shell Energy 38Mb broadband & line deal for £4.95 upfront, then £22.49/month. But you get 3 months' bill credit, plus you can claim (don't forget) a £110 Amazon voucher. Factor those in and it's equivalent to £12.91/month over the 18-month contract. Want faster speeds or higher service rating? Our broadband comparison shows top deals. |
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| Be a SAD FART to ensure your festive purchases are protected Ho ho ho. The festive season is closing in, and legally that means, er, NOTHING for your consumer rights. Yet the law and the practical realities can differ. Many rules aren't statutory (ie, set by law), they are set by stores that can and sometimes do change them during Christmas & January sales periods. So I want to tool you up with my 10 core need-to-knows (for more detail, see our Consumer rights help)... You DON'T have a legal right to change your mind & return store-bought goods (even if wrong colour / size). If you buy something in store (not online), shops are under no legal obligation to take your goods back unless they're faulty (see what counts as faulty below). So if you buy something in a hurry thinking you can always return it later, beware you may not have that choice. This surprised 29% in my Twitter poll & 21% weren't sure. Of course when I say 'the wrong size', I mean it doesn't quite fit. If it were labelled XS but in reality was an XXL, that's clearly faulty.If stores have published returns policies that forms part of the contract. Some stores allow no-fault returns, eg, John Lewis is usually up to 35 days after you buy them. If these are published, then they're enforceable. However, if they say: "You need a receipt, must ask in French, and we only give credit notes", then as you've no legal rights, you must accept it. (OK, maybe not the French bit, but you get the point.) Return rights can be suspended during sales. So if you think the store has a returns policy, it's worth double-checking in the sales before you buy it, if you may want to return later. You DO have a legal right to change your mind when buying online. This is designed to protect people when buying things remotely. For most items, you've... up to 14 days to notify them of a return... then up to 14 days after that to send it back. If their websites say you must be quicker, they're wrong. There are exceptions here, the main two being no returns of personalised or perishable items. See our full list of exceptions to online right to return. Know your SAD FART rights. If items are faulty, that trumps everything else. So what counts as faulty? Years ago I came up with my SAD FART mnemonic to make it easy to remember it (see Returning faulty goods help for more). If items are faulty, you only need proof of purchase. If you're returning something that's faulty, by law you don't need a receipt, just proof of purchase (eg, credit card statement). For powerful protective voodoo on bigger items, pay at least 1p on a credit card. Buy something costing £100.01 to £30,000 and pay for any of it, even a penny, on a credit card, and the card firm is jointly liable with the retailer for the WHOLE amount. So if you can, put at least some of it on a credit card (paid off IN FULL to avoid interest). Then if the retailer goes bust, won't play fair with faulty items, or you buy abroad and can't take the item back, you can go to the card firm. Full info, including when it doesn't work & how to claim in the Section 75 guide. Debit card spends & credit card purchases under £100 have the lesser, though still decent, chargeback protection. Beware buying items online from abroad - you have to pay to send returns back. In online returns, you get back the price you paid, plus the minimum delivery cost paid (ie, if it's free delivery but you paid £10 for express, you don't get the tenner back). Yet you don't have an automatic right to get back the cost of returning items, and if they come from abroad, sending it back can be more than you paid in the first place, so beware where it comes from before you buy, especially on the likes of Amazon and eBay, where it's less easy to see. If you paid for express parcel delivery but it didn't arrive on time, you may be due a refund or compensation. See our Parcel delivery rights guide for full details. Related: Cheap parcel delivery firms. Even if the gift you got is faulty, YOU don't legally have a right to return it. Return rights, whether legally enforced or voluntary, generally apply only to the person who actually paid for the item, so gift recipients have no right of return themselves. While most shops do allow it if you've a receipt, to be watertight - a gift receipt transfers the rights to the gift recipient (or write on the receipts that you're doing this). Full help in Christmas gift rights. Sadly, if it all goes wrong, enforcing your rights is tough. If you end up in dispute with a store, you can go to the Citizens Advice consumer helpline in England and Wales (or similar services in Scotland and Northern Ireland) for help. Yet ultimately the only way to get adjudication is to go to court (see 'Small claims court' help - it's not called that anymore, but that's common parlance), which is a faff for low-price items. It's one reason the credit card protection route is so helpful, because then you can go to the ombudsman instead. |
| Scores of energy cost-cutting tips, mortgage update, 7% savings. In the latest The Martin Lewis Podcast. Last order dates for Asos, Currys, John Lewis, M&S & more. Ordering earlier can mean free or cheap delivery, so we've these dates - as well as the absolute final dates - in major retailers' Christmas last order dates. £14 hooded blankets, £35 electric blankets & more. With winter truly upon us, and energy costs at all time highs, we've rounded up cheap ways to stay warm in our Heat the human, not the home guide. New. Cheapest iPhone 14 contract we've seen - 100GB data for '£39/month'. MSE Blagged. The latest smartphones aren't MoneySaving, but if you'll buy one anyway, at least do it the cheapest way... Three newbies can get a 128GB iPhone 14 with 100GB/month of data for £49 upfront, then £37/month through Fonehouse. That's £937 in total - equivalent to £39/month over the two-year contract. Note: Three is responsible for the contract, Fonehouse for the handset. Want a different handset or a Sim-only deal? See MSE's Cheap Mobile Finder tool. The £200 heating oil/LPG payment won't now come until the New Year. See our oil/LPG update. FREE 10-point Halfords winter car check. Includes battery, light and tyre checks, normally £15. Halfords Ikea 'up to 50% off' winter sale - for example, £30 shelves. Full analysis, plus 23 more Ikea tips and tricks. The MSE Mince Pie Taste Test 2022 - see who won. In answer to the famous question 'Who ate all the pies?', well the MSE team did, purely for your benefit to compare the posh pies with the cheap ones... Mince pies 44 craft beers for £50 delivered (normally £60). MSE Blagged. Flavourly newbies only. 1,000 boxes available, though not in Northern Ireland. Flavourly (please be Drinkaware). |
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| AT A GLANCE BEST BUYS
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| THIS WEEK'S POLL How often do you dip into your easy-access savings? Most easy-access savings accounts allow you to deposit and withdraw cash whenever you like. But, with rates often lower than for fixed savings accounts - where your money's locked away for a set period - we wondered how often you're taking advantage of the 'easy-access' element of your account. Vote in this week's poll. Virgin Media is the easiest firm to haggle with. Last week, we asked which companies you've tried to haggle with in the past year, and if you got a better deal - nearly 3,500 of you responded. A huge 85% of those who'd tried haggling with Virgin Media reported some form of success, as did 84% of those who haggled with TV and broadband rival Sky. Haggling with breakdown firms also bore fruit, with 85% of those who tried with the RAC having success and 81% with the AA. See full haggling poll results. |
| MONEY MORAL DILEMMA Should I keep sending Christmas cards to my partner's family who don't send them to us? I love sending Christmas cards, and always send them to my partner's family, who we don't often see or hear from. It's been years since any of them sent us a card, and with cash tight this year, I'm starting to think I'm wasting my money as it's not cheap to buy and send cards to them all. But it doesn't seem in the Christmas spirit to stop sending them because we don't get anything back, and I worry about my partner losing contact with his family. Enter the Money Moral Maze: Should I keep sending Christmas cards to my partner's family? | Suggest a Money Moral Dilemma |
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| MARTIN'S APPEARANCES (WED 14 DEC ONWARDS) Wed 14 Dec - Co-presenting Good Morning Britain, ITV, from 6am MSE TEAM APPEARANCES (SUBJECT TBC) Tue 20 Dec - BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, Mid-morning with Jeremy Sallis, from 10.45am |
| WHAT'S THE BEST CHEAP PRESENT YOU'VE GIVEN OR RECEIVED? That's all for this week, but before we go... 'Tis the season for Secret Santa, so we asked what's the best cheap present you've given or received. For many, the best gift is an act of service, whether that is a voucher for an evening's baby-sitting, tackling someone's ironing for a year or lending someone their DIY expert husband for a day. For those buying physical gifts, shopping for bargains at charity shops was popular, while useful presents such as mugs, diaries and packets of vegetable and flower seeds were all appreciated. But the ultimate MoneySaving present has to be the £1 reusable Starbucks coffee cup that also gets the recipient 25p off every cuppa. If you need some present ideas or want to add your best gifts, see our Twitter and Facebook conversations. We hope you save some money, stay safe, |
Important. Please read how MoneySavingExpert.com worksWe think it's important you understand the strengths and limitations of this email and the site. We're a journalistic website, and aim to provide the best MoneySaving guides, tips, tools and techniques - but can't promise to be perfect, so do note you use the information at your own risk and we can't accept liability if things go wrong. What you need to know This info does not constitute financial advice, always do your own research on top to ensure it's right for your specific circumstances - and remember we focus on rates not service. We don't as a general policy investigate the solvency of companies mentioned, how likely they are to go bust, but there is a risk any company can struggle and it's rarely made public until it's too late (see the Section 75 guide for protection tips). We often link to other websites, but can't be responsible for their content. Always remember anyone can post on the MSE forums, so it can be very different from our opinion. Please read the Full Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy, How This Site is Financed and Editorial Code. Martin Lewis is a registered trade mark belonging to Martin S Lewis. More about MoneySavingExpert and Martin LewisWhat is MoneySavingExpert.com? Who is Martin Lewis? What do the links with an * mean?Any links with an * by them are affiliated, which means get a product via this link and a contribution may be made to MoneySavingExpert.com, which helps it stay free to use. You shouldn't notice any difference; the links don't impact the products at all and the editorial line (the things we write) isn't changed due to them. If it isn't possible to get an affiliate link for the best product, it's still included in the same way. More info: See How This Site is Financed. As we believe transparency is important, we're including the following 'un-affiliated' web-addresses for content too: Unaffiliated web-addresses for links in this email firstdirect.com, hsbc.co.uk, ybs.co.uk, tandem.co.uk, nationwide.co.uk, sainsburysbank.co.uk, bank.marksandspencer.com Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Note MoneySupermarket.com Financial Group Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN: 303190). MoneySavingExpert.com Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales. Company Registration Number: 8021764. Registered office: One Dean Street, London, W1D 3RB. MoneySavingExpert.com Limited is an appointed representative of MoneySupermarket.com Financial Group Limited. To change your email or stop receiving the weekly tips (unsubscribe): Go to: www.moneysavingexpert.com/tips. |
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