We needto boycott price rises

Almost everyone in the UK is trying to cut all household bills, while daily we hear of increases. Kitkat, Unilever and Primark are the latest of to say they have no choice but to put prices up again.  The ONS says that grocery prices are increasing by 6% year on year.  But we should not just accept the increases. It takes time to save money, but it is definitely worth it. Remember Tesco made £2.2 billion last year and predicts it will increase profits to £2.4 billion to £2.6 billion.   Sainsbury also doubled profits. Lidl and Aldi say they are […]

Read More…

Shop around for petrol

Wholesale petrol prices have fallen $30 a barrel since last month. The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, cut fuel duty by 5p a litre on March 23 and a result VAT fell 1p per litre. But prices have stayed stubbornly high at most filling stations. We need to find out which stations are playing fair and reducing their prices and use them. The Competition and Markets Authority is trying to help by increasing competition. Since Morrisons was taken over last year by private equity some 1,200 petrol stations have been under the same ownership and are less likely to compete on prices. […]

Read More…

Big increases for energy and petrol

September is the month when we should think seriously about the cost of heating and lighting our homes as nights draw in and the days are cooler.  There is yet another strong prompt in the form of a 12% increase in energy bills for 11 million households from October 1. The price cap on standard variable tariffs is going up to an average £1,277 from October 1.  Ofgem allows this increase because the energy companies have persuaded the regulator that wholesale prices have risen massively, even though many of the companies we pay for our gas and electricity buy their […]

Read More…

Energy bills unfair to all

The chancellor announced in his Autumn Statement that the domestic energy bills are to be looked in to by the Government to make sure they are fair to all.  It cannot come a day too soon….and no doubt it will not be soon at all. The company’s tell us that they are making minuscule profits on our energy bills because they have historically used the cheapest tariffs for their calculations.  They could then say their profits were only 4% on a typical customer.  But if they used the standard variable rate it would be much higher. And all this was […]

Read More…

The poor need help to get better deals

I met the personification of the spirit of Money Fight Club when I was a fellow panelist at the Money Advice Service’s Financial Capability Week at the QEII centre this week.  Vanessa Simao is a trainee with the Young Women’s Trust in London and an outreacher in Barking and Dagenham so she knows that to help clients in her work she has to share her own experiences as a single parent. She knows what it is like to take a loan to provide food or heating and then to get behind and agree to consolidate the loans into one payment […]

Read More…

Double charging the poorest borrowers

  It’s always the same. It’s the poor what gets the blame and are charged far more than they should be. At the end of September Wonga managed to charge customers twice leaving thousands without money to buy food or pay their rent over a weekend.   But that accident was resolved in days. When it comes to overcharging it is the establishment lenders that know how to double charge their poorest customers over many years and take their time to put their customers back. Poorest customers will be repaid The Financial Conduct Authority estimates that up to 750,000 mortgage customers, […]

Read More…

Why energy companies leave me cold

Lit the stove last night. Winter is coming fast. So what do the energy companies do? They set us up to fail when we try to get the best deal on our gas and electricity tariffs over the winter months. Until April energy companies could not exclude existing customers from cheap new deals. Ofgem had ruled in 2014 that new tariffs should be offered to everyone. Since then they have been working on new chart-topping tariffs that will not be available for all. From November the regulator will no longer make sure that the market is fair. If the companies […]

Read More…

Don’t ask, dont…

In advance of the Women At The Top Summit organised by the Financial Times this week – where Money Fight Club co-founder Lindsay Cook looks at women and pay – she blogs on the underlying premise – don’t ask… don’t get. From pay rises to energy bills – how to get what you want One of the few rules of Money Fight Club is that if you do not ask you do not get. It applies to asking for better prices on insurance, energy bills, mortgage rates and fruit and vegetables in the market. We recommend that you allow yourself […]

Read More…

Cut home insurance costs – in minutes

I’m worth £600 an hour My time became worth £597.84 per hour this week when I challenged the price that my home insurer was planning to charge for my contents and buildings insurance. The policy is due for renewal at the end of August. It would be renewed automatically (auto renewal). It’s not a bad thing to set up, just in case, say,  you were away on holiday and forgot to get the policy renewed before departing, or had a family emergency and were distracted. Auto renewal means you are never without cover. Don’t wait for your insurer But you […]

Read More…

Being human

Behavioural economics – no, don’t yawn yet While the rest of us get on with paying the bills and going to work, economists are slugging it out in grand intellectual style. What are they arguing about? Well, little old us, of course. At the centre of the fisticuffs is a big debate about whether we can be totally logical when it comes to money – weigh up the facts at hand and make coolly rationale decisions – or whether we are bound by our emotions and the merry dance they lead us across our personal financial landscape. Economic nudging This […]

Read More…