Holiday hacks: cheapest way to spend abroad, car hire, insurance, 18 days off for 9 days leave, passports, GHIC…
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January 30, 2025
TLDR: Martin shares holiday tips, including ways to save on foreign transactions and annual leave maximization. He also discusses how children misunderstand money concepts, explains credit rating fundamentals, suggests techniques for reducing water bills, and offers a method to reduce energy standing charges by £100.

In the latest episode of The Martin Lewis Podcast, host Martin Lewis shares invaluable tips and tricks for planning your holidays effectively and economically. With summer holidays on the horizon, January proves to be a significant time for travelers. This blog summarizes Martin's best advice on saving money, navigating travel details, and improving financial literacy regarding spending abroad.
Key Takeaways from the Episode
1. Affordable Spending Abroad
- Use travel-friendly cards: Martin recommends using debit cards designed for foreign spending, like the Chase account card, which offers near-perfect exchange rates and cashback deals.
- Check transaction fees: Ensure you're paying in local currency when abroad to avoid unnecessary conversion fees.
2. Maximizing Annual Leave
- 18 Days Off for Just 9 Days Leave: In 2023, the unique timing of holidays means you can take 18 consecutive days off by strategically booking just 9 days off work. Plan your leave around bank holidays to make the most of your vacation time.
3. Car Hire Tips
- Avoid extra costs at the desk: Car hire companies often upsell additional insurance (excess insurance). To avoid paying inflated rates, purchase standalone excess insurance before your trip.
- Use credit cards for refunds: Pay for your car hire with a credit card to secure better protection and eliminate unnecessary fees.
4. Passport and Health Insurance Checks
- Ensure your passport has over six months of validity before departing. Remember, it must also be less than 10 years old.
- Check that all family members have updated European Health Insurance Cards (EHIC) or Global Health Insurance Cards (GHIC) to receive necessary medical care while in the EU.
5. Credit Ratings and Handling Money
- Understanding Different Cards: Martin breaks down the essential differences between prepaid cards, debit cards, and credit cards to help listeners konw which one to use where and when.
- Importance of Credit: Use a credit card responsibly to build your credit history. Always pay off balances in full to avoid interest charges.
6. Kids and Money: Misunderstandings About Finance
- Martin discusses common misconceptions children have regarding money, such as thinking debit cards are "free money" or believing that credit cards are not loans.
- It's crucial to teach kids the difference between card types and financial responsibilities to prepare them for adult life.
7. Cutting Water Bills
- Martin provides tips on how to manage and potentially lower your water bill by switching to metered billing in homes with fewer occupants than bedrooms.
- Look into social tariffs or forms of assistance if you are on a low income to help cut costs significantly.
8. Energy Bills Savings
- One quick method to save on energy standing charges is to switch to specific tariffs that lower daily charges significantly. For instance, the latest EDF tariff offers £100 less on standing charges, which is a substantial saving over the year.
Conclusion
With various practical applications shared throughout the episode, Martin Lewis empowers listeners to take actionable steps towards enjoying affordable and stress-free holidays. By adopting savvy spending habits, understanding different financial tools, and effectively managing leave days, you can enhance your traveling experience without overspending. Tune into The Martin Lewis Podcast for more insights and tips to manage your money smartly.
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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Nicola Cocklan and for BBC Radio 4, this is History's Youngest Heroes. Rebellion, risk and the radical power of youth. She thought right, I'll just do it. She thought about others rather than herself. Twelve stories of extraordinary young people from across history.
There's a real sense of urgency in them that resistance has to be mounted, it has to be mounted now.
Hello, I'm Martin Lewis and this is the cunningly named The Martin Lewis Podcast. I do wonder what that's going to be about. Now, usually much of it comes from a BBC Radio 5 live show with Adrian Childs, but there's also bonus money saving tips just for you lucky, lucky podcast listeners. In today's pod,
Well, it's January, it's cold, it's dark, no surprise this is the biggest month for booking holidays, especially summer holidays abroad. So I'll be going through all the things that you need to do and know now to cut the cost and the hassle when you do go away. Cheapest ways to spend, how to get 18 days off for just 9 days leave, how to avoid the car hire desk extra cost trap. A warning about passports and G-hit cards, how kids can spend abroad using mobile phones abroad and so much more.
The tellers this week is all about what mistakes your children make with money. I did it because I keep hearing kids calling their prepaid cards credit cards. That's dangerous. It risks diminishing the difference between types of plastic and ignoring them to debts when they're older. We need to gently correct and explain and I'll try and help you do that. It also led to an unexpected conversation between me and Adrian about credit ratings in a pub.
The Mastermind this week is all about water bills and I'll show some of you how to cut hundreds of pounds off them. And finally, I have a quick tip on how to cut a hundred pounds off your energy-standing charges. Yes, you did hear that right. Play the theme tune!
Marty, actually, did I see a picture of you with some of the traitors? You did, yes. I've had twice this week. I've had a couple of funny things like that happen. Over the last weekend, I was walking with Mrs Money Saving Expert with my wife, Laura. And we were walking down in town quite near the BBC. And there were a couple of people on the other side of the road to see people had stopped. So I realized, because my daughter and I had been watching traitors, although my wife hasn't, I was like, oh,
That's Jake and Leanne, who I won't do a spoiler just in case you haven't caught him. Yeah, we're in the final of the traitors, we'll say. And so I went up to them and said there, because I thought my little girl would be pleased, can I have a photo? And it took them a second or two and then we're like, yes, of course you can. And then we're like, can we have a photo? Which is very nice. And then I had another episode yesterday, actually, where a man came up to me, I just nipped out of money saving towers to go and have a look around to go and buy a drink. A chap came up to me and went, oh hello, how are you? And obviously that happens to me quite a lot in my life.
And the night, I suddenly realised now, oh, and it was boy George. Just out of nowhere. Nice. You're in the middle of your lunch, right? Boy George comes up to chat to you. I love it. Who asked who for a selfie there? I thought, oh, we've got to record this for social media. So I asked him for a selfie at that point, and we did a selfie together, which is a nice one. So, yes. I'll pay him once. He's a big unit, isn't he? You're having money, a rugby team, wouldn't you? I'm not sure he's as much anymore, actually. Really? There's less of him to love that? There's less of him there. But it was very smiley and happy. It was rather nice.
So the tellers is, what have your children misunderstood or misassumed about money that you had to explain? How old were you when they did it? It's finite, it would be. Do they get it? What prompted me is something that I've been concerned about recently, which is I keep hearing children because these days, obviously, many children, you don't give them money, you give them a card. And the cards that are available for children are prepaid cards. Lots of different varieties of these prepaid cards.
But I keep hearing children referring to it as spending on my credit card. And I have a real problem of that. Now, interestingly, quite a lot of people, because I put something on social media about it, have suggested to me this is because of the Americanization of television and watching on YouTube. And it seems that in the States, credit card is a ubiquitous term for a payment mechanism. And that's what we're educating our kids. But for me, that's very dangerous because language
Matters. A credit card is a debt card. A prepaid card isn't. And if we bring them both and homogenise them, it risks diminishing the differences between types of plastic and ignoring our young people to debt when they're older. There's already enough doing that because we send them to university and then force them to get what we call a debt. So we need to gently correct and explain to our young people what they are.
It's a critical branding thing that, isn't it? It's a bit like the genius, whoever called death insurance, life insurance. If you call them a debt card,
instead of a credit card, then people wouldn't have as turned, they wouldn't have as many credit cards. So I have a new one on this. Let's just talk about the three main types of plastic that you can spend on and what they are. You have a prepaid card, that's where you load up in advance, and then that is the money you have to spend. So you have to put your money onto the card before you can spend examples of that would be Monso would be one.
Monzo would be one or the Starling Kite card or the Go Henry card or lots of other cards for kids but for adults as well or Revolut is another one that you can preload and you only spend what you have already placed on the card.
Next, we have a credit card. A card you spend money on and then repay afterwards so you owe the money. And if you don't fully repair it in each month, in other words, repay in full each month, got to do the catchphrase, you pay interest on top of that because it is a debt.
Then you have a debit card. A debit card pays with what's in your bank account if there is money in your bank account. But again, if you are overdrawn, a debit card is a debt card because you're not spending your own money. And interestingly, and psychologically, most people always think debit card better than credit card,
Debt on an overdraft is typically at 40%, and for some Lloyd's Halifax customers it's about to go up to 50%, whereas a typical high street credit card is 25%. So the worst debt card of the mainstream variety is actually a debit card if you're in debt with your overdraft.
followed by a credit card, but a prepaid card you can't be in debt on. So that differentiation, and it's certainly when I talk to my daughter about it, I'm like, you have a prepaid card, you can't get in debt. It isn't a credit card. A credit card is where you can owe people money. And I think I'm not sure people, first of all, I'm not sure that many adults could explain the differences, particularly it's my job, obviously, I can.
And I think we need to have clarity over our language and make sure they understand. While these plastics all look very similar, they are completely different tools for a completely different job. Briefly, while it's on my mind, there's a benefit to your credit rating. As I understood it, OK. Go on, go on, go on. I'd love to use cover parlance, go on. But a benefit in the sense that if you
Actually, somebody I know in their 20s said this to me the other day, on the miss or something, that I know what I'm on about. I know financially somebody who doesn't know what they're on about, i.e. you, but said, I've heard I should get a credit card, because if I get it and pay it off every month, which I understand you've got to do, that's good for my credit rating. So let's imagine you and I are in a pub. We're not married this time. That's much more pleasurable. We're in a pub.
Right. We're standing there. We're in a pub. Now, I'm just going to preempt this. Don't be your generous self. And when I ask you something, I want you to make a clinical decision rather than rather than I'm a nice human being decision. First person comes up. It's someone you know who you've often met in that pub who always forgets their wallet and always says to you, would you lend me 20 quid?
and I'll give you the 20 quid back tomorrow and I'll buy you a drink. They've done this about 20 times before and they've always paid you back the next day without you having to remind them and they've always bought you the drink. Would you lend them the 20 pounds? Yes. Got a good credit history, haven't they? They've got a good history of being a good credit citizen. They borrow but they pay you back and they pay you back whatever you've asked them on top.
Next person comes in, same thing, and they always forget their wallet, they always ask you to lend the money, and they always forget to repay you, and you have to chase them, and you sometimes don't get the money back. And they say, I forgot my wallet, would you, would you lend me 20 quid? No. No. Well, because, because you're not going to get it back. The final person comes in,
Seems very nice. You have never met them before. You have never spoken through them before. You don't know who they are. And they say to you, forgot my wallet. Would you lend me 20 quid? I'll give you about three pounds tomorrow. Would you lend it to them?
onshore. Well, you wouldn't. Clinical decision, right? I mean, if I made it 200,000 pounds, you'd say no. So the point is, your person is the third person. When credit scoring works on behavioral prediction, so you might have a lot of data saying this person will repay me and repay the interest. You also have to do an affordability score. Do they actually have the money to repay me, which is a separate scoring mechanism?
You might say, well, look at this person's behavior in the past. They haven't repaid. Therefore, they're much riskier. So I either want to charge them or I don't want to lend them to because they have a bad credit history. But your young person has no credit history. It's not that they behave badly. I simply don't have the data to predict their behavior.
So what we have to do to manipulate that system is build data. And therefore, one easy way to do that is to get a credit card. It will usually be a credit builder or rebuild card with a horrible rate of interest. So you must pay it off in full at the end of each month. Do 50 to 100 quid of normal spending, not an excuse to spend more. Pay it off in full every each month. And after a year it will rehabilitate. If you want to be really clever. And again, the problem with saying this to young people
I worry about 18 year olds getting credit cards. You have to do it clinically and follow the recipe otherwise it's not worth it. It's actually get two and put 50 to 100 quid on two each month and that will build it even more quickly because you've now got two cards which is showing you're a good credit citizen showing you're a personal repay your debt each time. So yes, you're absolutely right. Credit cards are also good because you get section 75 protection. We're going on to holidays. I'll do that bit now because it's actually quite important. If you're going abroad,
or you're booking to go abroad with the exception of through a travel agent that breaks the causal link. The right way to pay is on a credit card. Now, of course, I want you to pay it off in full so that there's no interest at the end of the month. But if you book it on a credit card, you get section 75 protection, which is a legal protection that says the credit card company is jointly liable with the retailer for anything that happens. So if the retailer went bust, you can go to the card company. Now, this actually applies
on anything that costs over £100 up to £30,000 and that you spend any of it on the credit card. So even if you put a £10 deposit on the credit card and you booked a £10,000 hotel on, the credit card is liable for the entire £10,000, even if you only put a tenor on the credit card.
So spending at least some on a credit card is important. Also, when you're abroad, if you're buying abroad, you know, I always talk about avars in a shop in Brazil and you have a problem with avars, taking it back is going to be tough. But if you put on a credit card, the credit card company is jointly liable with the retailer. So that's another boon of using a credit card paid off in full and also you can get rewards on credit cards too. So credit cards aren't bad.
if you use them right, but they are bad when you use them as a debt card. So you have to separate the credit card's payment mechanism, which can be positive and give you protection and give you rewards and build your credit score from the credit card's debt system, which is what happens if you don't pay it off in fall every month. And I'll do my final. It wasn't where we're going to go, but I think it's fascinating. So I'm going to keep talking. The final thing that's really important, we've talked about this on the show. The reason I do that in fall, and I've made it my catchphrase over the years,
It's just let's be very simple. You have a thousand pounds debt on a credit card. You repay the thousand pounds. There is no interest. You repay 999 pounds in the month. You don't pay interest on the one pound. You still pay the interest on the entire thousand pounds. That's why it's not nearly in full. It's not trying to repay most of it. That's why it's in full at the end of the month. But you don't the following month.
Do the following month, you don't still pay interest on all of it. You then pay... Yeah, you pay on whatever you vote over that month, yeah. Interesting, though. We last mentioned this. To my shame and discredit, I didn't realize that. I mean, listen, I just didn't know. How I say it's probably to your shame and pro credit. Yeah, but I mentioned... But I mentioned it to someone and say, yeah, that's a disincentive on paying off more of your credit card, because you owe a thousand pounds. You pay a pound off. If you're still going to be charging interest on the thousand, then...
Why are you paying 999 off? Or pay 999 off. So what's the incentive to pay more? Well, why do credit card companies want you to pay more? Well, let's talk about what the perfect credit card customer is. Okay, the perfect credit card customer is someone who's perpetually in debt because they're constantly paying interest. This is why credit card minimum payments. I mean, in the old days, they didn't even cover the interest. Now I was involved in campaigning for the regulation. I think it was 2007.
Now we have regulation that credit card minimum payments must at least cover the interest and a bit more. But this is why if you have 5,000 pound debt on the credit card and you're paying minimum payments on a typical high street card, I'm trying to remember the numbers. I may get this slightly wrong, but I'm right scales. It'll take you 30 years to clear it because your own, as you what you owe drops, what your repay drops, so you hardly ever paying it off, you pay about nine grand in interest. Instead, in the first month, your repayment on the minimum payment is 200 quid.
If you repaid two, fixed it at 200 quid a month instead of letting it drop as what you owe drops, you'd repay it in about two years with a 1600 pound interest cost. There is no incentive. They don't want you to pay it up. They want you to pay the minimum. Then you're constantly paying interest year after year after year. The longer it takes us to repay something, two functions of the cost of interest. One, the interest rate, hardly interest rate the more you pay, two, the length you repay for. And by paying less,
You pay more. So you're exactly right. It is a disincentive, but that's not accidental. That's by design. Where do we start on holidays? Well, let's do passports. I think passports and G-Hicks, this is really important for everybody to understand. So if you are going abroad this year, I want you all to check yours and all members of the family's passports for two things.
For when you go the day you arrive, will you have over six months left on your passport of validity? And will your passport be under, in fact, for the day you leave, not the day you arrive? Will you have over six months left for the day you leave? So you've arrived, you've been there two weeks on that last day. And will you have
under your passport is under 10 years old. Now those are two crucial facts that may not be the same. Now the reason I do those rules is those are the most harsh rules that you've got out there. So let's just talk about the European Union, which is where the vast majority of people in the UK go when they go abroad.
If you're traveling to the EU, your passport needs to be less than 10 years old on the day you enter, some countries it's the day you leave, and valid for at least three months after the day you plan to leave. Now this 10 year thing confuses people, you can't do it anymore, but what you used to be able to do is when you renewed your passport,
you could renew it months early and you could get the months that you had left on your current passport added to your next passport. So it's over 10 years old, but many countries now won't accept a passport that's over 10 years old, even if it's still valid. So there's two separate factors. How old is the passport and how long do you have left? Now that stream is in India to get into India. Your passport needs to be valid for at least six months on the day you enter. You need two blank pages for your visa. So you've got to be careful.
on your passport. Check your passports now. What you don't want to do is check this the week before you go away and go, oh my, I'm not going to get in. So check your passports now. Another check I would make is your European health insurance card or your global health insurance card that basically virtually exactly the same thing, although Australia is partially covered on the global health insurance card. What this is,
It's a card that means if you're traveling mainly in the European Union, but a couple of other countries as well, you get healthcare the same as a local. So if it's free for them, it's free for you. If they can go to a GP for free, you can go to a GP for free, slightly different in Australia, mainly in the European Union, it works that way. Everybody should have an e-HIC or its replacement, the G-HIC,
and you should have a valid one. So I want people to check their dates, especially if you have a European health insurance card, the old card, because those are the ones that are now, there are millions of them that are out of date. Check your valid date, you can renew that for free, you should never pay anyone to get an E-HIC or a G-HIC card, or it's now a G-HIC, sorry, keep using the wrong terms. The E-HIC was replaced by the G-HIC, so when you renew your E-HIC, it'll now be a G-HIC.
global health insurance card, you should never pay anyone, go on to the NHS website, make sure every member of the family has one, you don't need to have them with you if something happens you, but it's always far easier if you've got them with you, carry them with you when you go out, when you're out of the country, then it gives you a valuable level of protection. It's only in state-run hospitals and state-run GPs that you can use it, but it's absolutely crucial to have. So those are my two-star checks.
There are lots of links. The simplest is go to the NHS website. This is the problem. There are many shyster sites, and I use that word deliberately. What they do, it's a grey area of the law. So they advertise on search engines.
And they often say it's a fast track. There's no fast track on G-Hick. There's no fast track. Or they often say, you know, this is the G-Hick site. You go in, they'll charge you 20 pounds. And literally you'll enter your data and then they'll feed your data into the official system for you, but they'll charge you 20 pounds for doing it. Is it absolutely pointless? Everyone's got to make a living, I know. But imagine getting up in the morning and that being your job, that's what you do.
I've had long discussions with lawyers over the years whether I'm allowed to say sheister or not. I can't call it a scam because it isn't a scam. I will say that again. I can't call it a scam because it isn't a scam. Sheister is a quasi-legal way, immoral way of operating. And I believe it is an immoral way of operating. And you have to be warned about these sheister sites. So there are other legit addresses, but the easiest for me is do it via the NHS.
or do it via gov.uk because then you're absolutely certain what you're going to be getting. But I mean, that at the same happens to passports and visas and driving license, all have shyster sites who advertise where you pay a fee or a fee over the top. If you're applying for your ESTA to go to the States, the shyster sites, so you'll pay three times the actual price. It's more difficult when there is a real fee because then people don't know what the fee should be. So they don't know they're being charged 100 quid that it should only be 10 quid type thing.
Let's have a question on spending money abroad. Jen sent us this.
Hi Martin, it's Jen from Margate in Kent. My teenage daughter is due to go on a trip to Germany later this year with school. Normally, when we go on holiday ourselves, we use a Chase account card to save on any extra fees for the currency exchange. This account is in my name. How can I support her or give her anything to use when she is in Germany so she doesn't incur any extra fees or penalties for using her money abroad? Thank you!
Thank you, Jen. I can see we've got a money saver in the house. She's using a chase card. Chase is my top current pick for spending overseas. But let's talk about kids because often you want to give the kids the money. It's much more difficult. You're not giving them cash these days. Let me go into that. Let's just do the basics of spending on plastic when you're abroad. Normally, when you use most plastic abroad,
You pay and you always want to pay in the local currency. So your card is doing the conversion. You know, when you're shopping abroad, it says paying euros, paying dollars, paying pounds or euros, paying euros. If you pay in pounds, that shop, that overseas cash machine is doing the conversion for you. I have never seen a case when that's cheaper than even a bog standard UK card. So you want your car to do the conversion. So pay in the local currency. When you do that,
Most cards get a perfect exchange rate, but then add what's called a non sterling exchange rate fee, which is normally around 2.75%. So what that means is when you spend 100 pounds of euros or 100 pounds of dollars or 100 pounds of dong, if you're in Vietnam, whatever you want, it will cost you 102 pounds and 75 pounds.
If you get a special card which has a no non-stirling exchange rate fee, then your £100 of yours or dollars or dongs costs you £100. You're getting the same near perfect exchange rate on the day, so it's whatever that day's exchange rate is.
when you do your spending. So all of the cards I talk about, the specialist cards, we just talk Chase, that's what Jen mentioned there. Chase is a debit card that gives you non-stirling exchange rates or near perfect exchange rates in every country and also gives you 1% cash back up to 15 pounds a month. So you're effectively getting even better than the exchange rate if you factor the 1% in as a discount. But kids can't get that. So there are a number of prepaid kids cards that give you near perfect exchange rates.
You have Hyperjaw, which is a free card, but you actually pay £5 for it to be delivered and they give you a £5 Amazon voucher. You can load up the money. It's for six to 17-year-olds. Parents must download the free app and parents can have control of it. It allows you to spend on it, but you can't take money from Cash Machine. It's only a spending card. It's not a cash withdrawal card.
If you want a cash withdrawal card, you've got the Starling Kite free prepaid card, but that's only for where parents have a Starling account, so the Kite is the kids' version, and you've got the nationwide FlexWarm. Those are the free ones. If your children have the very popular but paid for Go Henry card,
That is also near perfect exchange rates abroad, so they could use that if they were abroad. And there's the free, revolute card, five pound delivery again, but only on weekdays does that have near perfect exchange rate, it's 1% on weekends. So you want to use that with, so all of those, with all of those, you could load your kids up for money and then when they go abroad, they, without, with the exception of the hyper jar, where you can't withdraw from cash machines, they could spend or they could withdraw from cash machines, they'll get near perfect exchange rates. But remember, when you withdraw from a cash machine abroad,
there can be two charges, your cards charge, most of these cards don't charge, and the overseas cash machine can also charge. I think I've got one of the good ones, a credit card to use abroad. But is it always going to be a good one? Or can they change the terms and conditions? You see what I mean? They can always change the terms and conditions they should notify you. They're, actually, it's become quite a popular thing. They're about 13 or 14 cards.
that give you the non-stirling exchange rate fee now. So there's quite a lot of specialist cards, which is why I now pick on Chase because it gives you the 1% cashback. If you want a credit card, there's a bundle card, travel card, that gives you a quarter of a percent cashback. Why would you want a credit card over the debit card because you get the section 75 protection we talked about earlier? But with the Chase, you don't have an overdraft on it, so you'd preload it effectively works like a prepayment card. And while it's a bank account, the Chase card
You can open it without switching bank account. You just use it as a nap and it doesn't do a credit score. So pretty much anyone can get it. With the Barker card, you'd be credit scored. And if you're doing the Barker card, of course, you need to make sure. I'm going to do it yet again. You need to make sure you pair it off in full at the end of every month. Paul's going to the US for the first time in over 15 years.
Is there a particular credit debit card to get for US dollars? I mean, US is absolutely card-tastic, right? You can generally use cards everywhere. The only issue you'd have is tipping, because you often need to tip over that. Honestly, the double tipping in the States now, they will
they will have a service charge and then they expect a tip on top. I mean, it can add 40% to what you see on the bill. So if you're going in a restaurant in the States, especially if you're in on the East Coast or the West Coast, expect to pay 40% more than the list price for what I'm fact of that in when you're budgeting. But that's not the question. Yeah. Look, as I say, when you use one of these cards in whatever country you're in,
you get the same near perfect exchange rate on the day that the bank does. Now that means these cards
work in dollars, they work in euros, they work wherever you're going. So you can get one card, it works everywhere. What you may want to do if you want cash, the easy way to get cash with these is while you will pay an overseas ATM fee, what I tend to do if I want a little bit of cash in my pocket, which you sometimes feel safer when you're abroad with a bit of cash as well as your card just in case, as soon as I get to the airport I go, I find the cheapest APM with the lowest cash withdrawal fee, I use my card, I make sure I pay in that currency, I don't, those cards, they're really quite vicious, they say,
Would you like to do a currency conversion? We'll convert it for you. And you press no. Are you sure you don't want to do a currency conversion? No. Are you absolutely certain currency conversion? Are you mad? A face comes up on the list. A face comes up red and boiling. And you don't want to do the conversion. You want your car to do the conversion. They want you to do it because they're making money from it. So you don't do the conversion. You take your cash out in dollars and that. But you're paying interest on that because it's on a credit card.
Well, it depends, I've chased cards a debit card. Right, okay, yes. Okay, so a credit card. Okay, so this gets really complicated because, if you're on a credit card.
Some credit cards like the Barclays Travel Card, if you pay it off in full at the end of the month, doesn't charge interest on cash withdrawals, but some cards like Halifax Clarity do charge interest on cash withdrawals even if you pay off in full. So it depends on the credit card and the ones my top picks don't charge interest if you pay off in full.
What were we talking about holiday tips? You've had a couple of tips for us. The couple of random ones that no one would ask about that I want to throw in. The first one is we're in a peculiar year this year. This happens about every four or five years where Easter is very late in April and therefore very close to the first May bank holiday.
which means this year you can actually get 18 successive days off work for just nine days annual leave if you're on a typical work pattern because it's the gap, basically you would book off the gap between Easter Monday on the 21st of April, so you'd have the Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday off, you'd book off the rest of the week and you'd book that up until Monday the 5th of May bank holiday and that would mean nine days of annual leave but 18 off.
Now, you could also do that invariant so that, you know, you're getting 10 days off for five days and that type of stuff. So it's just a quick tip for anyone because there's going to be a fight to book and you'll leave over that period if you're in a place where lots of people are booking at the same time. So let's hope that people are listening to this show and this podcast, you're the ones who get your leave first. And if you're crushing HR systems around the country, then don't mention Martin's name. No, don't be possible. We don't want to get into trouble.
Second quick tip, and I get loads of successes on this in the summer, so I need to pre-warn people because they're able to do this, is the re-book and cancel. Note it's not cancel and re-book, it's re-book and cancel trick. It is your friend. So when you're booking hotels and car hat especially,
aim for products that have free or very cheap cancellation. So because what will happen is in the run up to the summer holidays we'll be on here again and I'll be talking and I will say to you what you should do now if you've got a holiday or car habit which you should always try and book early because you're locking in is go back online go back onto the comparison sites and check now if it's available cheaper which it can be the price can have dropped.
And if it has dropped and you've got free cancellation, what you then do is you book it again and you cancel your first booking so you get it at the cheaper price. So Steve got in touch with me. Booked a Melbourne hotel well in advance a few years ago. It was quite expensive because the Formula One Australian grandpa was scheduled for that week.
When it was moved to the week before, prices dropped and we rebuked, saving over £300. And I get lots of successes, especially on Kaja. Last couple of years, we've seen a change to the pattern of Kaja. Used to always be booking early was cheap, but I think something due to the capacity post COVID has meant that in certain areas,
It suddenly gets much cheaper in the three or four weeks before you go away. Now, you can't guarantee that will happen. So book your cheap car, get your free cancellation, or even better if you don't have to pay and you're able to cancel it that way. And then three or four weeks, check again. Then if it has dropped, I've had people who've saved 75% by doing it that way. So I call it the re-book and cancel, not cancel and re-book, because if you cancel and then you can't book, because something's happening, you'll be in trouble. You've got nothing at all.
Now onto the tellers, and we talked earlier about my concern that too many children are calling their prepaid cards credit cards. And that sparked this week's tellers, which is what have your children misunderstood or misassumed about money that you had to explain to them? And how old were they when they did it? And do they now understand it?
You've sort of seen into the future here because a lot of it is to do with what we were talking about. With the credit cards. I've got loads here. I've got Emma. I do Facebook. My seven-year-old thinks that cards have infinite money on them. I try to explain that work gives us money for working and once that money has run out, then that's it. I think we're slowly getting there reminding him. Kids do really... It's very interesting. I did a quiz for my daughter's birthday where she had lots of friends around because I'm a fun dad.
They loved it. And I nicked one of the House of Gaines quizzes where they do averages. I don't know if you've done House of Gaines. You do averages and you ask two people. And I included in that things like average property price and average salary. It was fascinating that some were pretty good and some just completely different scales of magnitude. What have you got?
Roberto says, Miss apprehension of kids, that money grows on trees, he thought when he was five, now he's six, he believes it just magically appears.
Well, yeah, we've got one of those. Charlotte, one of mine thought that the free cash signs on cash machines literally meant the cash was free and we could take as much as we like. Catherine, I think probably slightly older here. My daughter didn't realise that a regular payment from a debit card is not the same as and cannot be managed the same way as a direct debit. She missed cancelling two subscriptions due to this as she couldn't find a direct debit on her account to cancel. I think there are many grown-ups who don't know the difference between
The three... But you're set up to fail. They set you up to fail with this. There's a kind of a carefully curated ambiguity, isn't it? Because, as you know, we've said, they make money from you messing up. Yeah, absolutely. Again, I defined the three types of part cards before, let's do the three types of regular payment, shall we? You have a standing order which you must set up from your bank account to pay another party. This will often be somebody you know, a regular fixed amount.
You have a direct debit that you set up from a bank account and you would give your bank account details, not your debit card details. That's the crucial difference. And that is a payment that can be taken from your bank account, which can be a varying payment depending on the amount that you owe. But you have very strict rights called the direct debit guarantee that mean you can cancel it and it must be fair. And you have power if it goes wrong.
then you have what's known as a continuous payment authority or a recurring payment. This happens when you give the long of month number on your debit or credit card, so not your bank account details. If you do that, what you're effectively doing is you're authorizing the company to take a payment a bit like you, it's a bit like if you made a payment every month, like you used your card to pay every month, but they do that automatically.
When you do that, now, while the law does state that you have a right to cancel with your bank, some bank staff don't know that and push people away. You have a right to cancel with your bank. It's easier to cancel with the company, but they can leave subscriptions dripping away and they're not listed in your regular payments on firms. Your standing orders and direct debits aren't listed. So the best way to spot it is to look at your bank or your credit card statements and look for the regular payments that you haven't made and then you need to cancel them. I actually had one with a mobile company and I called them up,
And I wanted to cancel it, and they just said, you can't, you have to go to your house. This is ridiculous. I want to cancel a payment with you. And they refused. It was interesting, because I've done it for work. I'd set it up to check out their service. And I just thought, all right, well, you're never going on my life. I felt like saying, you're so play with the wrong person, because clearly, you're never going on my list of a firm that anybody should use at that point, because this is absolutely horrendous. Well, and what have you got next?
Both my kids 9 and 13 call them Monzo bank cards, credit cards. We've been into that. I think we've explained why. Yeah, but I think it's the American influence. Yeah. Heather, once that's my then five-year-old, if I could swap my £10 note for her £2, £5 to pay the window cleaner, she said no. And when asked why, she said, because you'll have two and I'll only have one.
There's a bit of challenge. Yeah. I mean, there's some, I don't mean silly, but there's the kind of things that can take root at a young age. So Tom says, for example, when I was a kid, I assumed checks could be written for anything and were essentially free money. Remember, my dad looked at a Porsche Cadillac and said, why don't you just write a check?
And similarly, so when they were little somebody said, my brother was younger, he assumed an ATM was just somewhere, you could go and get free money. Now that, in a four or five year old mind, whatever, that is entirely logical. Well, and you almost got to explain right from the get go.
Look, I think this is the deconstruction that needs to happen and it goes on at a much older age. So when I designed classes for kids years ago, one of the things I always did when I was talking to 15 year olds, as I said, who do you think gets the cheaper car insurance price?
the new customer who's signing up or the existing customer who's been there and has been a loyal customer for many years. And quite rightly, logically, they all put their hands up that it was the existing customer, but they were wrong. And so I think many of these things are intuitive that kids think, but they're wrong. I've got this one from Sarah.
I'll never forget the day we moved my daughter into her uni house. Her new housemate was lovely and we got them really well, chatting, helping to set things up. We got talking about money and finance and we discussed whether she had a student account. She said that it did and it came with an overdraft facility to use. I explained to her that it was only borrowing money and she had to have to pay it back. She was shocked. She had no idea and thought it was free money. I think she learnt a lot that day.
That's why I've campaigned for financial education in school. There are young people, 18-year-olds, who are financially independent and able to get debt.
who believe that the bigger APR is the better APR. The bigger number is the better number. The higher interest, because they don't know it is interest, is the better one. I mean, this is why as parents, people think, oh, it's sweet, my child says that's no. You need to have your antenna on, you need to intuitively, we need to gently correct them about these as soon as we can, about these misconceptions, because every little bit helps to use the advertising signal.
We've got a, just going back to holidays, Mel's going to Egypt. It's best to wait to get there to exchange currency. I heard you can play with dollars, euros and pounds. Is this correct? Well, there's a couple of questions in there, aren't they? Well, generally you can pound a card in Egypt, and as you can generally hear, using the cheapest cards are cheaper than spend, than bureau to charge generally. But if you want to go to a bureau to charge, you want to change your money,
So people always ask me should I wait till I get there. My answer is, only if you have specialist knowledge. So if you're going to a country that you regularly go to and you know there's a local bureau de shange that will give you exceptionally good rates, go for it.
If you don't, I would change my money before I went. And the reason I would do that is I would go on to a travel money comparison site, which is comparing 30 or 40 bureaus, and I would get yourself the best rates. And generally, the best UK bureaus rates, because you're doing a comparison, you've got a widespread
will beat your local bureau in the place you happen to be holidaying. Because one of them is a comparison and one of them is location specific and just random, will it be good or bad? So my general rule would be, unless you know something about that location and know that happens to be, they always give incredible rates there. And I'd question how they're doing it. But then I would just, if you want to change your money, change it here, then at least you've got certainty that you've done a comparison and you've been able to do it that way round.
And that isn't it for travel. There's lots more to come, including cheap travel insurance, how to avoid excess car hire costs when you go to the desk and they're trying to charge you a lot more, and lots more on spending abroad. Why don't we do a bit of this? Cue the music. Martin.
Yes, this is money mastermind where I ask Adrian a question. And traditionally, I was saying he gets them wrong. But this year, he's three for three. I mean, you have a hundred percent record in 2025, which is pretty outstanding, actually, Adrian. Overall, you have got seven right and eight wrong. You need to retire this feature. It's not going to get any better.
It is fascinating scoring. I mean, if you're at parity in a three-option multiple choice, actually showing there is some knowledge going on in there. It's wonderful. I'm very proud of you. You're listening. Thank you. So let's get on to the question. Listeners, Adrian recently opened his electricity and water bills at the same time. He was shocked.
There we go. I just have to give you the time. You please do that noise because sometimes I don't realise it's been a joke. I'm very well aware. It's a poor one this. That was busy. And not surprisingly was shocked because Bill's in England and Wales are going up 36% over the next five years on average, so it does depend on which award company is. A 20% rise this year alone, so the big rise comes straight away.
Now, in England and Wales, you get a water bill based on the rateable value of your home, which is a proxy for how much it could be rented out for, which is effectively a proxy for your house's value.
The rateable system is based on the local taxation system of the late 1980s. The predecessor to the poll tax, which was the predecessor to the cancel tax. But that is still what the water bills are based on. So my question for you, Adrian. Is it mad? Answer it yes. Thank you very much. Play the alley.
If you believe the rateable value of your house is wrong, and you would probably only do it if you felt you were paying too much, how do you challenge it? A, through the valuation office agency, B, through the valuation office agency, but only within the first six months of moving in, or C, it can't be challenged.
So A, through the Valuation Office Agency, B, through the Valuation Office Agency, but only within the first six months of moving in, or C, it can't be challenged. Well, it can't be B, because that means an nonsense, because I've been where I live for more than 10 years.
So the logic of that would be, so the logic of that would be, well, why you should have challenged when you moved in, or you've already lost your right to challenge. Yeah. I'm not saying that is the answer. I'm saying that's what the logic of that would be. I would say... So you've got A, the valuation of his agency, B, the valuation of his agency, because only within the first six months of moving in, or C, it can't be challenged.
Since. And just to everybody at home, say out loud your answer now, because then you're committed and you can't say when you're afterwards, I want you to say out loud your answer now, which is how you deal with it. Well, my logic here is simply that since the whole thing is barking mad, I would go for the most barking mad one, which is that what we just talked about big, that valuation office, whatever that is. Only within the first six months. So, I lost my right to challenge.
Okay, final answer. Final answer. Okay. Now, in 1990, the general rate system was replaced by the community charge poll tax and the district value as office, which is the ones that looked after the rate system was at that point disbanded. When the new council tax came in, the valuation office agency was set up and their job is to look at council tax. If you move into a new property, within the first six months, it is easy to challenge your council tax band.
After six months, it is still doable, but much more difficult. So there is a six month after moving in, you need to check it rule. But that's for council tax. When it comes to water, you can't change your locked in because I've already started giving you the explanation. When I start giving it away, you know, a desperate man.
And I'm afraid that I think I'm almost going to give you wrong twice because you said the most ludicrous option would be you can only challenge within the first six months and move again. No, the most ludicrous option is the correct option, which is it can't be challenged. Play the other. It can't be challenged. So if you think the entire property structure has changed and your house is now worth three up and it's hate me when it used to be worth 300 million pounds.
You still have absolutely no right to challenge in the way that you can with council tax. No right to challenge. And it's worth people being aware of that. But let's move on a little bit to water, because water's really important. You've got a little bit of time left. I'm really interested to hear your tips on this. OK, so look, the first thing I would say England and Wales only this works differently in Scotland and differently in Northern Ireland.
The first question you ask yourself is, do you have more or the same number of bedrooms in your property than people? So three bedrooms, two people would count a yes on that. In that case, you are likely to be better off on a water meter than having a bill because we talked about the bill is based on effectively the value of your property. So very simply, you've got a big house, not many people look living in it. It's likely to be cheaper if they're measuring your actual water usage. It's going to make it a lot cheaper doing it that way. So I think
That's one of the first things you need to look at. If that sounds right, get onto the Consumer Council for Waters Calculator. Just as an example, Ursula, going in touch with me, I got a water meter fitted as there's only two of us in a three-bed house. We now pay 16 pounds a month instead of 60 pounds a month. That's 500 pounds a year cheaper. This is nothing to be sniffed at. Now, some people say to me, I wanted a water meter. The seller can't have one. In some ways, that is actually the sweet spot. Because if you can't have a water meter, because you might be in shared pipes and flats, so they can't do well.
you can ask for an assess charge. Now what an assess charge does is it works out how much you would pay if you were on a water meter roughly. You then get given that. Now if that's less than your water bill,
You can go on the assess charge, but it doesn't matter what you use, you're going to pay the assess charge. If it's more, you stick on your water bill. Luke, I moved from my first home in October 2024. For context, I knew to utility bills, etc. My water company wanted to charge me £50 for water a month when it's just me in a two-bed flat flat. When I called them up to negotiate, they told me that's the price and to deal with it.
So I looked online and saw the value of getting a water meter installed. I booked an appointment, which they hid from me in the first place, and because they could not fit the water meter, I'm now on an assess charge of around £100 a year, saving me £500 a year quickly. But he's not even actually got the water meter. So it's really important that, again,
More or the same number of bedrooms than people, you're likely to be better off on a water meter. And then there's the website, Save Money, Save Water, which you can go to. It has lots of free water saving gadgets.
Now, a couple more important updates about water bills. First of all, are you one of up to 2 million homes on low incomes or on universal credit, missing out on saving hundreds of pounds with a social tariff? Now, these social tariffs are offered by all firms and they can reduce what you pay by up to 90 percent by lowering or sometimes capping the cost of your bills or your water meter charges. Yeah, there are almost 2 million households missing out.
It's incredibly important. If you are on a low income, and exactly what the criteria are depends, but let's say less than £22, £23,000 family income, or you're on universal credit, just get onto your water company's website, see what it's offering, or call them up and talk to them about it. There's a separate scheme that you could have as well, which is called Watershore, which is typically worth about £160 a year. Now, to be eligible for the Watershore scheme, you need to have a water meter
receive benefits and either have three or more children or a medical condition such as Crohn's or eczema which means you need to use more water. If that's you, you might be able to have your bills capped under the water shore scheme and that can work in conjunction with the social tariff. Now just a note on water meters and one of the questions that many people have to me is if you get a water meter and suddenly it's not working for you, can you change back?
Yes, usually is my answer. You normally have up to two years to change back with most water firms, although there are a couple that don't do it. So it is a question to check and ask beforehand. And the other thing just to say is if you moved into a property with a water meter, or you have had a water meter compulsorally,
Compulsarily? Compulsory. Fitted. Sorry. Compulsory fitted. I can't even think of the word, but you know what I mean. I'm going to carry on. Then you can't change it back. You don't have a choice, I'm afraid. So the changing back rule is only for those who have chosen to opt for a water meter voluntarily, and I managed to pronounce that word correctly.
Now, we're gonna go back to travel, and I've got podcast producer Simon with me. Absolutely delighted to be back the week after I've been on holiday. We've done this topic, but it's just a spite you don't go away again, man. You're not allowed. Before I get to your questions, though, Simon, I just wanna do a reminder of what we talked about on the pod with travel insurance a couple of weeks ago. The golden rule is always get your travel insurance, A-S-A-B.
as soon as you book
are saying no you can't have a refund because you didn't but with cancellation and they don't have to give you a refund because the flights still available the hotel still available the problem is the fact that you can't travel not the fact that there's a lack of availability on the room and they say what can I do and I feel impotent because the answer is that's what travel insurance is for.
That's why you get ASAB. So I know you've got travel insurance questions for me, but before we do that, if you have booked a holiday and you don't have travel insurance, get your travel insurance now. If you're booking a holiday, get your travel insurance straightaway afterwards. And if you're going to book a holiday, remember, you do your travel insurance ASAP. Now, what questions you got?
been booked. Yes, a new annual one would cover a trip that's already been booked. What you could do is you can get the travel insurance now and you can book it to start the day your old travel insurance policy ends and it should cover you for a year onwards and you should be able to do that. The only slight issue is if it's with a different company, there can be jurisdictional questions of arguing depending what happens when, who covers you.
So what I would probably do in that circumstance, even though it may not be the very cheapest way, because there may be a cheaper policy than your existing policy, is I would probably sign up now for another year when your existing policy ends with your existing insurer and then whatever happens you're covered. And that would cover you for the following year. I mean, I should say, if you're not planning to go away again after that September trip until after September 2026,
then you could just get a single trip cover to cover you for when you go away. And Lynn's asked a question and we've got a lot of questions about this. She asked for the best travel insurance for over 70s. Travel insurance gets very expensive, the older that you get. Now, there's a couple of ways to do it. Some of the package bank accounts like nationwide or Virgin have travel insurance that covers people who are older without much of a premium at all. And it is worth looking at those as long as you're going to use them for the other insurance like the mobile and the breakdown. If not, it can still be cheap.
It just depends is the answer. I mean, I would be checking for really dirt cheap policies and these are bog standard no thrills. You know, I'm not talking. There's any great bells and whistles with them. And they don't have the, you know, not really collecting the feedback. Place like cover wise bronze, leather guard, flexi, bronze, avanti, admiral, stay sure are all worth looking at.
for older people that you can still get roughly similar prices to people under age 65. It's 65, which is the crucial point. Once you're getting over 80, though, it does get very difficult. Kukotas has asked a question about travel insurance for pre-existing conditions. They want to know why it is skyrocketed so much since Brexit and Covid.
I mean, just insurance premiums have gone up so much generally. I don't know that pre-existing conditions have gone up. I think what we've had is we've had a change of policy where the regulator has told firms that they must signpost people who have pre-existing conditions to specialists if they don't have cheap policies. And I think what may have happened is some of the normal insurers may have then priced up to premium the pre-existing conditions because they're not really covering it.
So I would always first, if you've got a pre-existing condition, go on to a normal travel insurance comparison site to just see if standard travel insurance will cover you for your condition. It depends on the severity of the condition and when it was. And always make sure you declare it. There's no point in getting travel insurance policy that doesn't declare your pre-existing condition. It's arguably could leave you uncovered if you did. If you're struggling, then there's a couple of specialist pre-existing condition comparison sites. Medical travel compared
is one with a wide range of insurers and I'd also check paying too much as well. So they would be the two sites, medical travel compared and paying too much. And Hans has asked for advice on what to do if you don't get what was promised or what was advertised to you.
It always surprises me that people don't realize that travel insurance is a regulated product and I call financially regulated products. That means that if you have a problem with the travel insurer, you think you haven't been treated fairly, you don't get what you think you were promised or something goes wrong, you have a right to go to the free financial ombudsman service for it to adjudicate. Now, that can be even as simple as you've put a claim in. They say that your claim isn't valid. You think what they're saying is wrong because they've got the facts wrong or they're adjudicating it the wrong way.
even on a claim, you can then take that claim to the free financial ombudsman service. I would always tell the company that you're planning to do that in advance because being honest, they have to pay if you go to the financial ombudsman and sometimes it makes them think with a little bit more clarity about whether they should be settling, whether the ombudsman is likely to order in your favour anyway, in which case they're going to have to give you what they would give you anyway and pay the ombudsman on top.
So I think it's worth letting them know in advance that you're going to do that, but you always have to complain first to the insurer, but once you've complained to the insurer, if they are rejecting what you want and you don't think you've been treated fairly or you don't think you've got what you would offer, or you have any other problems, once you've complained to the insurer, you can go to the free financial ombudsman service, even about travel insurance. That brings to the end the special quick fire travel insurance round. Thank you.
We did a pass? Yeah, yeah, fly for marks. Literally flying colors. Oh, well done. That was an impromptu pump. Yeah, yeah. Well, I didn't know I was going to waste it as a producer. You should be like, yeah, yeah. We had one question from Gasmé. What's the best credit card to take abroad for a minimum fees?
Well, again, I talked about the chase card, and that is a debit card. So if you're going abroad and you want a credit card because you get that section 75 protection, it's the Barclay card reward credit card that gives you near perfect exchange rates when you go abroad, doesn't have ATM fees, and
gives you 0.25% cash back on your spending. So Chase is 1%. It's a debit card. This is 0.25%. Make sure you pay it off in full every month, although I'm just wondering a bit like we talked about in the tellers, whether you're using credit card as a shorthand for plastic, in which case I would probably go with Chase as the debit card. Peter asks, I've got a post office travel card that I preload prior to travel. Is it best making payments in the local currency or in British pounds?
Absolutely always. You want your car to do the conversion. Pay in the local currency. Post Office travel card isn't one of the best cards out there. You can get better rates either on prepaid with the likes of Revolut or by all the other cards I've been talking about while we're at it. It's fine, but it's no great shakes. But you still want it to do the conversion. I mean, I've seen horrible conversion rates abroad.
I mean, where you're losing 10, 15% if you pay in pounds and let them do the conversion, let the shop or the ATM do the conversion, as opposed to your card company doing the conversion. So pay, it's simple. Most people go to Europe, paying euros. If you're going to America, paying dollars, if you're going to Vietnam, as I like to say that currency, paying dong. Like literally last Friday, I was in Tenerife Airport.
And I bought, I got a Burger King and they asked me what I wanted to pay and I was like, I wish Martin loses it. And I knew there was a right answer. What did you choose? Well, so I went for euros. I knew there was a right answer. So yes, I've got lucky there. We got a lot of questions about mobile phones, including this one from Sue.
Hi Martin, Sue here. I'm due to go to the US later this year. I've just discovered that my new phone will accept an eSIM. Are they a good idea? What should I look for? Is there anything I need to be aware of or to avoid please?
Thanks a lot. Yep. Sue, I'm a fan of eSims. Now, I wouldn't tend to use them if you're just going away for a week in Europe. Almost all UK foams either have free EU roaming or you just pay a couple of quid the day to be able to use your phone in Europe at the same rate, you know, being able to make, get your free calls and your free texts or whatever you'd be doing in the UK. With data, it tend to match up, although some of them have higher data limits than your UK contract if you're going abroad. So do check that out. But generally, going in Europe,
If you're not going to be using it any more than you would at home, it won't cost you that much per cup of liquid a day. If you were staying for a longer period, I might think of a Nissan. Now, a Nissan is a virtual SIM card that you can sign up to online. You put the details in, you have to be able to change the settings on your phone to be able to do it. And then effectively, all your data goes through the SIM card.
So then you would make your calls on what's that, rather than making calls on your eSim. Some of them would allow you to do calls, but it's often about a data package that you're getting when you're going abroad, and that's what's really expensive. So I generally am a fan of eSims. I've used them myself to great success personally, where I've been able to use a lot of data abroad for fractions of the cost, you know, saving hundreds of pounds if I'd used the same data abroad. I never would have done because I knew what the cost would be. But because I had one of these data packages, I could use my data while I was abroad.
What I would say is if you're a first timer, you know, different sims, different coverage, if you're going to the states, different states, depending which phone has the best coverage where you go, what I would probably do is I'd get myself a cheap e-sim that say lasted a week and only had a small amounts of gig because you can always just buy another one online very easily for a firm that you think is good.
Then try and use it, and if it's working well, then just upgrade your data package. And if it's not working well, you might want to try a different one. That would be my general advice. There are good guys to ease Sims in each country available online as well, which are worth looking at. Kaimi wants to know about car hire. They ask, how do you stop car hire companies charging extra fees when you pick up the car?
Well, this is the car hire excess insurance trap that many get caught out on. Basic car insurance is included in the hire you get at the pickup desk you'll often hear. And that's someone in Germany. You will need the excess insurance. If you don't get the excess insurance, scare tactic. If you don't get the, let me move into the microphone to do this.
you don't buy our excess insurance. Even if you get one scratch on the car, it could cost you a thousand. Yeah, you generally get that type of thing, a rear fewer sell on the excess. And the problem is, especially if you bought cheap car hire, what they're trying to charge you, it could be 20 quid a day, it could be more than you're actually paying for the car hire for this excess insurance, and they will give you loads of scare tactics on top. So what I would always suggest you do is you get yourself a standalone
excess insurance policy before you go, which instead of 20 quid a day can be about two quid a day. There's a good comparison site. Money Maxim has a comparison site where you can go and find it. If you go and use car hire a lot, you can actually get annual excess insurance for car hire.
But even if you do do that, expect the person at the desk who is likely on commission to hard sell you to try and put you off to tell you it won't work or to try and make you jump through hoops. So you're going to need to be prepared to leave a refundable deposit of probably 1,000 pounds on a credit card, a credit card, not a debit card. They generally won't accept debit cards. You need to have a credit card if you're doing this.
It will usually need to be in the name of the person who booked, though in some cases it will need to be in the name of the main driver. If not, they may not accept it because they're trying to make you not be able to do this. So generally, I would always have the main driver be the person who is doing the booking and who has the credit card when you're getting your car here in the first place.
Once you've gone through this and successfully navigated it once or twice, I do it and I find it really easy now because I just, no thank you. I've got one of these. No thank you. Yes is my credit card. Yes, I'll pay the deposit. Thank you very much. And you can get through it. And I think they can sort of tell on the desk those people who know what they're doing and those people who don't know what they're doing.
And there've been times when I've been at a desk getting car hair and there's been someone of some British people on the next desk that I hear it's going through. And I have to tell you, you can let me know what you think. Do I intervene? It's hard to intervene when you're me. Because if they know who you are, it's a bit of embarrassing, it looks like. But on the other hand, that just really annoys me and I'm going, you've got your excess insurance. It's fine. Just don't get that extra policy. Anyway, I'll probably stop that was a long answer.
But a good one. And you touched on credit cards there. Helen is going to bruge in Belgium for Easter. Needs to pay for the hotel and arrival. What's the best way to pay for the hotel? Is it debit card, credit card? Or should she put the money on a prepaid money card?
I would just get yourself a specialist card, whichever one suits you, a debit card or a credit card or a prepaid card, although the debit and the credit card have the better rates. And I would simply pay on that. I mean, you could argue do it on a credit card for the Section 75 protection, but I think once you're there, if the hotel is there, the marginal gain of the purchase protection that you'll get on that is there is a slight gain. So a credit or a debit card, I would suggest would be the easiest way to go.
I just, I do one final thought that no one's asked, but it is an important one when we're talking about currency and money. When I talk about near perfect exchange rates, as I've explained, that is on the rate on the day that you pay. Now, clearly exchange rates move every day and they fluctuate every day.
So what I'm not saying is that use one of the specialist cards and you will get the best possible exchange rate over a time period. You will get the best possible exchange rate on that day. And if the rate were to change the next day, you may gain or you may lose out compared to having waited.
Some people worry about that and so there is another strategy that you could adopt and the other strategy would say that if you think the rate now is reasonable and it's one that means that your holiday would be affordable but you don't know what the rate will be when you go away, you could
simply go and either get cash now to spend when you're abroad at today's rate or you could go and get yourself a prepaid card because some of the prepaid cards give you the facility to load up and get the rate on the day that you load up as opposed to the rate on the day that you spend.
Now, if you were to adopt that strategy, that would mean you're hedging your bets that you think the rate is better now than it will be when you go away. So what I would probably do if you were really risk averse is I would probably get half of my money now, if you think the rate's reasonable, I get half of it on a prepaid card, or if you need to, if you're a cash type person on cash. And then I would do the other half for when you go away at the near perfect rates then, then you're hedging your bets against currency moves one way or the other.
I mean, it's not something I do myself. I just have a specialist card for spending abroad. But I know that some people are very nervous and very sensitive to price moves, in which case it is a way of hedging your bets in case there were to be a substantial move in the value of currency in between you booking and you going that would mean it would make it more difficult to afford to have a nice holiday when you went away. And I think I'll leave that as my final travel thought.
And now podcast listeners, it's that time for the quick tips. I've just got one for you, but it's an important one. It's a way to slash 100 pounds off energy standing charges, which is probably the single most complained about issue I get when we're talking about energy or probably anything else. There's a new tariff just launched. It's from EDF. It's called it simply tracker extra tariff. Now, what it does is it tracks the price cap that over 80% of homes are on. So if the price cap goes up, it goes up, but
The standing charges are 100 pounds a year lower. So that's the daily charges you pay for gas and electricity are 100 pounds a year lower over the year. So who's this good for? Well, it's especially good for those who have lower usage. It's incredibly difficult to work out. So I'm going for a very rough rule of thumb is if you pay on average under 135 pounds a month,
then you will probably be better off on this than going for a cheap fix. You will certainly be better off than this than just sticking on a price cap. Most people can get this tariff on most payment methods, although on prepay, you have to have a smart meter. So if you're on smart prepay, you can do it. At last for a year, there are 25 pounds per fuel exit fees. I should note, if you're a mid to high energy user, because the price cap is still predicted to go up somewhere between three to 6% in April,
I think you would be better off locking yourself into a cheap fix because for you, the unit rate, the amount that you pay for using gas and electricity is very important. For lower users, the standing charge makes up such a big proportion their bill, cutting the 100 quid off that will often be a bigger saving. But for mid to high users, I would be going for a cheap fix. Get yourself onto a whole-of-market comparison to decide which one is cheapest for you.
That's it for this week. If you've enjoyed it, please tell your friends you've been listening to the Martin Lewis podcast. If not, why not tell them you were listening to the Off-Air podcast with Jane and Fi? Apparently their latest episode is about tax dodging alpacas. Do you know why alpacas don't like singing with backing music? It's because they prefer to sing alpaca-pella. Sorry. We tend to put out a new episode every Thursday. Do subscribe to keep up to date and then your pockets will be pleased with you. Take care.
Martin Lewis is the founder of moneysavingexpert.com. But of course, other consumer and price comparison websites are available. You can get in touch with Martin's podcast production team by emailing Martin Lewis Podcast at bbc.co.uk. The offers and rates mentioned in the podcast are correct at the time of recording. However, if you are listening on demand, it's worth double checking as details can date. Remember to subscribe on BBC Sounds and leave us a review, however you listen.
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Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation. It felt a really safe and welcoming space. After yoga classes, I felt amazing.
But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders. I don't have my passport, I don't have my phone, I don't have my bank cards, I have nothing. The passport being taken, being in a house and not feeling like they can leave.
World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry, where the hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually.
and it's done so skillfully that you don't realise. And it's like this, the secret that's there. I wanted to believe that, you know, that
whatever they were doing, even if it seemed gross to me, was for some spiritual reason that I couldn't yet understand. Revealing the hidden secrets of a global yoga network, I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this and to put my reputation and everything else on the line. I want truth and justice.
and further people to not be hurt for things to be different in the future. To bring it into the light and almost alchemise some of that evil stuff that went on and take back the power. World of Secrets Season 6, the Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
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