← Merryn Talks Money
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- [00:00]
A
Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-IHeart Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News. Welcome to marantalks yous Money, the personal finance edition of Maren Talks Money. In these bonus podcasts, we talk about the best strategies for making the most of your money. I'm Maren Somethingset Webb, Editor at large for Bloomberg UK wealth.
- [00:46]
B
And I'm Join Stevik, senior reporter at Bloomberg and author of the multi award winning Money Distilled newsletter. Happy New Year, Merton.
- [00:54]
A
Happy New Year, John. Now you're probably having a lovely time because you were so right about silver and knowing you, you probably absolutely piled in and now you're super rich and leaving us any day now. Am I right or am I right?
- [01:05]
B
I mean, obviously, yes, I was right about, well, I wasn't even right about silver. I've just been gawping at it. But yes, from the side lanes.
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A
Disappointing.
- [01:14]
B
Silver is the crypto of the precious metals world.
- [01:20]
A
Yes, I suppose it is. No, it's not because it's been going up.
- [01:26]
B
Oh, shots fired already. And it's only the first podcast of the year, starting early. Send your email to the usual address.
- [01:34]
A
John's Listen, I'm feeling quite optimistic about the beginning of this year, partly to do with the gold and silver prize, et cetera, but I'm kind of alone. Well, this is the time of year to look at polls, surveys, et cetera. And one of the first ones that caught my eye this morning was one about despair over the future in the West. So the majority of people think governments are failing, democracy is weakening, life is gonna be harder and harder, generation after generation. This is kind of miserable stuff, this idea that people genuinely feel that their governments are failing, which they are, by the way, and that they that there is very little at a high level agency.
- [02:14]
B
Yeah, to be honest, it's hard to disagree with the sense of a lack of agency. I think the one thing that I would the main thing where I disagree is the idea that this is then going to lead to an inevitable decline as opposed to a change. And obviously change is unsettling. But obviously we're already seeing change. New Year's started with Donald Trump demonstrating change very clearly.
- [02:41]
A
Yeah, when he goes for change, he really does go for change. I don't think that the rest of us can quite go for change in the same way as Donald Trump. What we are going to talk about today is things that you do have your own agency over, and that is not, you know, invading countries and that kind of thing. It's a little more prosaic, really.
- [02:57]
B
So that would be a New Year's resolutions list, though. I quite like the idea. Invade small country.
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A
Okay, but let's just correct ourselves because as Trump has made clear, this is not an invasion. No, not an invasion. Not invaded. Venezuela. Not running Venezuela. Or they're kind of running Venezuela. Shall we leave that to one of the political podcasts and move on?
- [03:17]
B
Yes, good idea.
- [03:18]
A
Financial resolutions. Things you should be doing or not doing to be better off by the end of 2026. We're aiming for six potential financial resolutions for you. Now, one thing to say here is that there is yet another survey out from YouGov. It says only 19% of Britons say they intend to make New year's resolutions for 2026. We'd like to make that 100% of our listeners, young people are the most likely. 37% of them, 18 to 24, say they're gonna do it. And health pledges top the list of resolutions. Now that makes sense. Health first, always. But rather depressingly, only about 7% of them say that they want to make a financial one. So, no, it's worse than that. Save more, spend less.7% of people. Okay. Improve financial management.4% of people. Reduce levels of debt, 2% of people.
- [04:13]
B
That's interesting.
- [04:15]
A
Maybe people just don't have any debt. We know that household debt isn't across the board much of a problem at the moment. But save more, spend less. Economists wouldn't be down with that. They would like us to spend more, save less, but improve financial management. I think that's the key. So why don't we work from that? Improve financial management as an overarching resolution that, to be honest, really, really, really more than a couple of percent of you should be picking up. 4% is not enough. That should be like 100%. Okay, so, John, inside that. What would be your number one financial resolution?
- [04:51]
B
Number one? Well, number one is quite tricky, but I guess if you want to improve your financial management, then that's more about. Well, it's making sure that your spending is under control within the bounds of your monthly income. I think that's the most important thing.
- [05:13]
A
God, John, do you think people should be making spending spreadsheets and budgeting spreadsheets and all that kind of thing?
- [05:18]
B
Not unless you have to, you know, if your budget's tight, then you want, you do want to live within your means. I think that's, that's important. Obviously, living within your means differs from period to period in your life. And that's the other thing. It's like, what are you having to prioritize at this particular point? So, you know, what is your savings goal? Do you want to. Do you need to buy a house, in which case that dictates how you save? Or are you more my age? And you want to maximize the amount of money you're saving for your retirement? So it's all about different life stages. So if you're asking about one thing, then that is the most boring thing. It's like, know where your money's going and know what you're. What you're. What you want to do with it.
- [06:02]
A
Yeah. Do you know, this connects nicely with what I would say would be my number one. Right. Which is to actually make time for this. And one of the things that people never do is set aside an hour a month, literally. This is not gonna kill you an hour a month to sit down and just go through everything.
- [06:20]
B
That's really important because. Yeah. Cause it's the same with any kind of productivity move or exercise move. The first thing you actually need is to budget the time for it.
- [06:29]
A
Yeah. And take that time and. And then you can actually sit down. You can open your bank account, you can look at all your direct debits, all of your bills, you can look at your insurance, utilities. You can talk to your partner about it. Because you've got to do this as a couple. If you're going to do it, sit down with your partner, do it together. This one hour, maybe once a month is pushing it. Once every two months. Once every two months, even once every.
- [06:52]
B
Two months is good. And also there's different times as well, because, I mean, things like when your insurance comes in, make sure you've got that in a diary so that you know to do the comparison search at some point before it comes in.
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A
Yeah.
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B
It's much, much easier than it used to be in the old days. I mean, I still remember when you had to phone around three different car insurers or whatever to try and see, get a new quote. Whereas at least now you can all put it into one website. So you just. You need to put aside the time for it and plan ahead.
- [07:21]
A
Yep. And I'm going to pick up that one on insurance. Right. The other thing, if you've got a mortgage, a remortgage Coming up, you really need to be on this, probably in advance. I had a text this morning from a friend who's just about to roll off a five year mortgage deal at 1.5%. And so you need to be on that very quickly to make sure that you do not end up on a standard variable rate. Yeah, those will come in.
- [07:50]
B
That'd be nasty.
- [07:52]
A
Very nasty. They can come in at 6 plus percent at the moment. Imagine going from 1.5% to 6% on your mortgage. You do not want this to happen. So that's something to be absolutely aware of. If you know your mortgage is coming to an end, now is the time to put that in your diary. Not the actual end of the mortgage, but six months in advance to make sure that you are not the person, particularly in an environment of falling interest rates at the moment, you are not the person who ends up with the standard variable rate. Don't be that person.
- [08:20]
B
Yeah. And you can also talk to a mortgage broker around about that time. And if you do find a rate that you like, there's a good chance you'll be able to lock that in and then look at it again just before your mortgage is actually up. And if there is a better rate at that point, you can switch to that.
- [08:36]
A
Yeah. And we have, by the way, done several podcasts on this. Do go back to our property series when you can learn all about mortgages and finding a mortgage broker and how to work on that. I suppose one thing I might add to that, John, this is not necessarily a resolution, but a reminder, which is that if you are one of the very few people who appears to be buying a house this year, bargain hard, bargain hard. Prices are changing, aren't they? The market is finally reacting to higher interest rates. These things move so slowly. But interest rates have gone up a lot. House prices are reacting to that. So it is time, if you are looking for a house, to make sure you really, really get the right price.
- [09:15]
B
Yeah. And I think the further up the ladder you go, the harder it is to find a buyer. So if you are a buyer, especially at the kind of upper reaches, then yeah, as you say, you should be able to kind of drive a harder bargain than you could have maybe five years ago.
- [09:31]
A
Yeah. And if you're selling well, I guess.
- [09:35]
B
You'Re just going to have to accept that you may not get the price that you would have got again, sort of like five years ago. And again, it depends on where you are. The further north you are in the country, the more likely it is that actually Your house price probably is roughly what you thought it would be worth, whereas the further south. Yeah. Particularly in London, prices haven't moved since, you know, in about a decade. Realistically.
- [10:02]
A
Well, the papers are full at the moment of stories about people who can't sell their houses. We're desperate to sell, we're this, we're that, and it's a cruel world out there. But the answer is that there is no such thing as a house that won't sell. So there is only a house that won't sell because the price is wrong. There's always a price, right?
- [10:18]
B
Yeah. And I think a lot of the problem with that is that people have unfortunately sometimes taken out debt against their home over time, and so they end up with a price that not only they think is worth kind of a price that they feel they need to get. And you can't anchor to that. As you say, if the house isn't selling or getting viewings, then that's because the price is too high.
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A
Yeah, yeah, okay. No, that's a depressing one. We're moving on from this. Although not depressing for the buyers, just depressing.
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B
No, it's good news for the buyers. Yeah, it's good.
- [11:03]
A
Right, the next one, next financial resolution is be aware of all the possibilities for tax efficiency and take advantage of them. Right, so max out your isa. I think pretty much everyone who was able to do so maxed out their ISA last year. Right. We saw a figure from the bank of England out the other day showing that 5.1 billion into cash ISIS in November 2025 alone. That's the highest inflow in the year, apart from in April, which obviously was the highest inflows. So, yes, max that out. Remember that it's not that long hammer. It's another two ISIS seasons until you can only put £12,000 into cash and the rest has to go into equities, of which John and I thoroughly approve all that. We don't understand why the over 65s get an exemption from that. I spoke for you. You approve as well, right, John?
- [11:47]
B
Oh, yeah, I approve, yes. And also. Yes. I don't know why the over 65s get exempt from that. Well, I know why, but I think it's a daft reason.
- [11:56]
A
Yeah. So max out your ISAs, but also be aware as you do so, of the interest rate you might get. Very often the interest rate on a cash ISA is lower than the rate you might get on an ordinary account. And it is entirely possible that if you have to pay tax on the Interest from an ordinary account, you may still end up ahead of what you get on a cash isa. Who can know? Check all that stuff out along the way. By the way, A number from AJ Bell £300 billion is sitting in deposit accounts or current accounts that pay no interest of any kind whatsoever. Do something about that. If that's you do something about that. It's insane.
- [12:31]
B
And the other thing is, if you've got cash that is sitting outside the NYSER for whatever reason, then if you're married, make sure it's going into the name of the spouse who earns the least because they all pay the least tax on the interest. Assuming that you trust your spouse enough to stick your assets in their name. Which I hope you do.
- [12:51]
A
I hope you do too. Back to the fact that all your financial decisions should be joint. There was another survey out the other day showing that a very large number, I can't remember the percentage of which of people and couples have money they hide from their partners. Doesn't tell you much about trust, does it?
- [13:06]
B
Everyone's got different ways of running their finances. But I think whenever you're hiding money from your partner in a serious way, then that's just bad news.
- [13:16]
A
Yeah, I mean there's having your own accounts.
- [13:19]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [13:20]
A
There's having your own accounts and there's hiding money. Anyway, again, that's not our area. We'll leave that for the self help podcasts.
- [13:26]
B
We do need to do a divorce episode at some point. I keep getting requests for that for some reason. I think there may be some people in the office who are in rocky for the last few minutes.
- [13:38]
A
I would like to apologize to all our colleagues for the assumptions John makes. But anyway, we have past divorce day. Divorce Day was January 5th. The day when the more people file for divorce than any other day in the year on average. But of course the best financial tip when it comes to divorce is don't. Do not get divorced. Everyone's standard of living is lower after divorce. You can run one house on a certain amount of cash. Trying to run two households on the same amount of cash doesn't work so well. Particularly right now when you're not going to sell your house for the amount you thought you were going to sell your house for. So if you can possibly reconcile. And again, I'm moving into the realms of our self help competitors anyway, so if you can avoid getting divorced, don't get divorced. And of course the other bit of advice that divorce lawyers always give, particularly to women, is if you are getting divorced, forget the House, go for the pension and stay out of court to the extent that you possibly can.
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B
But that's good advice because pensions tend to get overlooked.
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A
Yeah. Do we now need a divorce podcast or are we done?
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B
Let the people decide.
- [14:43]
A
Okay. Send it in if you want. If you want to know more about how to divorce, well, financially at least, that's all we can do. Let us know. Right. I'm sticking with tax, John. I'm sticking with tax. The next resolution has got to be to keep an eye on your pension. Do you know what you've got? Do you know what types they are? Do you know how they work? Do you know all the T's and C's around the edge? Can you save more? What if you make a really small additional contribution? If you're young and you up Your contributions by 1 or 2 percentage points, which most schemes will allow you to do over time, that's going to add up to a lot. Right. Worth doing.
- [15:18]
B
Yeah. And I mean, this is a really important one because so many people have got so many pensions or even just one pension, that they don't know what's in it. So if you're an employee, look at your auto enrollment pension. Double check the conditions. If you get a match from your employer, like if you put more in and they'll put more in, then you should definitely do that. And also check what it's invested in. And also, if you're older, check that your fund isn't being lifestyled unless you want it to be. Because a lifestyle is the closer you get to retirement, the more that gets put into technically less risky assets like bonds. But that can mean that when you get to retire, maybe your fund hasn't grown as much as you wanted it to, or you thought you were investing, invested in one thing and in fact you're invested in another. So just keep an eye on what's going on with your pensions.
- [16:09]
A
Yep. Okay. Any other tax things we should think about?
- [16:13]
B
I mean, there's. I mean, obviously the capital gains tax allowance is very low now, but it's still £3,000. And if for some reason you do have, you know, investments in, outside an EISA or outside the pension wrapper, then crystallising some of those gains can be useful to use up bits of your allowance. But, yeah, it has become vague, very, very meager in a very short space of time, you know, so it's going down from like 12 to kind of three and just the space of a few years. So people who once wouldn't have had to worry about this do have to worry about it now, so it's worth taking a look at. And again, trying to share that allowance with your spouse where you can.
- [16:52]
A
Okay, I have one more that I think is really important and that I wrote about at the end of last year, which is taking us back to cash. We talked about making sure you're earning interest in cash, making sure that you max out your isa. If what you want is to have the cash, stocks and shares mixture, whatever. We'll do more on ISIS at a different time. But one of the key things about cash is that you need to have actual, real physical cash.
- [17:16]
B
This was a really interesting point you made.
- [17:18]
A
Yeah. So, you know, what if there's a cyber attack? What if your bank account is locked for some reason? You know, to do with cyber attack, to do with some money, money laundering mistake, whatever it is. I don't mean a mistake on your part, obviously not our listeners. I mean a mistake on the bank's part believing that there may be something wrong with your account when there isn't. This happens incredibly increasingly. There are all sorts of reasons why you might need to have a couple of weeks worth of cash at home. Don't forget, of course, possibilities of blackout. All sorts of things can happen and none of your accounts are going to work if there isn't any electricity or if there's a cyber attack. So having a bit of cash at home in case of emergencies is really worth doing. And I know people listen to me saying this and they think you're ridiculous, but look at the cyber attacks we saw last year and the year before at the geopolitical tensions ramping up. Look at the problems we're having in our electricity market and with our grid. I mean, why would you not have the insurance of having cash at home?
- [18:16]
B
This obviously happened in Spain last year and again, another colleague was pointing out that she was in Spain at the time and they couldn't get cash out and they couldn't, you know, they couldn't buy anything. They had something like €20 to last them for three days. And so. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's a really important, useful one. It's almost like your emergency emergency fund.
- [18:41]
A
Yeah, exactly. I mean, we're not talking here about the amount of cash that has armed robbers breaking into your home. We're just talking about a couple of days of cash if something goes wrong. You can still get some bread and some milk.
- [18:52]
B
Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's a really useful one. I think it's one that people don't think about. Particularly, again, younger people, whenever they've just used their phones for everything.
- [19:03]
A
Oh, actually, while we're on the subject, John, I just wanted to point to a Bloomberg article on our website about the horrors of people invading your home. If you have very large crypto holdings to force the passwords out of you. Really unbelievably unpleasant. So I just want to take this opportunity to let everybody know that while I talk a lot, just to tease John about my crypto holdings, they're worth very, very, very little. Like, basically nothing. Please do not invade my home. And John, of course, has no crypto at all, so definitely do not invade his home.
- [19:39]
B
Yes, that would be a complete waste of time.
- [19:41]
A
Total waste of time. Invading either of our houses would be a waste of time. Don't do it.
- [19:47]
B
Yeah. Okay, so that's another New Year's resolution. If you've got a lot of crypto, don't tell anyone.
- [19:53]
A
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- [19:57]
B
It is interesting because one of the reasons that these people do invade people's homes is because there isn't a central authority that can just stop your crypto. It's like if somebody steals your credit card, then you phone your bank and is dead within seconds. But if somebody kind of like, you know, hits you over the head until you give them your crypto password, there is nobody to stop that from being stolen.
- [20:18]
A
Of course, it'd be fascinating to find out how many people have already forgotten their password.
- [20:22]
B
Oh, I mean, that, too. I mean, that's the other big issue. But, you know, that's a lot less traumatic than, you know, having your house violently broken into.
- [20:31]
A
Well, yes, but having your house violently broken into while someone tries to force you to tell them your password, which you forgot five years ago.
- [20:38]
B
Oh, yes. Yep, that's a yeah. Yep, I take your point.
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A
I mean, awkward.
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B
That's even worse. Yeah, that is awkward.
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A
That's not what happened to me.
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B
Yeah, this is really a cheerful one, isn't it? To start the new year as we mean to go on, clearly right now, listen, we've done.
- [20:52]
A
We've really gone through this here. Set time aside to do some kind of financial MOT, etc. Make sure you have cash in a deposit account and genuine cash. Check the interest rate. Put it in your diary when your insurance and your mortgages are about to run out, because that's going to get you in all sorts of trouble. Don't tell anyone about your crypto holdings. Be tax efficient. That is five. We promised six. Give us one more. Jon.
- [21:24]
B
Get a will. Yeah, get a will. If you're married. Get a will. If you're married and you have kids, definitely get a will. And if you've got anything more complicated beyond that, then you absolutely need to. You must have a will. And it doesn't really matter what age you are, because obviously unexpected things happen. Get a will. Done. It's not complicated. It's not even particularly expensive. And it's. It's really, really important both for your own peace of mind and then for your inheritors. I think that's a really critical one.
- [22:00]
A
Yeah, I absolutely agree. And crucially, you want to get those wills if. Redone, if anything has changed.
- [22:07]
B
Yes, I did.
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A
You have kids, did you get remarried? Are you trying to blend a family? All these things. Disaster. If your will is not properly written and clear.
- [22:17]
B
Yeah.
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A
Don't leave misery behind you. That's what we're saying here.
- [22:20]
B
Yeah. And I mean, that's the most important one. But then you also need to think about your admin. So what makes stuff. Make stuff clear. So, like, just even if one document that explains to your descendants, you know, this is where everything is. So you need. Because that's the other issue is obviously things can be quite untidy. Filing systems can be quite untidy. So having that good idea, look, here's what matters and here's where it is, even as a kind of loose document. And then, you know, if you want to worry about the digital stuff, you know, that's another bucket of fish. But at the end of the day, your itunes account is one thing, but, you know, your current account.
- [23:01]
A
Yeah, we did a great podcast on this last year, didn't we? So if you're interested in this, and by the way, you really should be, we did do a podcast on this last year about how to prepare your finances and everything around you for people after your death to make life easy for them. Because, of course, that's one of the main legacies we'd like to leave behind is lack of admin. Well, not lack of admin. Lack of admin for our heirs to have to deal with something straightforward, something simple, and something that won't cause our families to fight with each other after we're gone. No one wants that.
- [23:34]
B
No, you want them to fight before you're gone. So you can watch it. John.
- [23:47]
A
Thanks for listening to this week's Marian Talks Money. If you like our show, rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Also keep sending questions or comments to marinmoneyloomburg.net you can follow me and John on Twitter or X. I'm Erinsw and John is johnstapek. This episode was hosted by me, Marin Somerset Web. It was produced by Sama Saadi and Moses andam sound designed by Blake Maples. Sam.