Archive: MoneySavingExpert's Money Tips Email

Easter discounts & freebies! Day trips, travel & hotels
Keep family entertained for long Easter without breaking the bank. New Guide!

With the Royal Wedding stretching the Easter break, budgets may be strained. So try our new jam-packed Easter Trip Deals guide (sun sadly not guaranteed). Here's a summary.

• Cheap UK-wide travel. Includes 50% off London Midland rail, £1 Megatrain & bus, 1/3 off with family rail cards and 66% cheaper with Clubcard vouchers.
• Stay away for less. Travelodge still has 20,000 £15 rooms for Easter holiday stays, or stay in empty student halls from £25 in Oxford, Cambridge & London.
• 2for1 vouchers for London Eye, Alton Towers etc. Lots of ways to get 'em for Thorpe Park, Chessington, Drayton Manor, Churchill's War Rooms, Madame Tussauds and more.
• Slash kids' cinema costs. There are a host of discounted tickets, including £1-£2.50 at Vue & Odeon, or a Sky deal where £3 buys an adult's 3D Cineworld ticket and 3 free kids trips.
• Free sports lessons: Budding Lionel Messis can receive free football coaching at 36 Tesco venues across England. Asda also offers free sports, incl football, dance, swimming and squash.
  
• Free museums and a bit of geocaching. There are over 150 UK Free Museums across the UK from biggies, eg, London Natural History or Manchester Imperial War museum, to local treasures such as the Savings Banks Museum in Dumfries. Or for a bit of high-tech treasure hunting fun, try geocaching.

FULL info on all these and more in our New Compendium: Easter Deals Related: Free Museums, 2for1 Theme Parks, Cheap Cinema Tickets

New! £50 free wine with already cheapest broadband
Get Plusnet for Naked Wine voucher (£5 p&p) | Half price for long-term O2 custs

There are a few hot new broadband deals. While most people can get them, it depends where you live, use the Cheap Broadband Finder tool to check your postcode ...

• Urgent! £50 wine voucher offer: Newbies signing up to best-buy Plusnet Value* (via this link) this week can claim a £50 off min £49.99 spend Naked Wine voucher (£5 p&p). ie, you get 6 decent bottles for a fiver. Plusnet Value alone's £6.49/mth + £25 activation (£103 over the year's contract), so it's a seriously good deal. Heavy users beware the 10GB/mth download limit.
• Half-price 'unlimited' broadband for O2 mobile custs: Existing O2 mobile customers can currently get big broadband discounts on its 'unlimited' package (ie, fair usage c. 100GB/mth) by phoning Broadband Choices*. If you've been with it 24+ months, quote '6mth free offer' and you get the first 6mths free, then it's £12.50/mth after; effectively half-price over the year's contract. Newer O2 customers can get 3mths free.

For full info & more best-buys, including superfast deals and how to get extra cashback, see the Updated Guide: Cheap Broadband Related: Cheap Home Phones, 3G Broadband

New top cash ISAs & savings
New inflation beater cash ISA | New top 3.5% 1 year fix, 3.96% 2 yr fix saving
After two years of UK base rate at 0.5%, saving & ISA competition's hotting up, probably in expectation of rises to come. Here's a rundown ... All have full £85,000 UK Savings Safety protection.

• Top 3.3% easy access cash ISAs. The new cash ISA year started last Wed, letting you save £5,340 tax free. Top variable picks include Santander's* Flexible ISA at 3.3% and tracks UK base rate for a year, so if that rises, as many predict, so will this. The AA's ISA pays a higher 3.35% AER (min £500), but doesn't track. The top deal also allowing transfers is Halifax's* 3% AER ISA Direct Reward and for existing customers only Nationwide* is 3.1% AER. All have year-long temporary rate hikes, so diarise to ditch and transfer then.
• New! Inflation-beating cash ISA: Lock into Kent Reliance BS (min £2,500) for 5 years and its new tax-free ISA pays the increase in RPI inflation over that time plus 2%, making it best-of-breed. As annual RPI's currently 5.3% this is a good hedge for those worried inflation's eating their savings, though over 5 yrs things could change radically. More help & top fixed options in Top Cash ISAs.
  
• Top easy access savings 3.05%: Santander's* eSaver pays 3% AER unlimited access. A smidgen more's available with Nationwide's* MySave Online Plus at 3.05% AER, yet it only allows 1 penalty free withdrawal a year (min £1,000). Both include year-long bonuses, so diarise to ditch and switch after.
  
• New! Higher savings fixes: For guaranteed returns if you're prepared to lock cash away, two new higher rates have launched ... 1 yr: FirstSave 3.5% AER (min £1,000). 2 yrs: Aldermore 3.96% AER (min £1,000). Pundits predict rates may rise soon, so after that these fixes mightn't look so competitive.
  

Full info & more options in the Updated Guide: Top Cash ISAs, Top Savings Related: ISA Transfers, Safe Savings

50 MoneySaving tips for over 60s!
Lots of new help for silver savers: discounts, freebies, pensions, equity release & more
Rising living costs are set to hit over-60s hardest this year, and debt charity CCCS says nearly one in six UK pensioners now live below the poverty line. So whether your 60th's round the corner or long gone, we've updated our checklist, including ... (if you know non-line over-60s, do print the guide for them)

• New hidden discounts! We've rooted out discounts for Vue, Cineworld, theatres, gyms, National Trust and Cadw Welsh heritage sites, and a free over-50s dining discounts card. These join existing deals for Boots, Specsavers, B&Q & many more.
• State pension rises this week: The full weekly individual state pension is up £4.50 to £102.15. Yet the minimum income guarantee means if you've less than £137.35/week, you're likely to be entitled to Pension Credit. Also see tips on state pension boosting and equity release.
• Travel, car & home insurance: Ageing can add a big hit to the price, travel insurance especially can be a nightmare. We've top picks to keep costs down, plus gas, electricity, water, council tax and health bills too.
• Claim free cash: There's £1,000s available in home & energy grants, especially for lower income pensioners. Plus, how to get free bus passes, prescriptions, TV licences, passports and more.

For FULL info see the Updated Guide: Over 60s MoneySaving Related: Cheap Travel Insurance, Cheap Gas & Elec, Pension Boosting, Free And Cheap Wills

Which is YOUR cheapest balance transfer? New Tool!
Shows new long 0% for 20 months deal can be cheapest even over 4 years!
Balance transfer deals let new cardholders shift existing credit card debts to them at much cheaper interest rates. A huge recent rate war resulted in the first ever 20mth 0% deal. Yet with so many variants, finding your cheapest ain't easy. First look at the contenders. You'll need a decent credit score and beware spending, it isn't usually at the cheap rate.

• Longest 0% deals: Barclaycard* Platinum is 20mths 0% with a 3.2% transfer fee, jumping to 17.5% representative APR afterwards. Repay quicker and MBNA's* Platinum is 18 mths 0% with a lesser 2.88% fee (18.8% rep. APR). If you have both, Nationwide's* 17mths 0% with a 2.95% fee (15.9% APR). See full 0% deals for more options.
• Cheap rates for life: Shift debts to MBNA's Rate for Life within 60 days and it's 5.9% APR until fully repaid (you must pay the monthly minimum) with a 1.5% fee. Avoid spending though as that's up to 24.9% APR.
• New Tool! 'Which is cheapest for you?' As each card has different fees, times & APRs, there's no one size fits all, so we've built a Balance Transfer Calculator. Slide up the amount you've got to transfer and repayment level (err on the low side) and it shows your cheapest (provided you don't spend on it). Note: we did mention the new tool a few weeks ago but it was lost among the rate war noise.
• 0% can now beat 'for life' over the longer-term. We've always said, "only go for 0% if you can clear it or switch again before it ends". While still best-practice, the new tool results are surprising. Mega-long 0% deals may still be cheapest over longer periods, eg, shift £5,000 and repay £200/mth and Barclaycard undercuts MBNA's Rate for Life by £200 in the 27 months it takes to clear, even though you're at its high APR for 7 months. It's because you clear so much while it's 0% it makes up for the higher APR. Sometimes 0% still wins after 4 years.
  

FULL info & more options in the Updated Guide & New Tool: Best Balance Transfers Related: 0% Purchase Cards Minimum Repayments Calculator

Gas bills can affect your credit rating!
Beware energy & phone providers scuppering your borrowing ability

Credit scoring plays an ever more influential part in your ability to get a mortgage, credit card or contract mobile phone and what rate you get. Yet there's a growing trend for utility companies to share data about how you operate accounts too.

• How credit scoring works. Apply and lenders credit score to predict if you'll behave like a profitable customer. They do this by looking at your application form, any past dealings with you and your credit reference agency files. These files include CCJs, missed and late payments, all of which can have a negative impact.
  
• Utility companies on your file. The 'giants' BT and British Gas (plus Scottish Power) now share some details of your payment history with at least one agency. Sky, Talk Talk, Npower, Eon, and Scottish & Southern reserve the right to but don't yet. So problems here can affect your borrowing rates.
• Joint bill doesn't mean joint finances. Your credit files can only be 'financially linked' with someone else if you've joint products (ie, whether you're married, live together, or just hold hands is irrelevant), meaning lenders can look at the other's file when assessing you. This applies to joint mortgages & bank accounts only, not credit cards (as they can't be joint) and thankfully we've confirmed joint utilities shouldn't count either.

To check your credit file, see the Updated Guide: Boost Your Credit Rating