Cost of Being Single, End of Mortgage Interest Support, Pension Transfer Letters
Money Box
BBC
4.2 • 825 Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2018
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The cost of living alone, rather than living as a couple, is more than £1000 a year, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics. In the UK nearly eight million people now live alone and spend on average £21 a week more than individuals who live as a couple. Money Box reporter Marie Keyworth visits Sussex to investigate the cost of living, shopping, exercising and holidaying alone.
Up to 90,000 people on benefits are at risk of losing their home when the Government stops paying the interest on their mortgage in just over two weeks' time. In future, help with mortgage interest will be paid as a loan not a benefit. But new figures from the Department for Work and Pensions show that around 90% of those who get this benefit have not yet signed up for the loan that replaces it. It will be the same amount and still paid direct to their lender. But it will be a loan from the Government and secured against their home. If they do not sign up for the loan arrangement the money will stop from April 6th. We hear from Kit Malthouse, the Minister for Family Support, Child Maintenance and Housing, and from debt advisor Sara Williams, the founder of the Debt Camel blog.
Also - Under Financial Conduct Authority rules, if you want to transfer a defined benefits pension of more than £30,000, you must seek guidance first. It's a safeguard against you making potentially disastrous financial decisions - but not an absolute block. That's because under pension freedom, it's your money and your decision. But one Money Box listener who received advice, but chose a different option, found it impossible to get her confirmation letter - which meant her pension transfer couldn't go ahead. Michelle Cracknell, chief executive of the Pensions Advisory Service explains your rights..
Presenter: Paul Lewis Producer: Paul Waters.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In Northern Ireland, from the late 70s to the early 90s, the IRA killed over 40 alleged informers. |
| 0:08.0 | But the man who often found, tortured and sometimes killed these people on behalf of the IRA |
| 0:12.0 | was himself an informer, a secret British army agent with the codename Stakeknife. |
| 0:18.0 | Who gets to play God? And why me? Why my family? |
| 0:21.4 | When lies are still being told to this day, who do you believe? |
| 0:25.1 | I wouldn't even know where to start, and I'm with the IRA. |
| 0:28.5 | Steakknife. |
| 0:29.7 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.4 | Welcome to the download of Moneybox, the program about your money and this week about love as well. |
| 0:38.0 | Our intrepid reporter, Marie Keyworth, went speed dating to get the material she needed. |
| 0:43.4 | Marie, I thought people used apps on their phone to find love nowadays. |
| 0:47.4 | Speed dating seems a bit, well, I don't know, 20th century. Is it still a thing? |
| 0:51.3 | Speed dating is still a thing, although perhaps not as huge as it was back in the 2000s. |
| 0:56.3 | But you'd think because of all the apps that are currently used for dating, |
| 1:00.3 | that something like speed dating would have gone out of fashion. |
| 1:02.7 | But in fact, it seems that people want to go back to the original way of meeting people face-to-face, |
| 1:08.5 | having a chat rather than doing it everything virtually through |
| 1:11.3 | an app, swiping and chatting on a messenger. And how did you get the interviews? Did you, |
| 1:15.8 | did you pretend you were speed dating too? Paul, I did actually really have to join in a bit. I managed |
| 1:21.1 | to speak to the women separately when they were getting briefed on how speed dating works. But then |
| 1:26.2 | when it all got going, it's a very regimented system. |
| 1:29.1 | They've got five minutes to talk, a minute to decide whether they want to meet up again in the future. |
... |
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