Inflation, Gift Cards and Energy Deals

Money Box

BBC

Business

4.2 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 13 January 2024

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Office for National Statistics has published the first of a new quarterly set of figures designed to reflect how inflation is experienced by households. They are called the Household Costs Indices and include things like mortgage costs, interest and insurance. It showed that overall UK household costs rose by 8.2% in the 12 months to September. How does it compare to other measures and what impact could it have? Are you thinking of buying a gift card as a present for Christmas? There's a warning that people looking to use gift cards this Christmas need to be on the look out for scams and fraud.

And from 1st January the cost of heating and lighting your home and cooking your food will rise in England, Scotland, and Wales. The average increase in energy bills will be just over 5% adding £94 a year to the typical bill. As some suppliers begin offering deals to fix your costs we'll ask what should you do?

Presenter: Paul Lewis Reporter: Dan Whitworth Researchers: Eimear Devlin and Jo Krasner Editor: Jess Quayle

(First broadcast 12pm Saturday 16th December 2023)

Transcript

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0:00.0	On a winter's night in 1974, a crime took place that would obsess the nation.
0:07.0	It was an extraordinary news story.
0:09.0	The story of an aristocrat, Lord Lucan, who's said to have killed the family Nanny,
0:14.0	mistaking her for his wife, then somehow just disappeared.
0:18.0	One of the great mysteries in English criminal history. We're still looking for Lucan.
0:21.6	It's honestly one of the most powerful stories of my lifetime.
0:25.6	I'm Alex Fondunzelman.
0:26.6	This is The Lucan Obsession.
0:28.6	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.6	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:35.6	Hello, welcome to this Moneybox podcast.
0:39.3	Gift cards may be easy to buy and nice to give, but how safe are they?
0:43.7	One woman finally gets her full state pension nearly 10 months after applying,
0:48.8	and energy bills will rise this winter, so should you fix the cost now?
0:53.4	But first, inflation. The rising cost of everything
0:56.9	we buy or pay for has been the big issue for the last 12 months. In October last year, the overall
1:03.2	rise in the price of goods and services we buy peaked at 11.1% in a year, but the rise measured
1:09.9	this October was less than half that, 4.6%. Prices are still
1:14.7	rising, of course, just more slowly. But that's not how it felt to many of these shoppers in Liverpool
1:20.0	this week, speaking to our reporter, Joe Krasner. Oh my goodness me, the food bill, it's doubled, I think,
1:26.6	to what I used to pay, definitely.
1:28.6	And I'm stopping to go to different shops now where the food is a little bit cheaper as well.
	...

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