It’s Love Actuarially! Base interest rate cut help. And will you get £150 off energy bills?
The Martin Lewis Podcast
BBC
4.4 • 929 Ratings
🗓️ 18 December 2025
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Martin Lewis has a selection box of topics in this week’s podcast, including: the Bank of England has cut the base interest rate, what does it mean for your mortgage, savings, credit cards, and loans? It’s Love Actuarially as you tell us when you’ve received a random act of financial kindness. The government’s taking £150 off energy bills, so Martin explains how it will work – especially if you’re on a fix. Plus, Mastermind is all about representative APR, and should you open expensive Christmas presents early? If you want to ask Martin a question, you now can! His Question Time podcast lets you ask Martin absolutely anything and everything (within reason!). So if you’ve always wanted to know his favourite colour, if he can move his eyebrows independently or not, or have a very complicated question about your finances, email it to MartinLewisPodcast@bbc.co.uk.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:08.2 | What they didn't do is specify how it would be passed off. |
| 0:12.9 | If you are looking imminently to get fixed savings today, do not wait. |
| 0:17.0 | Am I going to find out what the two of you are laughing at? |
| 0:19.2 | The sensible thing to do would be to open it yourself and check that it is working. |
| 0:24.8 | Hello, I'm Martin Lewis and this is the cunningly named the Martin Lewis podcast. |
| 0:29.9 | I do wonder what that's going to be about. |
| 0:31.5 | Now usually much of it comes from my BBC Radio 5 live show with Adrian Childs, |
| 0:35.7 | but there's also bonus money saving tips just for you |
| 0:38.7 | lucky, lucky podcast listeners. In today's pod, UK-based rates have just been cut by 0.25 percentage |
| 0:45.3 | points. What does that mean for your mortgage, your savings, your credit cards and your loans? |
| 0:49.5 | Love actuarially. This week's tellers is all about random acts of financial kindness from strangers. |
| 0:56.0 | The government is shifting a typical £150 off energy bills in April, and finally we're |
| 1:01.4 | starting to learn how it will work, especially for those on fixes. I'll be running through it |
| 1:06.5 | firm by firm. In the final mastermind of 2025, I've a gift for our Adrian. And finally, I may |
| 1:13.7 | shock you. I'm going to suggest if you've bought someone a Christmas present, you should open it |
| 1:18.3 | for them. I'll tell you why in a mo? Play the theme tune. Let's bring So I'm going to work for the interest. |
| 1:28.3 | I got a lot. |
| 1:29.8 | I got to feed. As expected, the bank And we have had the decision. So within the last |
| 1:44.7 | couple of moments, as expected, the Bank of England has cut interest rates to 3.75 cents, lowest |
| 1:49.7 | level in almost two years. It was, as we were saying, widely expected. Faisal Islam, our |
| 1:56.8 | economics editor has been in, sort of, it's called a lock-in. You kind of get the figures a little bit early and you have a little chance to sort of read them. He says that the governor, Andrew Bailey, says the UK has passed the peak in inflation. And he says that inflation is set to hit the target of 2% as soon as April next year. Had previously forecast, this wouldn't happen until 2027. |
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