Key April changes to your personal finances including NI hike and 'no fault' divorces

This is Money Podcast

This is Money

Business News, Business, Investing, News

4.1 • 650 Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2022

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week has seen a number of changes to our personal finances in the wake of energy bill and council tax rises, along with a number of key utilities such as broadband and mobile contracts.

It also marks the start of a new tax year and with it a National Insurance rise, a meagre state pension hike and the start of new 'no fault' divorce system.

Georgie Frost, Lee Boyce and Helen Crane run through what these changes potentially mean for you and why they're important.

Renting is set to become cheaper than mortgage repayments for the first time in 14 years according to a study.

This could signal 'trouble ahead,' as the data shows that when this happens, often a recession follows shortly afterwards. We discuss why.

The pandemic boom could also leave high-earning homeowners trapped and unable to move, if they've overstretched themselves to buy.

They may be unable to remortgage as lenders consider their squeezed incomes during the cost of living crisis.

And finally, with the energy price cap soaring, are there gadgets that could help you save money? Lee comes with a warning with his own 'smart' thermostat.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to This Is Money podcast. I'm Georgie Frost and joining me and Deputy Editor Lee Boyce is assistant editor Helen Crane.
0:06.4	And coming up, awful April, appalling April, atrocious April. There's a lot of bad this month happening to our personal finances.
0:13.7	But actually there's a sprinkling of good news. We run through some of the changes.
0:17.9	Also today renting is set to become cheaper than buying for the first time in
0:21.4	14 years, a sign of a pending recession, plus the plight of the high-earning mortgage prisoners
0:27.1	and the simple energy gadgets that you can buy that could wipe out the hike. Don't forget,
0:32.2	you stay up to date with all the latest breaking money news just to go to this ismoney.com.
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1:07.7	But first, this is one heck of a month for our personal finances. Energy bills, national insurance, council tax, mobile, and the list of prizes goes on. But there are other big changes happening to some not so terrible. A significant one for those planning on getting divorced, for example, is in there. So let's run through some of them. Firstly, Helen, is awful April
1:29.2	really so awful? Yeah, it is pretty bad, unfortunately, for a lot of people. With a new tax year,
1:37.2	we've got a whole host of things going up. National insurance is one of the big ones that's
1:41.9	going up by 1.25%. Dividend tax also for investors going
1:47.1	up by 1.25%. We've got the rise in the state pension, 3.1%, which sounds okay, but when you consider
1:56.4	that CPI inflation is currently 6.2%, that's not ideal. So yeah, and that's on top of all the
2:04.6	other cost of living stuff. So obviously the off-gem energy price cap has just gone up as well. So
2:10.0	yeah, April is shaping up to be pretty, pretty awful for a lot of people. Yeah, pretty miserable.
2:16.3	Let's pull out some of those, shall we,
	...

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