ISA changes for new tax year

The amount of money you can place in an Individual Savings Account (ISA) changes from 6 April with each persons annual ISA allowance increasing to £7,200.

The destinction between Mini and Maxi ISAs will be removed with all ISAs being reclassified as either a Cash ISA or a Stocks and Shares ISA. You can save up to £3,600 in a Cash ISA. The maximum you can invest in a Stocks and Shares ISA will be £7,200 less any money you have paid into a Cash ISA.

You will also now be allowed to transfer any money held in a previous years Cash ISA into a Stocks and Shares ISA, without affecting your current allowance. If you still have a PEP (Personal Equity Plan) from the 1990s it will be renamed an ISA without affecting your annual limit for the tax year 2008/09.

Unclaimed lottery winning tickets

A EuroMillions lottery winning ticket which won a mammoth £6,989,367.40 prize still remains unclaimed from the draw on Friday 28th September and the holder of the ticket only has until 5.30pm tomorrow to claim the prize. The winning ticket was bought somwehere in Devon and anyone who bought a ticket there is being urged to check their old tickets and to claim the prize otherwise it will be donated to charity.

It is not just people from Devon who forget to claim their winning the National Lottery has a list of the largest unclaimed prizes which is well worth checking if you play the Lottery to make sure you have not won a prize and forgotten to check your numbers.

Scottish & Southern price increase

Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) is the last of the major energy suppliers to raise its prices. The increase will be on average 14.2% for electricity, and by 15.8% for gas. The other big suppliers announced their increases previously and were led by Npower although EDF Energy, British Gas, Scottish Power and E.On quickly followed.

The increases have been blamed on the increases in wholesale energy.

Now that all the major players have announced their increases it is a good time to use a price comparison site such as Uswitch to ensure you are not paying over the odds for your energy supplies.

European travel insurance

As the Easter holidays approach many people will be planning to take a European break and these people along with anyone else who is planning to visit Europe this year should ensure they have a European Health Insurance Card (EHIC).

The EHIC gives its holder access to state provided medical treatment in the country they are visiting. This allows you to be treated as an insured person who resides in that country. It should be borne in mind however that items covered for free under NHS treatments may not be free in that country and you may require to make a financial contribution to your care.

The EHIC will cover any treatment you need for chronic diseases or existing illnesses but will not cover you if seeking medical treatment is the main purpose of your travel.

You can apply online for an EHIC or by telephoning the EHIC Applications Line on 0845 606 2030.

Share fraud

Two US fraudsters Paul Gunter and his daughter Zibiah have been arrested in Florida and are accused of selling worthless shares for £34m to around 15,000 UK 'investors'. Most of these people were elderly and could not afford to lose their life savings. The fraudsters apparently conned their victims using a boiler room fraud.

A boiler room fraud involves a fraudster phoning the potential victim and trying to sell them shares in a company. These rogues tend to use hard-selling tactics to persuade people to buy shares. As most boiler rooms are based overseas you may have no rights to complain or claim compensation.

Budget Day

The main losers in this years budget announced today by the Chancellor of the Exchequer were smokers, drinkers and drivers.

Even although the Budget fell on No Smoking Day Alistair Darling decided to increase the price of a packet of cigarettes by 11p.

The price of alcohol will also rise from Sunday with a bottle of wine costing an additional 14p, a bottle of spirits increasing by 55p and the cost of a pint of beer went up by 4p.

Drivers of environmentally unfriendly cars will be hit as the Chancellor outlined reforms to vehicle excise duty which will be based on the amount of pollution produced by the vehicles. The good news for drivers was that the 2p increase on fuel prices has been delayed from April to October.

The main winners from the budget are pensioners and families on benefits.

Pensioners gain through a £50 increase in the Winter Fuel Allowance bringing this up to £250 for the over 60s and £400 for the over 80s.

The Chancellor will also ensure that families on benefits will be better off in work by changing the current eligibility for housing and council tax benefits. He also announced that Child Benefit will be increased to £20 a week from April 2009.

Stop smoking start saving

It is No Smoking Day tomorrow and not only will giving up improve your health it would also save you a hefty sum.


A packet of cigarretes costs on average over £5.50 which for someone smoking 20 a day works out at over £2,000 a year. This cost is likely to increase further when the Chancellor of the Exchequer delivers his Budget this week.

The cost of being a smoker isn't just limited to the cost of the cigarettes, cigars or pipe tobacco it also has knock on implications in areas such as life insurance as non-smokers tend to live longer they have significantly lower insurance rates than smokers.

So do yourself a favour and stop your money going up in smoke by not just stopping smoking tomorrow but also the next and the next .......

Ebay free for all

For anyone interested in rasing some extra cash by selling their unwanted goods on Ebay then this weekend looks a good time to do so as Ebay are having a Springtime free for all.

Basically over Saturday and Sunday the 8th and 9th of March 2008 sellers who list items with a starting price of between £0.01 and £0.99 inclusive using the Auction-style format will not pay an Insertion Fee per item listed.

Minimum wage

The minimum wage will increase by 21p to £5.73 an hour from October 2008. The rate for 18 to 21-year-olds will increase to £4.77 whilst 16 to 17-year-olds will get £3.53. This should lead around a million people who currently earn £5.52 receiving a pay increase.

The minimum wage was introduced in 1999 by the government initially at a rate of £3.60 and was aimed at employers of low paid individuals some of whom earnt less than 50p an hour. Almost all workers over 16 are entitled to a minimum wage irrespective of their work or size of their employer.

Employers who fail to pay the minimum rate risk unlimited fines, with the more serious cases of non-compliance tried in a Crown Court.

Sky topcashback deal

Topcashback the cashback reward site have teamed up with Sky and are currently offering a £150 rebate if you are not already a Sky subscriber. This £150 cashback reward applies even if you subscribe to basic Sky TV/phone/broadband package of around £16 per month. So to subscribe to Sky for a year on the basic package would normally cost around £192 (12 x £16) but taking the cashback into account this would fall to only £42 for your first years subscription.

Power saving

Apparently the UK government is currently considering introducing a voucher scheme to help some of the less well off people in society to pay their gas and electricity bills. Whilst we wait for the government to make a decision I thought it would be worthwhile to list some suggestions that we should all do in order to reduce our own bills.

The biggest money saving idea may be to simply switch your energy provider. There are a number off well known websites such as Uswitch who allow you to compare numerous electricity and gas suppliers in your area to find the cheapest provider. By spending just a couple of minutes comparing prices you could save yourself a couple of hundred pounds.

Turning your thermostat down by 1 degree could save you up to 10% on your heating bill. Other ways to reduce your heating bill are to reduce the length of time your heating is actually on by say an hour a day. Draught proofing windows and doors as well as closing your curtains at dusk can also reduce your heating bills.

Other energy saving ideas include only use your washing machine when it had a full load and to use a low temperature unless your clothes are really dirty. Do not overfill your kettle just put in the amount of water you will actually need. Also use energy saving light bulbs as these use a quarter of the electricity of normal lightbulbs and last about eight times longer.