Save and Conquer
Hello again. I've just about recovered from our in Manchester last Wednesday, and my many broadcasts across many media. (Recovering from the excitement, you understand; let's not pretend that what I do is hard work ...)
Some people have left messages on my Facebook page, saying they enjoyed seeing me back on Breakfast TV. Thank you for your kind words - though I've a nagging doubt that some of you may also be Working Lunch viewers trying to drop a hint!*
What we're really thankful for - as Naga said in the newsletter on Friday - is your terrific, tremendous, enthusiastic response. Hundreds of people turned up at the Trafford Centre for advice. Many more who couldn't make it emailed their questions in advance. We're all so grateful that you took the time and trouble.
There's clearly an enormous demand out there for financial information.
Strikingly, the biggest queues by far were of people wanting advice about their savings. This doesn't surprise anyone on the Working Lunch team; we're well aware that more of you are savers than borrowers, and we try to select the items for the programme accordingly. But it's always useful to have the reminder - it helps us stay focused on your needs.
So we're talking about savings at the start of the programme today.
You've been telling us for months that you're frustrated by the tiny amounts of interest you're earning on your nest egg.
And you're angry about it too - you think policymakers, in their eagerness to kick-start the economy, pander to borrowers and ignore savers. You feel you're paying the price for other people's imprudence.
Is it possible that some of you have decided - enough is enough?
Britain's banks tell us today that savers have withdrawn the largest sums of money from their accounts since they started keeping these records 12 years ago.
Some of this will be down to people repairing their finances after all our Christmas spending. We often see people dip into their savings in January to pay off their credit card debts.
But the numbers suggest this time is different.
The previous record for monthly withdrawals was £1.5 billion.
Last month - we took £2.3 billion out of our bank accounts.
So where is it going? Well, we'd like you to tell us. Some of you have already made your suggestions on .
If you've taken your money out to make it work harder elsewhere, we might be able to help. Savings expert David Black joins us with the latest suggestions on where to find the best rates.
He thinks the banks might start offering slightly better savings rates soon - but only for tax efficient ISA accounts, or for people opening monthly or regular savings accounts.
So the best deals might be for people who put aside little but often. That's good for people who want to start the savings habit, but my hunch is that for many WL viewers, it's as useful as a chocolate tea pot.
Brew up in time for 1.30pm.
* Unfortunately we don't have an "ironic" typeface for the blogs, so I should point out that this is an attempt at a joke. Such as it is.
Comment number 1.
At 25th Feb 2009, n1 wrote:Using savings to repay debt (this seems to be the latest media bandwagon)? Why would people only start doing this now, Why would people have large amounts of savings at the same time as large debts outstanding, I can understand people having a little rainy day cash tucked away for emergencies at the same time as debt, but having savings anywhere near the same level as your debt just does not make sense. There has never been any point in having savings and debt at the same time, particularly credit card debt, it does not matter if prevailing rates of return on savings are 1% or 15% borrowing rates will always be higher.
The only way to make savings earn more than debt is to take more risk with your savings and even then you will struggle to find anything that is not very high risk that will return anything like credit card rates.
If people want guarantees that they will not lose any of their capital they cannot expect high returns, I just hope that those people moving their savings around in the hunt for higher returns realise that in almost every case a higher return means higher risk factor.
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