16 The Sunday Times April 24, 2022
MONEY
Contact us Money,
The Sunday Times,
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GFSavers with First Direct will
earn 3.5 per cent on their
savings from this week after
the bank puts up its regular
saver rate from 1 per cent.
There are a few hoops to
be jumped through first,
though: the regular saver
account can be opened
online or via the First Direct
app from Thursday, but you
have to have your main
account with the bank and2020 2021 2022Rates on new ixed-rate bonds and notice accounts
Rates on ixed-rate bonds of between 12 and 24 months1.2%0.20.40.60.81Source: Bank of EnglandSavers have had little
to smile about for some
time, but bond rates
are finally on the rise.
Last May the average
fixed-rate bond or
notice account paid
a miserable 0.23 per
cent. By the end of
February it was 0.67 per
cent. The rates on fixed
one-year and two-year
bonds went from
0.46 per cent in January
to 1.07 per cent in
February, higher than
they were in April 2020.CHART OF THE WEEK BONDS ARE BACK
A jump in rates, but watch out for the hurdles
you have to keep your money
in the savings account for a
year to get the rate.
You also need to pay in a
minimum of £25 a month and
the maximum amount you
can deposit in a year is
£3,600. If you saved the full
annual amount you would get
just over £68 in interest.
You could earn 2.5 per cent
from Nationwide’s regular
saver, but you can only save
up to £200 a month.
Santander has a one-yearregular saver that pays 2.5 per
cent, also with the maximum
monthly deposit of £200.
NatWest’s regular saver pays
3.25 per cent on balances up
to £1,000 but 0.3 per cent on
balances of £1,001 to £5,000
and a paltry 0.1 per cent on
anything above that. You can
only save up to £150 a month.
Cambridge Building
Society’s regular saver pays
5 per cent — but you have to
have been with the building
society for three years.Yasmin ChoudhuryNatWest has joined other
leading lenders in allowing
homeowners to take on
mortgages that will last until
their seventies. The bank now
offers 40-year mortgage
terms, up from 35 years, and
will also give you a loan up to
the age of 75 as long as you
are still working.
Halifax and HSBC allow
loans that will last until a
borrower is 80. The stateAnother mortgage that runs into retirement
pension age is 66, and will
rise to 67 by 2028.
Soaring house prices mean
that first-time buyers are
having to take out longer
loans to keep their monthly
repayments down. The
proportion of 40-year
mortgages has risen steadily
from 36 per cent in 2014 to
59 per cent now, according to
the data firm Moneyfacts.
First-time buyers are also
getting older, because it takes
them longer to save a deposit.The average age of a first-time
buyer last year was 32,
according to Halifax, up from
29 in 2011. This means that
more borrowers are taking
out mortgages that will run
until they are at least 72.
NatWest said: “We
recognise that many
customers don’t stop working
when they reach state
retirement age. These
changes allow more choice
and flexibility for our
customers.”George NixonThe number of TV
streaming accounts
cancelled in the first three
months of this year,
according to KantarIf you would like the
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or call him on 07917 5984221.5m
I bought
these
Chanel
sunglasses.
They made
me look
like a
moron
C
andice Brown, 37, grew up in
various pubs in London and
the home counties. A PE and
special educational needs
teacher, she spent her spare
time baking, inspired by her
grandmother Flo. In 2016,
after winning series seven of
The Great British Bake Off,
she quit teaching to
concentrate on cooking and has written
two books, Comfort and Happy Cooking.
She has a column for The Sunday Times
and has appeared on This Morning,
Loose Women and Dancing on Ice. She
lives with her rescue dogs, Albus, Sybil
and Severus, in her pub, the Green Man
in Eversholt, Bedfordshire.How much money is in your wallet?
About £70 in notes, but I pay for pretty
much everything with Apple Pay on my
phone. I carry some change to give to
homeless people. Apart from that I can’t
remember the last time I paid in cash.What credit cards do you use?
I have one credit card, but it’s disabled
because I’m paying it off. I’m not great
with money. I want to blame it on my
ADHD, but I don’t know whether that’s a
bit of an excuse. I only finished paying
off my student loan last year. I was
overjoyed. I thought I was going to die
with that debt.Are you a saver or a
spender?
Surprise, surprise, I’m a
spender. I’m quite an
impulse buyer. I
don’t spend all
the time, but
certainly more soThe Bake Off winner who collects antiques and vintage fashion
says cooking helps to manage her ADHD. She has poured all her
money into a pub she owns with her brother, she tells Nick McGrathAnd the worst?
I’ve occasionally bought clothes, taken
them home and looked at myself in the
mirror and thought, “You look like a
knob, what are you doing?” I bought this
pair of vintage Chanel sunglasses, which
would probably go for loads now, but I
put them on and thought, “You look like
a moron.”What was your most extravagant
purchase?
This was actually after conquering a time
where I’d been having some significant
mental health problems stemming from
a trauma. Things came to a close, and I
thought, “Why not? I’m going to buy a
full-price Victoria Beckham handbag for
£1,850.” I use it all the time and I love it.
I actually felt proud as it was my own
money and it’s a happy reminder of my
getting past a sad time. I adore it.
The one pricey thing I did buy for the
kitchen recently was a pair of Japanese
knives from Kin Knives, which cost
about £200 each and are like artwork.What’s your money weakness?
A lot of my money goes on Lego at the
moment. I love Lego. I was diagnosed
with ADHD two years ago. I find it very
hard to focus for very long. I love to
bake, and I bake because it’s therapy. My
book Happy Cooking is about that. But
obviously I can’t bake all the time and
Lego helps with that. It takes my focus
and you’re building something from
nothing. In total I probably spend about
£100 to £150 a month on Lego. I bought
a Lego minion for £65 in February.What is your financial priority?
Keeping the pub open and trying get the
business to a place where we hoped it
would have been last year. Working with
[the small business platform] Xero has
shown me that staying on top of
regulatory changes like the
government’s Making Tax Digital plan is
essential. This pub is my future.What if you won the lottery?
I would buy a big house with a massive
holding and just have rescue dogs and
animals. And I’d set my family up and
make sure they were all OK and then give
whatever was left to charity. And maybe
I’d get my dad to build me a special
lipstick room and a Lego room too.Do you support any charities?
I’m an ambassador for Dogs on the
Streets (Dots) and Alzheimer’s Research.
I’ve done three treks for the breast
cancer awareness charity CoppaFeel and
I’ll also be doing the Inca trail in
September for Action Against Hunger.What is the most important lesson
you’ve learnt about money?
It’s not everything. Wealth comes in so
many ways, shapes and forms. You can
have nothing and be the happiest person
in the world. You could have everything
and be the saddest, loneliest person.Candice Brown is working with Xero,
a small business platform that helps
companies get to grips with new tax
regulationsevening I was driving back and just
sobbing. I looked at my brother and just
said, “What the f*** are we going to do?”
as we only had £416 in the pub account,
not enough money to pay the staff. Ben
and I have both had to show huge
resilience to get through this period, but
in terms of personal sacrifice it never got
too extreme because my friends and
family would never allow that to
happen. It never got to the point where I
had to survive on baked beans. We had
hundreds of packets of luxury crisps in
the pub and a cellar full of wine. That’s
the two main food groups. We’d be fine.Do you own a property?
I’ve never owned a house. Had the
pandemic not happened I think I would
have bought a property and that’s my
goal before the end of the year. My
brother got on to the property ladder
very young and has built his house into a
beautiful home, but I was busy doing
other things then Bake Off came along. I
was making pubs out of gingerbread
rather than actual bricks. If it doesn’t
happen it doesn’t fuss me. I’m rich in
other ways. I have friends, I have family
and a beautiful pub.Are you better off than your parents?
It would never cross my mind to
compare. My mum helps prepping all
the veg and my dad is still busting his
arse as a brilliant builder. It’s not about
comparisons for me. It’s just about
reaping the benefits of hard work more
than the money itself.Do you invest in shares?
I haven’t outside my pension. I think it’s
just lack of understanding and interest.
When it comes to anything to do withnumbers, I block out a lot. I would have
to seek advice. It would have to be
someone I completely trusted.What’s better for retirement —
property or pension?
Obviously I had a pension when I was a
teacher, but then you go to being self-
employed, you have to think about that
differently. I would imagine my brother
and my dad’s advice would be property.What has been your best investment?
Learning. Recently I did a shift at the
Ned hotel, helping a friend who was
putting on an event alongside Michelin-
star chefs, because it gives me a chance
to learn. I also love antiques. I bought an
antique children’s French piano that I
displayed my fondant fancies on during
dessert week on Bake Off. That cost me
£250. I love the story behind antique
jewellery, kitchenware and vintage
clothing and bags. I have a large
collection but no intention of selling.
I want to eventually pass them on.‘I spend £150 a
month on Lego.
It keeps me calm’
in the past few years. If you’ve worked
hard and you want something that’ll
make you happy, buy it. Life is short.
You’re not harming anyone. It’s
important to enjoy the money you’ve
earned. You can’t take it with you.How much did you earn last year and
what impact has the pandemic had?
I own the Green Man with my brother,
Ben, and I have a great accountant who
looks after everything so I honestly
don’t know how much I earned last
year. I do know that the pandemic hit
the pub hard. My income from
cookbooks and appearances enables me
to help the pub when I need to. Ben and
I funded the extension, which my dad
helped build, and I’ve yet to take any
wage at all. People think I’m living this
glamorous life, but I’ve got a tiny Skoda
that looks like a rollerskate and I live
above the pub. The main difference for
me from when I was a teacher is the
irregularity of my income, which can
make me panic. At the beginning of the
pandemic, I thought: “We’ve got no
fallback. We have to do everything we
can to survive.” And we did. If we hadn’t
pulled through, we would have lost
everything we put in.Have you ever been really hard up?
Just before Christmas 2020 when we
went into the lockdown tier
system, me, my brother and
his now fiancée were doing
takeaway beers and food
deliveries. I was
cooking, they
were washing
up, the pub
extension wasn’t
finished. OneFAME AND FORTUNE CANDICE BROWN
FRANTZESCO KANGARIS/PA