The Times - UK (2022-05-28)

the times | Saturday May 28 2022 65

Money

the oven in a hour or less, then that

could be the cheaper option.

0 Should I turn off all those plugs?

Let’s face it, going round the house and

turning off every sockets is a faff. Yet

one of the most common energy saving

tips is that you can save money — any-

where from £30 to £55 — by switching

off so-called “vampire devices” sucking

power from the plug day and night. The

claim is that your TV, microwave, com-

puter and other devices consume huge

amounts of energy on standby mode.

However, since 2013, appliances like

computers, games consoles, micro-

home goes, it’s unlikely to be the biggest

culprit or save you much money.

0 Should I use the tumble dryer or

hang my washing on the radiator?

Drying your clothes outside or on a

rack in a well-ventilated spot in your

home is undoubtedly the cheapest

method of getting them dry.

But what if it’s wet outside or your

clothes do not dry well inside?

First things first, don’t hang them

over the radiator. It blocks it and makes

your boiler work harder to heat your

house. The boiler has to heat the damp

clothes first before being able to heat

waves and TVs have had the amount of

power they consume in standby capped

at just 0.5w under EU and now UK

rules. A device that consumes 0.5w

amounts to 4.38kWh of consumption if

it was left on all year, for 8,760 hours, it

would cost £1.24.

To save the £35 a year the govern-

ment organisation the Energy Saving

Trust claims switching off standby de-

vices saves you, you would need a total

of 28 devices such as TVs, microwaves,

laptop chargers and games consoles,

and that’s assuming you never actually

wanted to use them.

As far as energy consumption in your

Half a million join top-rate Chase

C

hase Bank’s high-paying interest

rate, generous cashback offer and

refer-a-friend deal has helped it

hoover up half a million customers in

less than a year.

Owned by the investment house JP

Morgan, the app-only bank was

launched in September to challenge

other digital banks such as Starling and

Monzo.

Chase’s current account pays 1 per

cent cashback on most purchases for

the first 12 months, making it the

best debit card cashback deal on the

market.You can also save by automati-

cally rounding up purchases to the

nearest pound and transferring the dif-

ference to a separate pot. Money in this

pot gets 5 per cent interest — by far

the best rate on the market.

The bank’s refer-a-friend deal gives

you and the friend £20 each. You can re-

fer up to 20 people.

Once you have the current account,

you can set up a savings account with

the app that pays 1.5 per cent interest.

This makes it the best paying easy-ac-

cess savings account on the market.

As inflation nears double digits, it is

important to make sure your cash sav-

ings are in the best-paying account.

If you need to access your money eas-

ily, then Chase pays the highest rate.

But you can get better deals if you lock

your money away for longer. The best

one-year fixed rate is from Kent Reli-

ance, part of the private bank OneSav-

ings Bank, at 2.36 per cent, according to

the data company Savings Champion.

Locking it away for even longer will

get you a better rate, but there is not

much difference between the best two-

year fix (2.76 per cent from Kent Reli-

ance) and top five-year deal (2.85 per

cent from Tandem Bank.

Imogen Tew

Savers need more protection

if pension scheme goes bust

C

ustomers should be able to claim

more money if their pension pro-

vider collapses or they receive ir-

responsible advice, the Financial Ser-

vices Compensation Scheme (FSCS)

has said.

The FSCS was set up in 2001 to re-

imburse customers of regulated finan-

cial services firms that fail. It said

the current compensation limit of

£85,000 should be raised for pension-

related claims, on Thursday.

“Consumers would rather deal with a

different limit for pensions than face a

future where their retirement is no

longer secure through no fault of their

own,” said Emma Barrow from FSCS.

The number of pension-related

claims exceeding the compensation al-

lowance has risen sharply. In 2021-22

pension customers lost £137 million in

total as a result of the limit, more than

15 times the 2016-17 figure of £9 million.

The FSCS wants to align the cap with

the maximum amount the Financial

Ombudsman Service can order a busi-

ness to pay, which is £375,000.

The FSCS expects to pay £698 mil-

lion in compensation in 2022-23.

Lily Russell-Jones

5%

the interest rate available on Chase’s

‘round-up’ savings account

are really worth the effort

the air. It takes four time more energy

to heat water than air, and it’s the air

temperature that your thermostat is

measuring. Drying on radiators can al-

so lead to damp problems in your home.

If you’re looking to save money, you

should leave your tumble dryer well

alone. Even the most efficient dryer

around, the Miele TCB 140 WP, accord-

ing to Which?, consumes 1.7kWh of

electricity for a full 7kg load taking

155 minutes or 0.96kWh for a half load

taking 95 minutes. That will cost 48.2p

per full load or 27.2p for a half load.

Other dryers can cost £1.50 per cycle.

A cheaper thing to use, if you have

one, is a heated clothing rack. Lake-

land’s heated airer (£150), which can

hold up to 15kg of washing, has a power

consumption of 300w. If you ran it for

two hours that would be 0.6kWh of

consumption, which would cost 17p.

0 Should you run appliances at night?

Running appliances like dishwashers,

tumble dryers and washing machines at

night, when there is less demand for

electricity and it’s cheaper, is also often

suggested as a way to save money.

But this only works if you’re on a tar-

iff that gives you cheaper electricity at

this time. These are known as Economy

7 or 10 tariffs, which give you cheaper

electricity at off-peak times for seven

and ten hours respectively.

The flipside of this is that peak-time

rates are more expensive, so if you still

use a lot of electricity in the daytime,

you might find yourself paying more.

Scott Byrom, from the comparison

site the Energy Shop, said these tariffs

are often useful for people with electric

storage heaters that can be warmed up

at night, those with appliances that can

be put on using a timer, or those work-

ing shifts outside of normal working

hours.

He said you would have to be using at

least 30 per cent of your energy con-

sumption in the off-peak period in or-

der to benefit from one of these tariffs.

0 Should I turn off radiators in

rooms I’m not using?

Many people use an electric radiator to

heat up one room without turning on

the central heating. But these can be

very expensive to run, at about 2kWh

for every hour of usage (56.7p).

The Money Saving Expert founder,

Martin Lewis, has an adage you should

“heat the human not the home”, so a

better thing to consider is an electric

blanket or throw. These consume much

less electricity, about 0.15kWh (4.3p an

hour), 13 times cheaper than an electric

heater.

These can cost up to £60, however, so

if you don’t have one, a cheaper alter-

native is a hot water bottle wrapped up

in a pillowcase or blanket. Boiling

enough water on a gas hob to fill a 1.5l

hot water bottle would consume

0.45kWh of gas, and cost 3p to do so.

Use the kettle and it will cost 4.7p.

0 Are LED bulbs really worth

investing in?

The energy saving tip that makes by far

the biggest difference, apart from just

turning your heating off, is changing

your lightbulbs.

The sale of halogen bulbs was

banned in October, and replacing them

with LEDs saves the cost of new bulbs

several times over. Plus they also last

about 12.5 times longer, said Which?.

A 700 lumen halogen bulb would

consume 42w of electricity, while an

LED producing the same level of light

would consume 10. If left on for 1,500

hours a year (about four hours a day),

the halogen bulb would cost £17.85 to

run and the LED would cost £4.25.

If you swapped out ten old lightbulbs,

for a cost of about £20, and used them

all that often, you would still save

£116 a year after earning back the initial

outlay.

0 Is a bath really that much worse

than a shower?

It depends on how long you stay in the

shower. The average 90l bath contains

30l of cold water and 60l of hot water,

according to the boiler manufacturer

Worcester Bosch, while an average

shower dispenses 9l of water a minute,

6l of which is hot (about 42C).

The cost of heating a litre of water

to that temperature from 5C is about

0.04kWh. That would mean running

60l of hot water in a bath would use

2.4kWh, which at the price of gas would

be 17.69p.

Dispensing 6l of hot water a minute,

a shower powered by your gas boiler

would cost 1.77p per minute, and an

electric shower at the higher per kWh

price of electricity would cost 6.8p per

minute. These savings don’t take into

account the cost of water, but if you

don’t have a water meter then you’re

quids-in.

The price difference means if you

shower in less than ten minutes with a

boiler-powered shower it will cost you

less than running a bath. If you have an

electric shower, you have two and a half

minutes. Get scrubbing.

5p

a minute cheaper to

use a gas-heated

shower instead of

electric

48p

minimum to tumble

dry a full load. Some

dryers can cost

£1.50 a go

£1.24

the most a modern

device will cost a

year if left on

standby

A slow cooker beats a fan oven

A bath can be as cheap as a shower

Whatever you do, don’t dry washing on the radiator

The biggest difference

you can make is to

change your lightbulbs