Twenty pound notesTo beat inflation with our everyday savings and on wages paid into our banks is not easy.

If you don't shop around or look for special products to boost your interest rate, you're probably earning no more than 0.1% – and that's before tax is taken off.

Supermarket Sweep - Tips & Advice


Asda has a solution

If you are an Asda shopper and you get in quickly, you could earn the equivalent of 129 times as much interest with one of its gift cards. This certainly counts as a "special product".

If you take out an Asda Christmas Savings Card and load money onto it before 19 November 2012, Asda will add a bonus onto it. Load £49 onto the card and you'll get a £1 bonus, £97 will give you a £3 and £144 will give you the maximum bonus of £6.

Supermarket Sweep - Tips & Advice


Get as many cards as you want

You can have £144 topped up by £6 to £150 on as many cards as you want. The best bit is that you can still use these cards long after Christmas.

Let's say you get ten such cards and top them up in full. You'll have £1,500 on your cards after the Christmas bonuses are paid.

Let's say your family also spends £300 per month on Asda groceries. This means you'll use up the money on the cards in five months.

After the fifth month, you'll have benefited from the bonuses you were paid. It will have been the equivalent of earning 12.9%pa interest, assuming you're a basic-rate taxpayer. The bonus is actually £6 after tax, so the after-tax return is a massive 10.3%.

That sure beats savings accounts, even if you shop around.

Use these cards in combination

The best way to beat both banks and inflation is to keep your money agile and not tied up in long-term products, so that you can use it with unusual products like this as when they turn up.

Asda shoppers shouldn't put all their savings onto these cards, but by putting some of their savings on them they can boost their overall rate when used in conjunction with easy access accounts that are paying just 2% to 3%, for example. With Asda's help you could easily beat inflation overall, perhaps by a good margin.

Things to note about the Asda cards

  • Get the cards in-store and not online, or you'll pay delivery charges.
  • The cards can be used in full or part payment on in-store Asda goods only, excluding petrol and lottery tickets. It also excludes "third party concessions and products", which might potentially mean you can't use them in Asda cafes or photo booths, for example.
  • A card will be cancelled and your savings lost if you don't use it for two years after your last transaction. However, that's plenty of time to spend all the savings you put on the cards before 19th November 2012.
  • Your savings on the card are not protected by the Government so, if you're worried about Asda's financial soundness, don't use them.
  • You can register the cards online to reduce the chance that a thief can use them after they've been stolen. However, if a card is stolen and used before you report the theft, you won't get the used money back from Asda.
  • If Asda tries to convince you to load more money on the gift card by offering sweeteners, think carefully before doing so. Most such offers from retailers merely encourage you to spend more money, not save or earn any.
  • Finally, don't forget to pay at Asda with the savings cards every time you shop there, starting as soon as you have received the bonuses in mid-November. If you leave money sitting on a card without using it, you'll lower your effective annual interest rate, because Asda is not promising to pay further generous bonuses.

10 things we hate about our banks

  • 1. PPI
    <p> More than 46,000 of 106,000 the complaints received by the FOS in the second half of last year related to payment protection insurance (PPI). And the organisation is expecting to receive a record 165,000 PPI complaints in 2012/2013.</p> <p> The huge numbers are due to the PPI mis-selling scandal that should now be a thing of the past, but there is no doubt that the insurance, which can add thousands to the cost of a loan, is highly unpopular!</p> <div> </div> <div> (Pictured: Martin Lewis after the PPI payout ruling)</div>
    1. PPI
  • 2. Mortgages
    <p> Complaints about mortgages jumped by 38% in the last six months of last year, the FOS figures show, compared to an increase of just 5% in investment-related complaints.</p> <p> Common gripes about mortgages include the exit penalties imposed should you want to sell up or change you mortgage before a fixed or discounted deal comes to an end, and the high arrangement fees charged by many lenders.</p> <div> </div>
    2. Mortgages
  • 3. Savings rates
    <p> While there is nothing in the data released by the FOS about the number of complaints relating to savings accounts, hard-pressed savers have been struggling with low interest rates for several years now.</p> <p> You can get up to 3.10% with Santander's easy-access eSaver account, but many older accounts are paying 1.00% or less and even this market-leading offer includes a 12-month bonus of 2.60% - meaning that the rate will plummet to just 0.50% after the first year.</p>
    3. Savings rates
  • 4. Borrowing rates
    <p> Banks are imposing the highest authorised overdraft interest rates since records began, with today's borrowers paying an average of 19.47%, according to the Bank of England.</p> <p> A typical Briton with an overdraft of &pound;1,000 is therefore forking out around &pound;200 in interest charges alone. Coupled with meagre returns on savings, it's enough to make your blood boil!</p>
    4. Borrowing rates
  • 5. Penalty charges
    <p style="text-align: left;"> While authorised overdrafts may seem expensive, going into the red without permission will cost you even more due to huge penalty fees.</p> <p style="text-align: left;"> Barclays, for example, charges &pound;8 (up to a maximum of &pound;40 a day) each time that there is not enough money in your account to cover a payment.</p>
    5. Penalty charges
  • 6. International transfer charges
    <p> If you need to send money abroad, the likelihood is that your bank will impose transfer charges - and offer you a poor rate of exchange. Someone transferring a five-figure sum could easily lose out by &pound;500 or more as a result.</p> <p> The good news, however, is that you can often get a better deal by using a currency specialist such as Moneycorp.</p>
    6. International transfer charges
  • 7. Waiting on the phone
    <p> <span style="text-align: left; ">Automated telephone banking systems, not to mention call centres in far-flung parts of the world, are one of our top gripes - especially as we often encounter them when we are already calling to report a problem.</span></p> <p> In the words of one disgruntled customer: &quot;What is it about telephone banking that turns me into Victor Meldrew? Well, maybe it's the fourteen security questions, maybe it's the range of products that they try to push or maybe it's because I'm forced to listen to jazz funk at full volume while my phone bill soars.</p> <div> </div> <div> &quot;Actually though, I think it's because the people I eventually speak to rarely seem able to solve the issue I'm calling about.&quot;</div>
    7. Waiting on the phone
  • 8. Being treated like a number
    <p> The days of a personal relationship with your bank manager are long gone - for the huge majority of us at least.</p> <p> When ethical Triodos Bank investigated recently why around 9 million Britons would not recommend their banks to a friend or relative, it found that almost a third felt they were not treated as individuals. Another 40%, meanwhile, were simply disappointed with the customer service they received.</p> <div> </div>
    8. Being treated like a number
  • 9. Long queues in branches
    <p> <span style="text-align: left; ">When you're in a rush, the last thing you want to do is wait in a long queue at your local branch.</span></p> <p> Researchers at consumer champion Which? recently found that most people get seen within 12 minutes, but you could have a much longer wait if you go in at a busy time. Frustrating stuff!</p> <div> </div>
    9. Long queues in branches
  • 10. Bankers' bonuses
    <p> The Triodos Bank research also indicated that the bonus culture that ensured the bank's high-flying employees received large salaries, even when it was making a loss at the taxpayer's expense, was hugely unpopular with consumers.</p> <p> About a quarter of those who would not recommend their current banks said this was the main reason why. And with RBS executives sharing a &pound;785 million bonus pool despite the bank, which is 82% publicly owned, making a loss of &pound;2 billion last year, it's not hard to see why.</p>
    10. Bankers' bonuses


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