Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Business
Prudence Ivey

Comment: ‘Martin Lewis’ savings campaign will help buyers with no Bank of Mum and Dad’

I know that suggesting saving to most people right now is tantamount to abuse. “Save what?” you might quite reasonably ask.

But, if Martin Lewis, our collective hero, gets his way then it will be worth figuring out an answer to that question.

The Money Saving Expert is currently campaigning to get the rate rises causing havoc with all our personal finances to be applied to savings accounts in the way they have been to mortgages.

The reasoning behind that is simple: the base rate is rising in an attempt to reduce spending power. A friendlier way to take money out of the economy is to encourage people to save it instead of spending it.

Aside from ludicrous back chat about avocados and milky coffee, talk of saving has played a remarkably small role in home buying and owning discourse in recent years.

Not least because while interest rates were at a historic low, the returns on savings (or considered in some light, losses) were so negligible they could not contend with dirt cheap borrowing and unattainable house prices.

Realistically a privately renting Londoner without loaded parents might as well have bathed in flat whites for all the property their pitiful savings power would have got them.

Meanwhile having cleared the deposit hurdle and sitting on a rapidly appreciating asset, it’s understandable that homeowners were choosing holidays over boosting their housing equity.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and some of those people may well be regretting their choices now.

But looking forward, it may not be too late.

If savings rates do go up significantly, those instant gratification buys might seem less worth it than watching your money grow in the bank.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.