With only a limited amount of time left remaining in this tax year, Cash ISAs are the talk of the town at the moment – and so they should be.

Interest base rates sit at an all-time low which means finding high interest rates on your savings is hard to come by. Hopefully this guide will help convince you Cash ISAs are worthwhile.

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ISA stands for Individual Savings Account. An ISA differs from a normal savings account as the interest gained isn’t taxed. With a normal savings account, basic-rate taxpayers have to give 20% of the interest to the Government while this percentage shoots up to 40% for higher rate taxpayers.

You have to be aged 16 or over to open a Cash ISA account and the financial year runs from April to April. Each financial year, an individual is allowed to put in a maximum of £5,340 cash into an ISA account. If you don’t use the full allowance, it will not be rolled over to the next year.

It’s important to spend time finding the right Cash ISA that suits your situation as offerings differ; the last thing you want is to be restricted access to your savings when you need it.

First thing to do is to decide how much access you really need to your savings. Some offerings penalise you for taking money out of the account, while others need a months’ notice. If you do need frequent access or would like that safety net, Easy Access Cash ISAs are perfect. Offering great flexibility, this account normally allows you to withdraw money freely without incurring penalties, just like a day to day bank account.

Withdrawing money will mean losing some of your £5,340 allowance however. For example, you have saved £1000 in your account, you withdraw the £1000 so your new allowance is reduced to £4,340.

On the other hand, if you are saving for the long term and don’t need access, fixed Cash ISAs are best. Although your money is locked for a number of years, you do receive a higher interest rate than Easy Access ISAs in return. The number of years you can choose from varies between 1-5 years. The interest rate increases if you choose to save for a longer term.

Bonuses are another aspect to take into consideration. You may think you’ve seen a great interest rate, chances are it’s a short term bonus. What this means is for a short period of time, the bank will inflate the Bank of England base rate, 0.5% at the time of writing.

For example, a bank may give a bonus of 2.5% interest, meaning their account offers 3%. However, this will usually be for 12 months only, after the second year the interest rate returns to the Bank of England base rate. There is of course nothing to stop you from changing after the 1^st year to another bank, many people do this, but it can save the hassle choosing one without a bonus rate. It can be easy to forget after a year.

With only 23 days left make sure you use the £5,340 allowance. For further information on the best current rates, Money Saving Expert and This Is Money have frequently updated tables to compare the current market.

Do you think ISAs are a good way of saving for those rainy days? Tell me what you think in the comments below.

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The majority of us will at some point have come up short money wise at least once in our life. It may have been an unexpected bill or expense that put you off your budget but how did you handle it? There appears to be a worrying growth in the number of businesses offering payday loans.

Payday loans are loans meant for the short term, you can usually borrow a couple of thousand with a lower number of checks and have the money in your account within fifteen minutes. Now this all sounds too good to be true. That is because it is. There is a real worry that people are turning to these payday loans as a viable way of sorting out there financial problems. With some organisations charging interest as high as 4,000% it surely must be seen that these organisations are preying on people who need help.

Have a look at this video which looks at the standards and regulation of the payday loans.

There is a real risk of people falling into a rolling debt. They may borrow a small amount of money for an emergency and find them selves paying more in interest and unable to pay back the amount, this is when the trouble begins, the amount of interest will continue to put the individual in a very tight position. Perhaps leading to the individual taking out another payday loan and digging themselves deeper into a financial hole.

So what are the alternatives?

• Put the emergency amount on a credit card – much lower interest.
• Create an overdraft or increase the level of your overdraft – depends if the bank will allow you to do this.
• Borrow from friends or family – again depends on the amount and how kind they are feeling.

We at cashzilla believe that there needs to be regulation placed on these companies and help offered to those unfortunate people who have fallen into this financial trap. There are people who have taken out payday loans and have repaid them quickly and have had no problems but there must be something put in place to stop people from finding themselves stuck at the bottom of a financial mountain due to the huge amounts of interest put on an emergency loan.

Have you ever taken a payday loan? Did you have any problems paying them back? What do you think would be a better alternative? Any thoughts and comments please leave them in the section below.

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Since the financial crash back in 2008, it’s been a very difficult and frustrating time for first-time buyers to get a foot-hold on the property ladder.  In a strange twist of fate, it was the gung-ho attitude of mortgage lenders pre-2008 that ultimatly led to the financial crash and the difficulties that first-time buyers’s face today while trying to get on to the property ladder.

The main reasons for this difficulty are, that there are 98% less mortgage products available today as compared to pre-2008, the criteria for approving applications are much more strict and the average deposit is now an eye-watering 30% – which is over £35,000 for your average first time buyer.

Many  rightly feel more than a little aggrieved, as raising this kind of money is very, very difficult and is not always a good measure of whether someone can responsibly afford a mortgage or not.

These days around 18% of 18 to 34 year olds are asking for help from the bank of mummy and daddy.  Not everyone has access to a bank of mummy and daddy and for them there are really only two options; take out an unsecured loan or just save.

Around 16% of first-time buyers are considering taking out an unsecured loan to pay for their deposit, but this is a worrying trend.  If your mortgage provider found out you were planning to pay your deposit with an unsecured loan, your application would be declined, as this would be considered a 100% loan.  Interest rates on unsecured loan tend to be quite high, so it really doesn’t make financial sense to fund your house purchase in this way.

Really the only sensible way to get onto the property ladder is to bide your time and save up for a deposit.

A deposit is only one of a myriad of costs faced by any house buyer. There are many other cost’s to be considered too, like stamp duty, solicitors fees, removal vans, utility bills, furniture, renovation and decorating costs.  You really should try and make a detailed analysis of how much money you have coming in and how much you can realistically afford, including a budgeted buffer to pay for unseen costs like emergency roof repairs etc.

Don’t let your heart rule your head.  Research a property properly and make decisions based on solid financial information.  Buying a house you love, but can’t sustainably afford is a recipe for disaster.

There are a few other schemes that can help you get on the property ladder; check out the governments Firstbuy scheme or shared ownership scheme, both of which will help you get on the property ladder without having to save up a huge deposit.

Fundamentally there is no easy way onto the property ladder.  The best advice is to wait, save up a deposit and look carefully for the right house.

Have you recently bought a house, or are you still looking for one? We’d love to here about your experiences in the comments below.

Here in the UK the interest rate has today gone done to yet another record low, a mere 0.5%! Though I doubt many of the banks (if any) will pass on the reductions to their poor customers, preferring to hide behind rate capping to protect any money they might make by borrowing from the tax payer so they can pass them on to Lord Goodwin’s retirement fund. My what a cynical old dinosaur I am sometimes.

The Bank Of England (BoE) has also announced that it is going to release another £75 billion into the economy through quantitive easing (QE) to try and encourage banks to start lending again. Basically they will be electronically printing money to get the banks lending again and get people to spend more now that the BoE can’t reduce interest rates any further. In fact ratherthan just the £75bn the chancellor has actually authorised purchases of up to £150bn should the banks require.

Maybe I am just getting old and forgetful, but wasn’t that the idea behind the previous funds being made available to the banks?

Although there are a few arguable differences, this is still basically what happened in both the Weimar Republic and Zimbabwe, and what a success that proved [extreme dino-sarcasm].

QE is also what happened when Japan hit hard times a few years ago before resurfacing again in July 2006. When Japan did emerge out of their troubles, it is widely agreed that the QE didn’t work and was just a very costly exercise. So it looks like we are all saved then [cue more dino-sarcasm].

Meanwhile taxpayers, savers and pensioners are all losing out as their money is used without their permission to support the banks in providing bonuses and bail outs.

The BBC claims that “Business and employers groups accepted that the latest rise was “necessary”, but added caution was needed in future so as not to slow UK growth too much.” however this is of no comfort to the millions of beleaguered mortgage holders.

The latest of the rises will be seen as good news for any savers who are not also weighed down by the growing tide of consumer debt, but for the majority of people, it will mean higher household bills.

The increase is set to add, on average, an extra £16 a month to a £100,000 mortgage on top of the previous 3 rises making it difficult for some houseowners to meet the rising costs.

According to Stephen Leonard, Director of Mortgages at Alliance & Leicester, the situation is not that bleak for most; “House price inflation is significantly down on last year, and the market is currently experiencing a cooling effect, as increased inflation, higher borrowing costs and the possible introduction of HIPs are all leading to consumers tightening their belts, taking stock of their finances and perhaps delaying their decision to buy or sell a property…..However, indications are that the rate may well be at the top end of the curve so borrowers needn’t panic.”

He did however acknowledge that many first-time buyers were feeling extremely vulnerable due to the current situation, however there are still options available. “First-time buyers should consider locking into a fixed-rate mortgage enabling them to have the security of regular payments, and allowing them to budget at a level they find comfortable and affordable. There are still deals on the market under 5.5%, and borrowers should act quickly if they want one.”

As landlords look to pass off the increases onto their tenants, and houseowners, feel the pinch on their mortgage repayments, it may be time to call in that long overdue lottery win in order to pay off the debts and start saving instead.

Rate tarts will wait until the interest free period is about to expire on their current credit card, and then check through lists of providers to find another card they can switch to that has another 0% interest rate introductory period. The growth of financial comparison sites like uSwitch, Moneynet and Moneyfacts has made this money saving behaviour easy to achieve.

Professor Merlin Stone of Bristol Business School, comments: “Economically, some providers cannot sustain their current offers of zero per cent interest which means they may have to remove them or start introducing new charges to help reduce their losses.”

This is exactly what appears to be happening, Professor Stone stated, “Research shows that in 2003, none of the cards offering zero per cent APR interest on balance transfers applied charges for transferring balances compared to around 11 per cent that do today.”

Perhaps in an effort to justify the reduction in 0% introductory period on credit cards, Patrick Muir, marketing director at Morgan Stanley Consumer Banking, said: “Our research suggests that cardholders are wising up to short-term deals, as the majority of those currently switching or planning to switch are not moving from one short-term offer to another.”

Only eight per cent of people are looking to change their credit card in the coming months, said investment bank Morgan Stanley, however Stuart Glendenning advises, “Whilst not all have gone down the fee route yet, my advice is simple: transfer your balance for free while you still can.”