Pocket money... wave goodbye to old notes

⬤ You’ve got six months left to spend your paper £20 and £50 notes before they are withdrawn from circulation, says The Telegraph. Anybody who has paper notes should spend them or deposit them at a bank or post office before 30 September. Old-style paper notes have been replaced with new polymer designs, which are more durable and harder to counterfeit, but there are estimated to be £7bn of old paper £20 notes still in circulation and £10bn of old £50 notes. You won’t be able to spend these after 30 September, but you will be able to deposit them at your bank, and at some Post Office branches. “The Bank of England will exchange all old notes for all time.”

⬤ The number of remortgages being approved by banks has risen by 40% over the past year as homeowners sought to lock in new deals before rates increased, says The Sunday Times. Some 48,200 people remortgaged in the past 12 months and a record £9.8bn worth of remortgage loans were approved in February.

Mortgage rates have been rising since October due to three Bank of England base rate increases, with more hikes likely to follow. You can remortgage six months before a fixed-rate deal ends.

⬤ February saw the biggest monthly increase in credit card borrowing on record, according to Bank of England figures. Balances grew by £1.5bn over the month, taking the annual increase in creditcard debt to 9.4%.

This “eye-watering increase” could be a “worrying sign of things to come”, says the Yorkshire Post. Many people have cut their costs as much as they feel they can and “are still spending more than they earn”. While overall as a nation we are still saving, the fear is that many families have now used up their savings and, faced with the rising cost of living, are turning to debt to cover their bills. While credit cards feel like a short-term solution, paying interest “makes it even harder to make ends meet.”