If you have a mortgage and you want something else to worry about, forget the Bank of England base rate. Lenders’s standard variable rates are already 3.5%. Hardly the reflection of our (still unchanged) record low interest rates. The key is what they think they can get away with and how much they’re forced to compete for business. To take a random example, the Halifax’s SVR is 3.59%, yet it’s paying interest of 0.01% on its savings accounts. NatWest/Barclays/HSBC, the same. Some tidy little banker’s bonuses tucked away there, I’d say.
“The true impact of inflation on cash savings and pensions”
Leaving your money in the bank or building society has always meant that its ‘real value’ after inflation will go down. Although rates go up to, supposedly, control inflation, any chart you look at will show that, apart from a few very short-term blips (N Lamont, I’m looking at you) they are never more than inflation.
