Money

Paying for power used to be simple. You cooked, did your chores and turned the heating on as needed. Then, every three months, your supplier sent you a bill and you'd pop a cheque in the post. But it's about to become a great deal more complicated. Suppliers are launching deals that mean you can buy power in advance, enjoy free electricity at weekends - and even pay a cheaper rate if you wait until it rains to run the vacuum cleaner round.

Kristin Forbes signaled she was inching closer to voting for a rate hike after becoming increasingly 'uncomfortable' with surging inflation given the economy's resilience since the Brexit vote. She said the UK's impressive performance since last June has made it 'increasingly difficult' to justify keeping rates at the record low of 0.25 per cent with inflation predicted to surge close to 3 per cent next year.

NS&I;'s popular Premium Bonds currently pay out tax-free monthly prizes at an equivalent rate of 1.25 per cent a year of the money held in them, but from 1 May that will be reduced  to 1.15 per cent. The cuts will mainly fall on the £50 and £100 prizes, which will tumble from 141,900 per month to an estimated 41,458 - meaning 70 per cent less of these prizes will be won.

No-one wants to think about their home being flooded, but what are the steps you need to take if disaster strikes and you want to get your property back to its former glory as soon as you can? Follow these guidelines to help get your property dry again.

Buying a property is a stressful business. And when you're wading through your property 'to do' list, it's easy to mistake mortgage life insurance cover as an optional extra that you can do without - especially if you're not married or you don't have children. But this could be a mistake for a number of reasons.

We've had five offers on our two-bed flat in the last six months. However, lenders have refused to lend thanks to it being located on a parade of shops, which includes a Chinese takeaway. We've already had to lower the price by £40,000 to appeal to cash buyers and don't know what to do next.

The 174,564 vehicles registered was 2.3 per cent up on the same month last year and it seems the order rush was prompted by changes to Vehicle Excise Duty that will make many cars - especially low-emissions vehicles - more expensive to own from April 1. Car buyers have reacted to the upcoming changes fairly swiftly, with private motorists triggering the biggest growth in car registrations last month.

New affordability rules introduced by the FCAy are to blame. They mean some lenders will only entertain the self-employed if they can provide at least three years of accounts or three years of income that has been reported to Revenue & Customs. The mechanistic way many big lenders now process mortgage applications means that those made by the self-employed are routinely spat out. It's a 'mortgage minefield', but it can be navigated. Nigel Patton has experienced problems.

The company posted net profit for 2016 of £2.28bn - less than half the £4.7bn it made in 2015. Meanwhile, earnings of £323m over the latest quarter were £129m worse than analysts had predicted.

Punch tenants claim Heineken plans to force pubs to stock 85 per cent of its own brands, which include Amstel, Foster's and Birra Moretti.

Private equity firm Endless has made a nine-fold return on packaging business Excelsior. Paper and packaging firm Mondi yesterday paid £33m for Excelsior, which is behind a type of pouch for steam cooking in the microwave. Excelsior, which has plants in Wales and Lancashire, was bought by investment firm Endless in December 2014.

The Post Office network has almost halved since the Millennium to just 11,600 branches, yet hard-hit communities are now facing a fresh cull. More than 40% of the large Crown offices - branches run directly by the Post Office - will soon die a death, including the one in South Woodford, where Winston Churchill was MP.

T.D. writes: Pentagon Asset Management approached me about selling my carbon credits. Its website address is pentagonassetmgt.com and the telephone number is 020 7859 4985. I assume this company is a scam, but perhaps you can check it out and let readers know if it is to be avoided.

The floods that struck the North of the country last winter cost £1.3bn and caused untold misery. They were the latest in a series of weather incidents to wreck the properties and lives of thousands of households. But their devastating impact could be averted by the development of the house of the future. We look inside - and give tips on how to adapt a home to withstand a disaster.

Today, the company is run by Brett Simpson, who was born in New Zealand, raised in Australia and has spent most of his working life in the US, Asia and continental Europe. The group still has a presence in Dundee, making yarns for carpet groups, including Axminster & Wilton. But it now has 15 factories worldwide, and operates in 20 countries, with almost 2,500 employees. The shares are 71p and should rise this year and beyond.

Professor David Miles, a former member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, says the shortage of housing and a restriction on the availability of land in the UK will mean house prices keep spiralling upwards. Speaking at an event in Westminster this week, Miles revealed analysis showing that 'extraordinary' house price inflation over the past 30 years was likely to continue for the next 50 years.

In early February I'll be away for almost three weeks and am worried about my pipes freezing and flooding my home because of the cold weather. Do I need to leave my heating on low or is it okay to just set my heating to come on for an hour a day? And if so what time of day does this need to happen?

Revenue & Customs published its latest proposals for quarterly reporting, but Mike Cherry, chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, said that without clear answers to small firms' fears, the plans, due to take effect in 2018, should be delayed until 2020. 'There's still no clarity on what it means in practice. Does quarterly tax reporting actually mean full sets of accounts, being sent in every quarter? Nobody knows the detail yet,' he said.

Chris Gillan served alongside the SAS in Afghanistan until a training injury ended his RAF career. After a 'dire' period of unemployment during which time his home was flooded and his family left homeless, he turned to charities for support. Now his company, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to employing injured veterans and supporting forces' charities with donations from sales, is about to start selling through 353 Asda stores.

Woodford's new Income Focus fund will aim to focus on paying a higher income - higher than his Equity Income fund, which currently yields around 3.3 per cent. It sounds like an appealing prospect for income-starved investors, particularly with interest rates set to stay low for longer. Woodford's track record has not been so hot in recent years.

Manufacturers are offering big discounts on new cars - even those that have just been released, like the Vauxhall Mokka X (pictured) - amid fears that new registrations could fall by 6% in 2017 due to Brexit, the weaker pound and changes to VED that will make car tax more expensive for many drivers.

The number of Aldi stores has more than doubled in the last decade and it has fast become a winner with all types of shopper, cutting into the market share of the traditional big players. This is Money was invited behind the scenes at one of its stores and distribution centres to see what makes the German supermarket chain tick.

Mobile homes were once considered unslightly blots on the landscape. But it seems they're undergoing something of a renaissance if some of the current asking prices are anything to go by. We have found a handful of such properties around the country with price tags higher than the average home in Britain - and in some cases significantly more. Pictured: A three bedroom property in Sandhurst, Berkshire has an asking price of £499,950. A home is in St Neots, Cambridgeshire is on the market for £250,000. One home in Bracknell has an asking price of £299,950 and a two bedroom mobile home in Denham, Buckinghamshire costs £275,000.

Nervous investors piled into absolute return and fixed income funds in 2016 as rocky global events caused them to shy away from 'risky' equity funds. Equities saw outflows of £8.2billion last year, despite being the best selling asset class of 2015.

A new Range Rover is priced from £76,370 at dealerships today. But this 'new' Range Rover costs almost twice that. That's because it's a restored original created by Land Rover's Classic department that will be an identical match to the Classic 4x4 launched in 1970.

Georgia Elms found out she was pregnant with her second daughter the day after her husband Jon died suddenly of meningitis. She says she could not have managed without bereavement benefits, to which she was entitled because Jon had made considerable National Insurance payments over his lifetime. These payments are set to be cut for bereaved families.

This week, there were a number of changes made to train fares which are in the right direction, but still misses out those who use them most - commuters. The train firm I use, Greater Anglia is closing the line every weekend until April. But still it charges me for a seven day service...

A long way from the Bank of England's decision-making chambers, something happened this week that might point the way forward for setting interest rates.

From a polite request for evidence to a social media shaming our tips aim to help the hundreds of thousands of people left out of pocket every year after online and telephone orders never arrive. Retailers and delivery firms are routinely washing their hands of responsibility when parcels go missing, claiming it was 'signed for' or put in a 'safe place', such as a shed or porch.

After viewing the pretty four- bedroom Georgian town house overlooking the seafront, Christabel Smith and her husband Jonathan felt they had found their dream home. However, their joy at moving into the house in Ramgsgate, Kent, in December 2015 soon turned to despair. Within weeks the boiler packed up and replacing it would cost nearly £3,000.

To clear the average national household debt of ?13,000 at 6% interest with a monthly repayment of ?100 will take around 17 years. There are, however, plenty of simple ways to make significant savings on your regular spending that could clear your debt - or boost your savings - in less than a year. This is Money's top 50 - updated - money-saving tips may appear light-hearted but are deadly serious.

Choosing the right DIY platform is crucial but a wealth of choice and changes to charges have left many investors scratching their heads. We pick some of the best. We also highlight why investing in an Isa makes sense, as it should protect your hopefully growing investments from tax forever.

The amount you can save into a pension ultimately depends on what you can afford - but the longer you leave it the more you will need to save. We tend to put ambitious targets on our hoped-for income in retirement and then underestimate how much we will need to set aside to achieve that. So how much should you save?

An interest rate cut before the end of the year looks less likely following the plunge in the pound. However, the Bank of England has indicated that higher inflation driven by rising import costs won't make it lift rates.

Despite endless media coverage of the political wrangling and financial speculation, the average Briton can be forgiven for remaining confused about what 'soft' and 'hard' Brexit really mean. But a clever table put together by HSBC cleaves some clarity from the murk.

Compare your pay to the national average and see whether your employer treated you to a pay rise in line with the the rest of your profession. Farmers, care and air travel assistants were big winners on the pay scales in 2016. Travel agents, careers advisers and probation officers lost out.