Money

Housing is tipped to be a headline grabber in Chancellor Philip Hammond's speech on Wednesday - with hints of possible stamp duty incentives for first-time buyers. Stamp duty is blamed for 'suffocating the housing market', according to a report last week by the London School of Economics.

Research by eBay says we are likely to spend an incredible £748 each on up to 48 different gifts this year - with toys, clothes, gadgets and perfumes the most popular purchases. The good news is that it is possible to recoup the full cost of Christmas by kicking off a pre-holiday review of all our other regular expenses. You may need to wait until some annual insurance policies and contracts expire to make the biggest savings.

Chancellor Philip Hammond has a battle on his hands to deliver a Budget next week that appeals to young voters while also keeping the core Conservative-voting public on side. This is Money alongside Investec reveal nine key measures that could feature and look at whether they would work.

Social status still matters when it comes to how much you earn, a new study by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) has found. Of the students who did the same subject at the same university, those from rich households still earn around 10 per cent more than those from less affluent backgrounds.

Amryt is a drugs firm with a difference. It focuses on treatments for rare and ‘orphan’ diseases, that is, conditions that affect fewer than one in 2,000 people. The shares are 17.75p and deserve to be far higher. Amryt is chaired by Harry Stratford, who set up Shire in 1986, a drugs firm now valued at £33bn. Stratford also set up ProStrakan, a pharmaceutical firm sold to the Japanese for nearly £300m back in 2011.

BEST INVESTMENT, WORST INVESTMENT: Richard Browning finds little to cheer about as he shares his best investment which resulted in an accidental windfall that more than tripled his money with a 344 per cent return.

The surcharge will cost all diesel motorists £2 an hour on top of existing hourly fees, which range from £1.20 to £6. The measures, which are due to be rolled out in January, will see the cost of parking surge for diesel owners who park in any of the 6,500 short-stay bays in the area.

In the last year, more than eight million Britons have had their credit limits increased by an average of £1,481, according to Citizens Advice. For some, credit limit rises can be a good thing, but 32 per cent told the rights body they could be tempted further into debt if their credit limit was increased.

Properties in Liverpool and Belfast take the longest time to sell out of all major cities in the UK. Nationally, homes in the UK's biggest cities take an average of 96 days to sell, but in Liverpool and Belfast this figure rises to 112 days and 119 days respectively. In the Scottish cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, selling times are fastest, at 41 days and 51 days respectively. While London now takes 111 days on average.

The Department for Transport confirmed that 1.8 per cent of vehicles, the equivalent of 755,000 cars, motorcycles and vans, were untaxed in 2017 - that's compared to just 0.6 per cent in 2013, before the paper tax disc was abolished. In fact, more motorists are evading today then they have done in any other year for a decade.

Economics and comedy. Not a conventional pairing. But after spending a weekend at the world's first (and likely to be only) economics and comedy festival, I can tell you they're a match made in heaven. But I also think laughing at economics shouldn't be confined to one weekend a year.

Broadbent said: 'There's been a persistent strain of opinion that EU withdrawal is something that necessarily means lower interest rates, or at least that it's a reason to avoid putting them up. If so, then I think the belief has been overdone.' The Bank's deputy governor of monetary policy - said markets have put too much weight on Britain's divorce from the EU when it comes to considering whether an interest rate rise is appropriate.

Consider renting out parts of your home - from your driveway to your living room - and see how you could earn £1,000 a month. A host of websites mean now give you direct access to a wide audience of potential customers who are willing to pay to use almost every square foot of your home.

The three brands - whose garments have been worn by celebrities including Holly Willoughby, Emma Willis and the Duchess of Cambridge - were put up for sale last December by Icelandic bank Kaupthing. There had been hopes the group would attract bids up to £100million, but the brands were taken off the market last month. The chains have a total of 1,000 outlets and more than 6,000 staff.

The new business sector profit rose 17 per cent to £2.47bn for the first nine months of the year. Asia churned out the largest slice, rising 15 per cent to £1.62bn.

After returning from a strenuous two-week holiday touring India and Nepal in March we booked a short holiday in Germany with Titan for the end of August. We bought insurance with Axa the day after booking. A week later I had severe back pain. I went to the doctors on May 2 and was told that it was probably sciatica. After six weeks in pain, a scan revealed a slipped disc and I agreed to surgery.

Come together, right now, for the ultimate car auction for Beatles fans. Next month's Bonhams Bond Street Sale in London offers the unique opportunity to buy not one but two highly-collectible classic vehicles that were owned by members of arguably the biggest band of all time. he first, an Aston Martin DB4 worth an estimated £1.5 million was originally bought by Sir Paul McCartney while the the second, a characterful 1966 Mini Cooper S Radford conversion, was owned by drummer Ringo Starr and could sell for a £120,000.

Britain's biggest insurance companies are using an EU ruling to brush a major investment scandal under the carpet. Payouts on endowment policies have crashed by up to 78 per cent over 25 years. Customers were lured in by promises of payouts of as much as £110,000 when their policies matured - enough to cover the average mortgage three times over, at the time.

The convoluted mess created by successive Chancellors means you may be taking home as little as 12p in every pound on some of your income. That effective 88 per cent tax rate can even hit basic-rate taxpayers, putting them in a higher bracket than the richest people in the land. Those on modest incomes of less than £20,000 a year may end up with as little as 27p of every £1 they earn.

We have obtained a damning transcript where a woman telephoned Nationwide about a £7,300 bank transfer she was planning to make for a car found online. In it, Sophie Jones, 26, asks Nationwide whether she would be protected if the sale turned out to be a scam. The call handler says 'yes' and explains to Sophie that they would be able to trace the money to see where it had gone. However, this couldn't be further from the truth.

The top deals lenders advertise in newspapers, on television and on buses are not always the cheapest. These low-rate offers typically have large fees, which put up the cost overall. If you've got a small mortgage, it's usually cheaper to go for a deal with a slightly higher rate and a low fee.

HM Revenue & Customs was going to write to people who were contracted out of state pension top-ups between 1978 and 1997. The letters were due to be sent in December 2018.

Governor Mark Carney has avoided having to write to the Chancellor to explain by the skin of his teeth, as that is triggered at inflation above 3% rather than on the nose, but nevertheless had he and his colleagues backed off from a raise at the last meeting they would have ha serious questions to answer. The key question now is not whether Carney will have to get his best pen out, but when will the next rise come?

Buying a holiday home in your favourite destination could not only prove the ultimate antidote to the British winter but may also prove a sound investment. We've selected a handful of overseas properties that could be the answer to your holiday home dreams - ranging from an exclusive 12-bedroom home in America's California to a much cheaper one-bedroom flat closer to home in Spain's Andalusia. But can you guess the price?

Here's our pick of the top credit cards for Christmas spending this year, and the ones you still have time to get before the Black Friday madness hits. Plus, we reveal the ones to avoid at all costs.

Hot hatches of the current era are far from cheap, but there are ways of picking up a performance hatchback for much less. We countdown our top 10 favourites from the past you can buy today for as little as £2,000.

A retired couple moving back from Canada to settle in Cornwall were left in limbo after a huge payment seemingly went missing while being wired across the Atlantic. Brian Dover 78 and his wife Carolyn, 74, moved to Canada in 2013, but soon discovered that the winters in the North American country were too harsh for them.

With energy bills steadily rising over the past year, and all of the Big Six energy providers hiking prices, one reader asks if he could safely cut his annual energy bills by turning off his fridge freezer overnight. We look at whether it will save money and if it is safe for the food stored inside.

A new era of banking will be ushered in from January next year - and security experts say it could put people at greater risk of scams and identity theft. Under new 'open banking' rules, Britain's biggest banks will be forced to share customer data with companies that demand it. Security experts say cyber-criminals will seek fresh opportunities under open banking.

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?

The Bank of England has raised the base rate back to 0.5 per cent. The move up from 0.25 per cent is accompanied by an Inflation Report, which will outline where the bank sees things moving next. Expectations are that rates will not move up swiftly after this first rise, This is Money will bring you the details of the Inflation report and analysis imminently.

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.

Innocent Drinks boss Richard Reed and Labour's Shadow Business Minister Bill Esterson also backed the campaign last night. The Mail on Sunday is demanding a new body to mediate disputes between firms and their banks. Currently most of these have to be resolved directly because the firms are unable to afford High Court fees.