Dear Listener

Just when you thought state pension age for women was settled, a further amendment has been put down for when the House of Lords considers the Commons amendments on Monday. It almost certainly won’t be passed but it is a last ditch attempt to keep the original timetable to raise pension age for women to 65 by April 2020 and then bolt on the rise to 66 for men and women over the next two years. If it turns out to be more than a late launched kite we will no doubt tell you next week.

You have probably heard of smart meters for your gas and electricity supply even if you are pretty vague about what they will do. But have you heard of ‘time of use’ pricing? Smart meters send information back to the energy supplier so you can be charged accurately for the energy you use. But they also allow the supplier to know what you are using and when. And that will allow them to charge different amounts half hour by half hour, perhaps even minute by minute. So if you boil the kettle when everyone else is making a cup of tea you could be charged more than if you boil it in the middle of the night. The companies claim this will help smooth the energy load and save them money from keeping old and inefficient power stations on standby for heavy power demand. Critics say it could mean low income households will be unable to afford to have their meals when everyone else does.

The compulsory programme to fit smart meters begins in 2014 and should be done by 2019. The cost is put at £10.8 billion but the savings are estimated at rather more – between £11.4bn and £15.8bn.

More on this in due course. Meanwhile…

***IN MONEY BOX THIS WEEK***

The Euro rescue. My golden rule is – borrowing to pay off debt is not paying off debt, it is borrowing more. Has the Eurozone rescue broken that rule? Or is getting help from a country like China (which has a cash pile of £2 trillion, most of it in euros) just a sensible response to years of overspending? Will the rescue brokered this week work? And will the markets continue to be happy.

If you hire a car or book a hotel your credit card will be swiped to put a ringfence round a certain amount of funds just in case you do a runner. But once you’ve returned the car or booked out how long should it take for the workmen to come and take the fence down? One man says he was stopped from using his card for days after a ringfence took him down to his credit limit.

Are you for or against AMDs? And equally important are AMDs fair or not? If you are thinking ‘what on earth is an AMD?’ You would not be alone. It is one of those TLAs* designed to bamboozle rather than enlighten. In fact an AMD is simply a higher management charge levied on the pension funds of people who leave a group personal pension scheme early rather than carrying on until they retire. But it is called an ‘Active Member Discount’ rather than an ELP (Early Leaver’s Penalty). The firms say it is a fairer way of sharing out the costs of running the fund. The Pensions Regulator says it is not. We debate the fairness question.

*TLA = Three Letter Abbreviation

Banks boycott junior ISAs – well sort of, insofar as there are very few cash offerings. And not that many stocks and shares JISAs. We look at saving for children. And asks whether JISAs will be a damp squib.

Those five stories will stuff full our 24 minutes of prime time radio by listening to Money Box, Radio 4 Saturday at midday, repeated 9pm on Sunday or of course online anytime www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/moneybox.

There is more information on the stories on our website www.bbc.co.uk/moneybox and you can download transcripts, as well as send us ideas or problems you want us to look into. And why not Have Your Say on credit card pre-authorisations?

This newsletter is available at bbc.co.uk/moneybox/newsletter around the time it hits your inbox (tell your friends who don’t subscribe). And you could join more than 13,000 people who follow me on Twitter to enjoy (or rant about) my random but timely thoughts on money and a few other things whenever I’m awake at twitter.com/paullewismoney.

Best wishes,

Paul

PS I will be on BBC One Breakfast on Saturday trailing one of our stories. And back on Breakfast later in the week, probably on Thursday and usually around 0640 and 0820 talking about a money story and answering emails and tweets. But the time, and occasionally the day, can vary.

e-mail Paul Lewis