Martin Lewis saves fan £400 with 5-minute energy | European Markets

Martin Lewis saved a grateful fan a staggering £454 with a intelligent five-minute hack that almost anyone can do.

Talking on The Cash Present, the saving knowledgeable defined how a lot could be saved by switching vitality to a fixed tariff with the help of an viewers member to show.

The show aired on the day it was introduced that the vitality price cap will rise by 6.4% from April 1 and one viewers member defined that he and his associate could be affected by the change and requested what he may do to restrict the impression.

Lewis defined: “You want to get off of the price cap because the fixed rates are so much cheaper than the energy price cap.

“The first thing is if you fix, you get peace of mind and you get certainty. You can get up to 5% off at the moment compared to the current price cap and it is worth noting that there are a couple of comparison sites that have exclusive deals at the moment.”

He added: “Most of the best fixes at the moment do not require you to have a smart meter so do not let that put you off.

“The biggest message tonight though is you’re probably going to do a comparison and it is probably going to tell you that you won’t save much. That is because the saving is compared to the current price cap, that price cap is going up 6.4% in April.

“So if it says £20 or £30 in reality you are probably talking £100.”

The viewers member who demonstrated it discovered that this was an understatement, as they revealed on the finish of the show that they’d saved an eye-watering £454 per yr on their vitality by switching to a fixed fee.

The vitality price cap was launched in 2019 and locations an higher restrict on what vitality suppliers can charge for every unit of vitality used.

The cap is reviewed quarterly by the vitality regulator, Ofgem and immediately’s increase, which is able to take impact from April 1, is the third consecutive rise.

The regulator blamed the continued struggle in Ukraine for disrupting vitality availability and pipelines because it confirmed the cap on fuel and electrical energy expenses would rise by £111.

The federal government stated: “In practice, this rise will mean an increase of around £9 per month for a typical household over the next 3 months.”

The rise signifies that on average, a typical family can pay £1,849 for his or her vitality over the course of a yr.

The 6.4% rise will imply that households are paying round £600 more for fuel and electric than they had been three years in the past previous to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The federal government web site added that vitality costs are rising as a result of “international gas prices have risen, bringing British energy bills up with them.”

It continued: “That’s because the price we pay for energy in the UK is set by gas prices on the global market, over which we have no control.

“As a result of recent events that have affected the market, which the whole of Europe is dealing with, wholesale gas prices covered by the period of this price cap are around 15% higher than they were in the period covered under the previous price cap. This is comparable to the rise in prices across Europe.”