Callum Mason

Journalist working at the i Paper. Formerly of MoneySavingExpert.com and Tes.

The i Paper •

American-style mortgages could stop another Truss crisis - why the UK rejects them

This year, hundreds of thousands of homeowners will be hit with a financial shock.


Around 1.6 million fixed mortgages expire in 2026. Many of the owners will find their bills rise, possibly by hundreds of pounds a month.


Rates have been soaring since March, as a result of the conflict in the Middle East and its expected impact on inflation and Bank of England interest rates.But this sort of shock is not rare – not even in recent memory.


Most borrowers will remember the infamous Liz Trus...
The i Paper •

Some 60,000 graduates voluntarily clear student debt in full - but there are risks

Sixty thousand graduates opted to voluntarily clear their student loan balance in full last year, according to figures obtained by The i Paper.


And a further 156,000 decided to overpay their loan by choice, but did not pay off the full balance.


Graduates with student loans are obliged to start repaying a portion of their income once they earn above a certain salary threshold, which varies depending on when they went to university and where they are from.Payments are generally taken straigh...
The i Paper •

I bought a one-bed flat in 2006 for £180,000 - I've just made a £32,000 loss

In 2006, Carole Weale bought three buy-to-let properties that she thought would grow in price and could eventually be sold to help her and her husband in retirement.


One of those three properties was a one-bedroom flat in Woking, Surrey, which she bought for £180,000.


Last week, after years of failed sales, she finally sold it – for £148,000.Property prices on the whole have ballooned over the past two decades. In 2006, the average UK house price was £173,746 – around £100,000 less than th...
The i Paper •

178,000 taxpayers miss out on £800 rebates - because HMRC are still sending cheques

Tens of thousands of Britons are missing out on getting tax rebates because they are not cashing cheques sent to them by HMRC, The i Paper can reveal.


Every year, millions of people who overpay income tax receive a letter from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) telling them how to request a rebate. These overpayments can happen for multiple reasons, for example, if someone changes jobs partway through a year or is mistakenly put on the wrong tax code.


Historically, if they did not respond within...
The i Paper •

Scammers sell fake London Marathon spots for £80 on running app Strava

Scammers are targeting runners desperate to secure places in major races, including the London Marathon, with promises to sell them entries that don’t exist for as much as £80.


Fraudsters are creating fake accounts on social media websites like popular running app Strava and posing as injured athletes in an attempt to lure victims to transfer them cash in return for entries.


Entries into some of the major global marathons are becoming increasingly difficult to get places for, with 1,133,81...
The i Paper •

Doctors to lose £2,000 from pensions due to 21 days of strikes

Some doctors are set to lose more than £2,000 from their retirement pots as a result of the strikes that have been taking place since the start of last summer, calculations for The i Paper show.


Resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors, are to stage a six-day strike in England starting on 7 April after talks with the government over pay and job shortages broke down.


It will be the fourth strike by members of the British Medical Association (BMA) since last July, with 21 days of i...
The i Paper •

Inheritance tax should be the last tax to be cut - here's why

Most people would probably like it if their taxes were lower. This is not a controversial thing to say.


If you poll people on their taxes they hate the most, inheritance tax (IHT) – charged on the estate of someone who dies – is placed towards the top of the list by most of the public.


Perhaps controversially, I disagree. If I were choosing which taxes to cut, IHT would be towards the bottom of my list.One of the most difficult things governments encounter when managing an economy is balan...
The i Paper •

Reeves finally admits it - she doesn't care about your student loan debt

On Tuesday, Rachel Reeves admitted what many graduates already knew – that their loans are not a priority for this Government. Though it isn’t surprising, it’s still galling to hear.


To understand why, you simply need to recap Labour’s various positions on student loans over the past few years.


In 2023, when the party was vying for power, it promised graduates it would reform the “broken system” and that they would pay less under Labour.Yet in 2025, it chose to freeze the threshold at whic...
The i Paper •

300,000 retired NHS staff don't know if they're getting correct pensions

More than 300,000 retired NHS staff still don’t know if they are getting the right size of pension after a landmark discrimination ruling.


Public sector workers saw huge changes to their pension schemes in 2015 which broadly made their pensions less generous.


Some staff had the pensions they were entitled to revalued as a result, and a court case – known as the McCloud judgement – found that there had been age discrimination based on how this was done.A fix called the McCloud remedy was an...
The i Paper •

I helped create the student loan system, I can't defend what's happened since

Nick Hillman was a special adviser for the universities minister when Plan 2 student loans were launched. He says some of the changes made since then are 'regrettable' The team that introduced a new student loan system in 2012 were “maybe naive” to assume that the rules would not be altered by future governments to make borrowers pay more, a policy adviser that worked on the terms has said.


Tuition fees were trebled to £9,000 a year in 2012, whilst the then government intr...
The i Paper •

I can afford to buy a home. Why I'm choosing to rent for £900 a month instead

Molly Dutton has enough money saved to put down a deposit to buy her first home, but the 23-year-old is choosing to wait and rent for now instead.


Molly currently rents a one-bedroom flat just outside Leeds city centre and pays £900 per month to do so. She recently started exploring properties to buy, but had decided against committing to this for now.


“I felt that staying in a rental would allow me to put some money into an ISA and save what I could each month, putting it towards a better...
The i Paper •

Home sellers forced to slash prices despite mortgage rate cuts

Experts say that property purchasing remains a buyers market Property sellers are being forced to slash the asking prices on homes despite reductions to mortgage rates making it cheaper for buyers to borrow money.


Some 7 per cent of sellers in London and 6.6 per cent in the rest of England have cut the asking price on their home by more than 5 per cent in the last four weeks, data from property portal Zoopla shows.


These figures are the highest since 2023, when mortgage...
The i Paper •

Property prices are falling – and it's leaving new home owners trapped

While some property types are rising in prices, others are falling, making it harder for first-time buyers to upgrade their home As an aspiring first-time buyer, falling property prices don’t generally worry me personally as much as they do others.


The backdrop of falling prices – usually a struggling economy – is obviously not something to aspire to, but as an individual, a slight reduction to the price of homes wouldn’t be so much of a bad thing.


Although Land Registry data in...
The i Paper •

University dropouts owe £12bn in student loans after being 'pushed' into degrees

Campaigners say students are being 'shepherded' into debt at university due to a lack of alternatives University students who dropped out of their courses owe more than £12bn in student loan debt, with figures obtained by The i Paper showing the amount is growing every year.


Hundreds of thousands of people who withdrew from higher education currently owe money for their degrees, according to statistics shared by the Student Loans Company.


The data, obtained via a Freedo...
The i Paper •

Teachers pensions are very good value, experts say, but only one in 10 agree

The Teachers' Pension Scheme (TPS) is 'one of the most generous in the UK', one expert says Teacher pensions offer the “gold standard” of retirement income, according to experts – but research shows only one in 10 (11 per cent) of teachers think they offer “very good” value.


Like other public sector pensions, the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) is often referred to as a gold-plated pension plan, because it offers a guaranteed income for life in retirement, unlike most priva...
The i Paper •

Streeting called Tory student loan changes 'mis-selling' - before Labour copied them

Campaigners said Streeting's comments exposed the hypocrisy at the heart of the Government student loans policy Cabinet minister Wes Streeting called student loans a “mis-selling scandal” and said a choice by the Conservatives to freeze the salary level at which the loans must be repaid had “misled” graduates – before this Labour Government did exactly the same thing.


When tuition fees were trebled in 2012, a new loan repayment system was introduced. Students who went to u...
The i Paper •

'Mis-sold' student loans to cost graduates £14,000 more than they were told

The terms under which school-leavers were persuaded to take out student loans have been changed retrospectively multiple times Thousands of graduates who went to university after tuition fees were trebled are set to pay back £14,000 more than they expected due to changes to their student loan terms.


Tuition fees were hiked to £9,000 for those who went to university from 2012 onwards, with this increase coinciding with a new repayment system for loans.


But promises the c...
The i Paper •

The areas where second-time buyers are trapped and can't move up the housing ladder

Moving to a bigger homes can cost families thousands of pounds extra per year Second-time buyers in some areas of the country are finding it a “nightmare” to upsize, according to analysis produced for The i Paper.


When buyers move up the property ladder, they typically have to put down bigger deposits and stomach larger mortgage costs for their second home than their first.


Part of the way to bridge the gap would be selling their first home for a higher price than they...
The i Paper •

Grieving families and home buyers face £100m 'back door tax'

Experts warn those going through probate process could lose out on hundreds of pounds in interest under new proposals Grieving families are among those set to be hit by a proposed £100m “tax” on the interest made from money sitting in lawyers’ client accounts, experts have warned.


Lawyers often handle money from a deceased person’s estate when they are going through probate, or when their clients are going through property transactions.


This cash generates interest, som...
The i Paper •

My student loan is over £80,000 and growing - here's why I think we were lied to

Those who took out student loans after 2012 have had the goalposts moved multiple times, leaving many of us with decades of debt with no escape Every month, I repay hundreds of pounds towards a student loan I took out when I was 18, in the year 2012.


When I left university in 2016, this loan totalled around £60,000. A decade of repayments later, and it is £84,000.


Each year, the interest on my loan outstrips the thousands of pounds I pay towards it.Last year alone, I accrued £5,...
The i Paper •

'Inheritance tax insurance' being taken out by increasing numbers of pension savers

Whole-life cover can be used to cover inheritance tax bills, though experts warn it may not be right for everyone There has been a “clear increase” in families using life insurance policies to fund future inheritance tax bills ahead of pensions becoming subject to the charge, financial planners have told The i Paper.


Inheritance tax (IHT) is owed on the estate – savings, property and other assets – of someone who has died, but tax-free limits and various exemptions mean th...
The i Paper •

Pensions blow as millions of pounds withdrawn early in 'irreversible' pre-Budget panic

Pensioners and people close to retirement have risked harming their savings by withdrawing lump sums sooner than planned Thousands of savers made the “irreversible” decision to withdraw hundreds of millions of pounds in tax-free cash from their pension pots due to uncertainty in the run up to the Budget, The i Paper has been told.


Pensioners and people close to retirement have risked harming their savings by withdrawing lump sums sooner than planned – and the Government sh...
The i Paper •

Banks set for cash ISA rate war to entice savers before Reeves cuts £20k limit

Savings market experts predict that cash ISA providers will compete to attract customers ahead of a cut to the allowance being introduced Banks and building societies are likely to start a “mini rate war” as they compete to attract customers ahead of an expected cut to the cash ISA allowance, savings experts have predicted.


Savers can currently put up to £20,000 per year in ISAs – cash or stocks and shares – to protect the returns and interest from being taxed, but Chancel...
The i Paper •

Mansion tax could force cash-poor pensioners to use equity release

A mansion tax is reportedly on the cards in November's Budget More pensioners are likely to consider releasing equity from their properties to pay their bills if Labour goes ahead with a mooted mansion tax, experts have predicted.


Chancellor Rachel Reeves is reportedly considering hitting homeowners in properties worth over £2m with a 1 per cent annual charge in her November Budget.


Although only a small fraction of homes in the UK are worth over £2m, they are more comm...
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