SALLY HAMILTON: Be your own Chancellor and make your money work harder

We are now on our fourth finance minister this year – the person responsible for decisions about the country’s finances.

Our story walks you through how it could affect your personal finances in the coming months.

But here’s a suggestion. Why not appoint yourself chancellor in your own home and devise a personal strategy to make your money work harder?

I have decided to do this in my fight against the cost of living crisis. The role has taken on some urgency with higher utility bills looming as we head into winter.

I’m not as brave as my colleague Harry Wallop, who tells us in our cover story how he plans to keep his heating out as long as possible.

However, I’ve adjusted our heating thermostat from a toasty 21 to a more refreshing 19 degrees and lowered the heating supply temperature – the level at which the water leaves our combi boiler on its way to the radiators – from 75 to 50 degrees.

This will apparently save up to 8 percent on my gas bill. Just as important to my household as heating is our broadband.

Like most families, we rely on it for work, rest, and play. But I’m tired of my provider, Virgin Media, charging almost £69 a month for our internet and phone.

It’s not just the cost, but we’ve been constantly buffering when streaming TV shows, and out the back of our London terrace there’s little or no internet coverage.

When a flyer arrived from Community Fiber — a provider that only serves parts of London, with high-speed internet that has received excellent Trustpilot reviews — we took the plunge.

It all went smoothly and we now have internet in every room and no buffering – whoopee – and best of all our bill has almost halved to £35. In fairness to Virgin we chose not to have a landline, what the price was. But we never used it anyway.

Hold your nerves

Speaking of savings, it was also time to see how my rainy day sums fared with Nationwide. I have saved a large part of my working life with them. I was somewhat alarmed to see that my last online visit was logged almost a year ago.

oops. Not good for my chancellor degrees. But since my money is in their Loyalty Saver account, surely I was rewarded for being a loyal member of the UK’s largest building association for decades? No.

The rate on this account was only 1.6 percent. It’s certainly not the worst deal, as plenty of easily accessible accounts offered by High Street banks pay 0.5 percent or less. But I know I can do better.

Since I neglected my account for a year, I think I have the courage to lock up my money for another 12 months and get a significantly better return.

Currently, one of the best fixed-rate one-year bonds is Aldermore Bank’s at 4.35 percent, so I can earn more than two and a half times as much from my savings.

Even if I lose my nerve and decide to keep it with easy access, there are several deals out there that exceed my “loyalty” percentage.

I was brave enough to peek at my savings because while high inflation and low savings rates mean their value has fallen in real terms, the balance doesn’t look any different from a year ago.

But I have not had the same courage to look at my pension, nor at my scholarship Isa. The rocky markets have taken their toll on all of our investments – the FTSE 100 alone is down 9 percent so far this year.

But as any good chancellor knows, austerity is only one side of the balance. You should also invest to ensure a decent lifestyle in the future.

So tempting as it is with higher bills to pay, I stay calm and carry on, replenishing my pension and Isa for as long as I can.

History shows that stock markets eventually recover. As Gary Smith, investment expert at Evelyn Partners, an asset manager in the UK, says, ‘By stopping contributing, you’re missing out on potentially valuable investments that can pay off in the long run.’

Finally, any true chancellor should try to ensure that government spending is getting the best value for taxpayers’ pounds.

In my imagined chancellorship, I can do this by taking extra care when booking my upcoming birthday weekend trip to Belfast.

People say booking flights on Tuesdays offers the best deals. I have no idea if there’s any science behind this idea, but doing so saved me £100 off the price I’d seen two days earlier. I recommend this budget to the house.

moneymail@dailymail.co.uk