LEE BOYCE: Make your washing pay with a new tumble dryer

I like my dryer. See, I said it. It’s the one luxury our family can’t live without in the winter, despite skyrocketing energy bills.

When Mrs. B and I bought our semi-triple room nearly seven years ago, we didn’t flip through kitchen brochures or mull over wallpaper patterns before picking up the keys.

Oh no. It was the trip through a department store to check out a clothes dryer for our garage that got us most excited.

We used to only rent small flats where drying clothes was a pain whatever the weather.

Our vision of the utopia of home ownership was a powerful dryer to banish the days of breathing humid air from drying underwear.

Sure, tumble dryers aren’t rock ‘n’ roll, but they really are a great investment. Let me explain.

We use ours on average four months a year. In the summer the clothes hang outside. Between the seasons, the sun warms the conservatory – with the windows on the handle, it is the ideal place to dry clothes.

We also use an £8 Ecoegg. These handy plastic devices go in the tumble dryer and help break clothes apart during the spin cycle, making the cycle faster and less expensive.

But the key to getting your money’s worth is making sure you buy an energy-efficient model. The difference between using an A++ rated tumble dryer and a C rated tumble dryer is huge. It’s a bigger difference than for almost any other white goods appliance.

Comparison website Uswitch says a £499 Hotpoint tumble dryer rated A++ costs £35.36 per year, based on two uses per week.

Whereas – and make sure you sit down if you’re reading this – a £259 C-rated Hotpoint costs a whopping £198.80 a year. That’s £163 a year more in running costs. In other words, the A++ is five times more economical.

So if you love your tumble dryer too and haven’t upgraded in a while, it’s worth considering whether you can afford it.

Look at it this way: if you were to spend £500 on an A++ model to replace a worn out old C model, it would only take a little over three years for the purchase to pay for itself.

Bank math

You have to be Carol Vorderman to work out the math behind some of the best checking account deals touted by banks.

HSBC and Nationwide offer £200 to switch. But some of their accounts have a monthly fee, cashback and an interest rate on balances up to a certain level. The same goes for their rivals.

Working out the best option is a spreadsheet and calculator task – with a few hours set aside and a few good cups of tea to keep going. For that reason, anyway, most of us just stay loyal to the bank we’ve been with for years. And I totally get it.

That’s why I always tell friends to open a second current account. That way, you can move your secondary account between any number of different banks to pocket switching bonuses.

Often there are hoops you have to jump through – certain amounts have to be paid each month and a certain number of direct debits have to be set up.

But meeting these requirements is usually a breeze. When the bonus comes in and I can close the account without losing it (sometimes you have to hold out for a certain period of time before you can leave), I look for the next offer.

Nothing beats free money in the bank in a cost of living crisis.

Savior Sally

Not all heroes wear capes. This week, our Consumer Champion Sally Hamilton broke the £1 million mark for the total amount she won back for readers.

That milestone comes just seven months after starting Sally Sorts It. A standout case for me is a £3,000 refund through Section 75 protection at the bank following the collapse of Safe Hands funeral plans – a route our older reader hadn’t considered.

That may not be her biggest win, but it highlights exactly what makes Sally such an effective reader champion: her dogged determination to help Money Mail readers right the obvious wrongs of businesses big and small.

All power to her elbow.

l.boyce@dailymail.co.uk