Last year Chris Gardner paid £159.99 for his breakdown cover with the AA but a renewal notice recently sent out has pushed the price up 60 per cent, to £253.47 for the next year. The price hike is largely due to a discount he was given when he first bought the policy because he was a new customer. But Mr Gardner's case is not unique and we see scores of customers falling into the same trap when being auto-renewed and while in his case it was a breakdown policy, it usually occurs in car and home policies.

If you have a family then an SUV can make a lot of sense, even if a 4x4 that can traverse deserts and jungles get used for little more than clogging up the roads by private schools twice a day. Here are the top six recommendations from the expert road test team at What Car? magazine.

At an industry event last week to show off the cutting-edge technology being knitted together to create the fully-fledged driverless car, debate centred on what the developments will mean for owners in terms of insurance and the law. If a car is in an accident who or what is to blame if there is no driver at the wheel?

TV presenter Nick Hewer - host of Countdown and formerly an aide to Lord Sugar on The Apprentice - is the face of a new campaign to crack down on so-called 'boiler room' scams. Thousands of people are affected each year but the true figure is unknown because most people are too embarrassed to report the crime.

Off the back of a tax squeeze, landlords may be thinking of quitting life in buy-to-let altogether. But is selling up and cashing in any profits a wise move? We take a look at what questions investors need to be asking themselves before taking a decision about the future direction of their property portfolios.

Intelligent workers who are good with money and have long saved into a pension do not necessarily have a high 'retirement IQ' - despite an aptitude for handling money well. the Bank of England's chief economist Andy Haldane admits to being stumped and says he cannot make the 'remotest sense' of his retirement savings. We go through the basics and cut through the jargon.

'Lower for longer' rates of interest are inflating the housing bubble, with the price of homes currently to more than six times average earnings, 'within a whisker' of its pre-financial crash peak, according to research by Fathom Consulting. The current UK's house price to income ratio is at 6.1 times earnings, very close to the peak of 6.4 times recorded in the run un to the financial crash of 2008. But for homes to be priced in line with earnings, hence be affordable, the ratio should fall to 3.5.

Britain's peers in Europe spend more than twice as much on state aid to business as the UK, according to figures compiled for The Mail on Sunday. A study by leading economic research group Oxera shows that Britain spent on average €95 (£70) a year per head of population on state aid to business and industry between 2009 and 2014, compared with €235 in France and €240 in Germany.

The chairman of the Work and Pensions Committee, Frank Field MP, said some firms had sent the wrong people to the hearings and must now allow MPs to question the key advisers. The news of a fresh interrogation for City firms comes as the future of BHS rests on a knife-edge with bidders told they needed to come up with £100 million in a matter of days to rescue the company from liquidation.

IDS said that planned EU directives on solvency and harmonisation for pension schemes could still be passed without the UK support and would cost British pensioners £400billion. His comments come as George Osborne claimed that the economic shock that could follow from a Brexit would cause a fall in the value of the retirement assets of both pensioners and those coming up to retirement age.

Pay off your mortgage as soon as you can. That tip has stood for years as a cornerstone of financial wisdom. The idea was that while you might have traditionally taken out a 25-year mortgage, the wise thing to do was overpay and get it cleared as soon as possible. But this is coming under attack from lenders and low rates, so is it still wise?

The Nissan Qashqai, Honda Civic and Vauxhall Astra are all built in Britain. However, you won't find those in this list of the best British cars of 2016, selected by the new Top Gear host. His picks include a car you won't ever be able to buy, two limited edition models that cost in excess of £90,000 and a pair that are almost too extreme for UK roads.

Investors are regularly told that they need to asset allocate, build a balance portfolio and think long term - but how do you do that? Justin Urquhart Stewart, of Seven Investment Management, gives us his tips. He includes topics from how to asset allocate, to how to target what you see as growth areas and why a combination of both passive and active funds can be a wise move.

He suddenly kept turning up on my relative's doorstep prior to her death after ignoring her for years, redid her will to leave all assets to his own wife and appointed himself executor. By the time family members had been informed of the death, he and his wife had the house cleared out and all family items sent to an auction, and had a fast funeral with no announcement or attendees apart from him and his kids. We have no idea how much the assets were worth but there were valuable paintings, antiques and at least £50,000 in cash. Is this legal and what action can be taken?

It was only after I had booked the Florida villa holiday with Thomas Cook that I was made aware that while the price quoted was what I would pay, it included an under-occupancy fee that I hadn't known about. When the booking confirmation came through, I had been charged six under-occupancy fees totalling £984. Is this fair?

The cut-price pubs group revealed a list of 34 premises it was seeking buyers for in November and five of those remain on this list of 45 (see below).

Frustrated savers have lodged nearly 500 official complaints over new pension freedoms since the reforms were launched in Spring 2015. Around one in 10 complaints the Ombudsman gets about pensions nowadays involves a dispute about the new freedoms, which are aimed at allowing over-55s access to retirement pots to spend, save or invest the money as they wish.

Haggling over the price of a new motor can be uncomfortable for some, but get yourself armed with the right information and the task can become a lot easier. So if you need some ammunition to help you negotiate a saving on a new car, online seller AutoeBid has revealed the top 10 discounted models to us - with savings of up to 28 per cent on some new cars.

In June, my son and I bought a VW Golf for £4,750. I paid £650 of this on my Nationwide credit card after reading in your column that this would give me protection under the Consumer Credit Act. After two weeks, the car gave me trouble and was subsequently found to need nearly £3,000 worth of repairs. I tried to return it to the garage as unfit for purpose, but it refused to take it back.

You can't always rely on the fuel efficiency figures that manufacturers are reproducing. But these are the most economical cars based on tests carried out on real roads. All the cars in this list have also scored at least four out of five stars in tests carried out by What Car? magazine.

Every country has different customs about when you should tip, when it's inappropriate and how much you should leave. And even within each country it can be different if you are paying for a meal, taxi, room service or just a drink at the bar.it can be different if you are paying for a meal, taxi, room service or just a drink at the bar. Here, we ask local experts in major holiday destinations for the insider's guide to tipping.

Albert Einstein called compounding the eighth wonder of the world. It's a simple but extraordinarily powerful force that anyone saving for their future or going into debt should understand, says Tom Stevenson of Fidelity International. He explains how to work it out and apply it when you're making real life money decisions.

To clear the average national household debt of ?13,000 at 6% interest with a monthly repayment of ?100 will take around 17 years. There are, however, plenty of simple ways to make significant savings on your regular spending that could clear your debt - or boost your savings - in less than a year. This is Money's top 50 - updated - money-saving tips may appear light-hearted but are deadly serious.

Choosing the right DIY platform is crucial but a wealth of choice and changes to charges have left many investors scratching their heads. We pick some of the best. We also highlight why investing in an Isa makes sense, as it should protect your hopefully growing investments from tax forever.

George Osborne's continued austerity revealed in his 2016 Budget is likely to keep rates on hold for longer. Inflation expectations have been revised down for 2016 to 0.7 per cent, while Brexit uncertainty and slow global growth are also playing on rate-setters' minds.

Musicians have seen pay rises averaging nearly 20 per cent in 2015, while cleaners are getting 17.8 per cent more, and window cleaners 12.3 per cent. Artists in general are earning 14.6 per cent more in 2015 than 2014, according to the huge annual data dump of pay scales by the Office For National Statistics highlights.