Protect your Pocket

Music streaming service Spotify has announced it's hiking the prices on most of its paid plans by up to £2 a month (£24 a year). Below we explain who's affected, when you'll see the changes and how to cut costs – whether you want to stick with Spotify or not.

Royal Mail is temporarily waiving its £5 penalty fee for anyone who receives a letter with a fake stamp on it while it takes fresh action against counterfeits. It's also developing a new tool that will help people to check whether a stamp they've bought is legitimate before using it. Here's what you need to know. 

If you got a text message or email from the Metropolitan Police between 4pm and 6pm on Wednesday 17 April – or you get a letter in the next few days – don't ignore it. You may need to take action to protect yourself from fraud. Below we explain how to know if the message is genuine and what you need to do.

A new online service designed to simplify how you check and pay for voluntary national insurance (NI) contributions is due to launch before the end of this financial year, the Government has confirmed to MoneySavingExpert.com (MSE). 

If you need to contact HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) for help with your tax return, you'll soon only be able to do through its webchat in most cases. That's because, starting from next month, HMRC will be closing its self-assessment telephone helpline for half the year – and will only open it for "priority" calls the rest of the time.

Council tax bills will rise for millions of people from 1 April, with most local authorities in England preparing increases of 5% – adding around £100 to a typical band D bill. In Wales, most councils are planning rises of between around 5% to 10%, while in Scotland council tax bills are mostly frozen. 

Are you one of the almost one million people in England who overpaid for NHS prescriptions in the 2022/23 financial year? If you get more than one prescription a month on average, you could save with a prescription 'season ticket' – here's how.

If you're one of the millions of taxpayers still to file their online self-assessment tax return or pay the tax due, you've just days left until the deadline. Here's what you need to do to avoid a £100 fine and interest charges of 7.75%.

Banks will be required to refund most victims of bank transfer scams – known as "authorised push payment (APP)" fraud – from 7 October 2024, under new rules confirmed today (Tuesday 19 December). But you'll still need to be cautious when making a payment, as banks will be able to refuse refunds where you haven't been "sufficiently careful" – and they can charge an excess on claims.

Disney+ will soon raise the price of its existing plan by up to £36 a year. From Wednesday 1 November, the subscription service will also launch two cheaper plans – but they'll have fewer perks and you'll have to watch adverts on one of them. Here's what's changing, plus a trick to beat the hikes and save up to £52 a year.