Helen Nugent

A story on the front page of today's edition of The Times warns that holidaymakers risk being stranded abroad with huge bills after buying travel insurance that turns out to be worthless. It has emerged that many cheap policies fail to protect families against even the most basic of mishaps, including missed flights, lost bags and medical bills. Some policies were sold for as little as £13. In many cases travellers were hit with such high excesses — the compulsory payments on a claim — that they made the policy almost valueless. Researchers at the comparison site comparethemarket.com, which compiled the study based on an analysis of single-trip policies, found that about 14 per cent failed to reimburse for missed flights.

Ker-ching! Children's pocket money has reached its highest level for nine years, according to an annual survey that has been running since the 1980s. Children now receive £6.55 per week from a parent or guardian on average, an increase of six per cent compared to last year, according to Halifax. But there's a gender gap, even at this age. Parents gave boys 13 per cent more pocket money every week than girls in the past year with the gender gap growing from 2 per cent the year before. Halifax's survey, which involved more than 1,200 children and 575 parents, found boys between eight and 15 received an average of £6.93 a week, with girls getting £6.16. It means both sons and daughters have seen their pocket money reach the pre-credit crisis levels of 2007.

Yesterday the Nationwide Building Society revealed a cooling in the annual rate of UK house price growth. Now the Bank of England has said that, in April, mortgage lending rose at its slowest pace since the height of the 2012 eurozone crisis. The Times reports that the slow crawl followed a significant increase in lending a month earlier when landlords rushed to buy homes before a stamp duty rise came into effect on April 1. According to the Bank of England, net mortgage lending in April rose by £281 million, a fraction of the £7.4 billion increase seen in March and more than 13 times less than the £3.8 billion rise forecast by economists.

Did you spend the bank holiday weekend with a hammer in your hand, making countless trips to B&Q and cursing the barbecue's failure to light? If so, you weren't alone. New research by Lloyds Bank has revealed that DIY spending has reached its highest level since 2008. Nearly ten years on from the financial crisis, confidence has returned to housing market. Although putting up a shelf or mowing the lawn may not seem like an economic indicator, experts say that an upsurge in home improvements is good news. Andrew Mason, Lloyds Bank mortgage products director, said: 'Taking a DIY approach to home improvements helps cut costs and provides homeowners with the opportunity to put their own distinctive stamp on their property.

Pity the taxman. As reviled professions go, it's up there with estate agents, traffic wardens and, er, journalists. Now comes the news that more than three million people may have paid the wrong tax after chaos at HM Revenue & Customs left callers waiting for over an hour to speak to staff last year. In a stinging report, the National Audit Office said that the quality of service at HMRC 'collapsed' over an 18-month period between 2014 and 2015. Call waiting times tripled during that time, as some customers were kept on hold for up to an hour. One in five callers – 4.2 million people – hung up after waiting an average of 16 minutes each for an answer.

On a quiet news day, not much happens if you're a reporter. It's tempting to sit back, surf the internet, check your social media profiles and mull over dinner prospects. Then there's the lure of online shopping sites: ASOS, Amazon, you name it, they're there at the click of a button. Ordering online can be dangerous. It doesn't really feel like spending money, particularly if you have a debit or credit card set up already. All it takes is a few seconds to spend hundreds of pounds. I know because I've done it. Now comes the news that we are moving ever closer to becoming a cashless society.

Britain moved another step closer to becoming a cashless society last year. According to Payments UK, which represents the major banks, building societies and payment providers, 2015 was the first year that cash was used for less than half of all payments by consumers. The story made it to the front page of The Guardian. The paper reported that cash usage will be eclipsed by debit cards and contactless payments by 2021. As for 2015, cash made up 45.1 per cent of payments, compared with 64 per cent in 2005, and is expected to fall to just a quarter by 2025. More than one billion 'wave and pay' transactions took place last year. Since the start of 2016, contactless use has gathered pace, particularly on the London Underground network.

As the digital revolution continues apace, it has emerged that Britons over the age of 60 are the fastest growing group of people taking to contactless card payments. According to Barclaycard, contactless spending within the older age group has more than doubled in the last year. Its growth has been most noticeable in Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff and Edinburgh. Separate figures showed that total spending on contactless cards hit £1.5 billion for the first time in March. The Barclaycard data suggests the number of silver surfers using 'touch and go' payments increased by 116 per cent over the last 12 months. The Times reports that British shoppers have provided a glimmer of good news for the economy after retail sales rebounded in April.

A 'digital revolution' was at the heart of the Queen's Speech yesterday, including a new legal right to fast broadband under plans to bring rural areas and unconnected households into the 21st century. That's according to this morning's front page of The Times. The paper reports that a law enshrining the right to broadband will mean that up to a million people in rural areas, who have long suffered terrible coverage, can demand a better service. It brings internet connectivity into line with the right to get electricity, telephone and postal services.

My phone rings. 'Hi, it's your editor here. We need an article in a hurry, it's a bit of an emergency. Can you do it quickly?'. I reply: 'Yes, but I'll have to raise my rate by 500 per cent.' My career at The Spectator would be pretty short-lived if I tried that on. But it's exactly what plumbers do - and they get away with it. A new study from Direct Line Home Insurance has revealed the so-called 'plumber premium' if you need a tradesperson to fix a leak in an emergency. While the average increase in a plumber's hourly rate for this kind of work is an imposing 117 per cent, researchers found examples of 500 per cent rises. In pounds and pence, that's an eye-watering amount to plug a leak.

There's some good news for homeowners this morning: asking prices for houses jumped to a new record high of £308,151 on average in May, according to property website Rightmove, Thisismoney reports that some towns have seen ‘eye-watering’ increases while across England and Wales, the average price tag on a property coming to market has risen by £1,118 on last month. The price increase comes despite a three percentage point stamp duty hike for buy-to-let investors, imposed from April 1, which it was thought would take some heat out of the market. But the rush from homebuyers in March to beat the extra stamp duty on buy-to-let properties and second homes has led to a property 'drought'.