Lex highlights a bone of contention for those of us who have gone alcohol-free (“It is all beer and skittles in the no-alco­hol drinks space”, September 23). Despite the advances in sales and taxes levied on alcoholic drinks, there is still a negligible price difference between no-alcohol drinks and their alcoholic equivalents.

Alcohol accounted for more than 10,000 UK deaths in 2022 and 343,000 hospital admissions. Given the NHS funding crisis, a sensible measure would be to work with manufacturers and retailers to incentivise and, if necessary, subsidise the production of no-alcohol drinks to make them discernibly cheaper than alcoholic ones. This would deliver sustainable savings to the NHS budget and improve overall health outcomes.

Milo Brett
London N15, UK

SAVING money for a rainy day or big purchase is no easy feat at the best of times, let alone when you’re battling against soaring bills with stagnant wages.

By the time food and household costs are met, many of us have barely anything left at the end of the month to save

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However, if you can bring your earnings up and the cost of living down, you will start to increase your disposable income which can be used for savings.

It sounds easier said than done, but the cash you earn each month, as well as living costs are heavily influenced by where in the UK you live.

It means that if you choose your location wisely you can start to increase the gap between wages and costs for the better – giving you more free cash to put into savings.

There are nine locations in the UK where the amount you’re paid is on average at least £1,000 more than living costs – see map above – according to research from property site Compare My Move.

The location with the highest gap between the cost of living and earnings is York.

The cost of both buying or renting a flat in the historic city  is low compared to other parts of the UK, and you can get on to the property ladder for around £198,093, found Compare My Move.

At the same time, the cost of living comes in at £1,415 while average earnings after tax are £2,846, leaving £1,431 of disposable income each month. 

Even if the cost of living is relatively high, you can still save if salaries are higher.

For example, in second place is Cambridge where the average salary is a bumper £3,143 while the cost of living is £1,829 meaning there is still £1,314 leftover.

And in third spot is Reading with the highest employability rate of any city or town in the UK with 86.1% of its residents in employment, according to Compare My Move.

In the South East, means buying a flat is more expensive than other locations at a typical £227,525. However, the average salary is competitive at £2,909 after tax, while the cost of living is £1,714 meaning that disposable income is still high at £1,195.

Wigan, Derby, Bolton and Glasgow are among other spots where there is a sizeable difference between earnings and costs – and some of the most underrated spots in the UK for young adults, according to Compare My Move.  

Of course, your earnings in any location will depend on other factors such as the job you do and the company you work for.

However, you can use job sites to see advertised salaries in your field across different locations and compare with your current earnings.

Costs will also depend on exactly where you choose to live but you can use a property site to look up rent or house prices in different locations to try to gauge how to create a bigger disposable income in your budget.

SAVING £1,000 A MONTH

If saving to buy a home is an important achievement for you, living in one of the locations on the list could help.

Putting away £1,000 a month after a year would give you £12,000. And after three years you could have £36,000 – enough for a 10% deposit on £360,000 property.

If you are going to start saving, it’s also important to keep your cash in a spot where it will earn the highest interest.

It’s also important to be able to access at least a month or two’s worth of income in an easy access account for emergency situations – such as a job loss.

You can currently earn as much as 5.2% in an easy access account with Ulster Bank if you have at least £5,000 in savings – you will earn 2.25% if you have less than that.

Or for smaller sums from £1 you can get a rate of 4.84% with app-based provider Chip.

On a lump sum of £12,000 you’d earn £580.80 worth of interest after a year at a rate of 4.84%.

Opting for as high rate of interest as possible helps you to achieve your savings goals faster. It also stops inflation eroding the value of your nest egg.

If you want to save regularly, you can rates of up to 7% with first direct. You will need to hold a current account with the bank but can then put away up to £300 a month over a year at the top rate.

A GREAT gran who won £166,666 says her husband will have to write a “begging letter” if he wants to see a single penny of it.

Gill English landed the cash on People’s Postcode Lottery in Rugby, Warwickshire – and is now planning a slap-up carvery dinner for her big family.

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The retired carer also said she is prepared to buy her hubby a new pair of shoes – but only once shes sees his “begging letter”.

Gill said: “Oh my God! Flippin’ heck! I’ll take the family to a carvery. I also said I’d buy Kev a new pair of shoes.

“He’ll have the begging letter written!”

Retired chauffeur Kev laughed: “I’ve already written the begging letter.”

The couple are both recovering from cancer.

Kev had melanoma and Gill is still receiving treatment after having part of her right lung removed.

But Gill said they are more interested in helping family – including her three sons, eight grandchildren and nine great grandchildren – than treating themselves.

She said: “I love buying presents and love doing things for people. It’s lovely when you feel you have done something for somebody.

“I love giving. I get great joy out of it. If you’ve got money, you’ve got it. If you haven’t, you haven’t.

“I’m not money motivated, but I am now! This is so lovely. Thank you.”

Gill also revealed she hadn’t told her hubby that she played Postcode Lottery until she got the call to say she’d won.

She said: “Kev didn’t know I even played; I don’t tell him everything. I hadn’t told anyone except my youngest son.

“I’ll never get any sleep now just working it all out.”

Kev said: “It wasn’t a secret, she just never told me.”

How to enter the People’s Postcode Lottery

• The Postcode Lottery is a subscription-based lottery in which players sign up with their postcode.
• Your postcode is your ticket number – 40p a day ensures entry into all drawers, or £12 a month.
• Once subscribed, they are automatically entered into every draw.
• Prizes are announced every day of the month.
• If your postcode gets luck, every player in your postcode wins.
• 33 per cent of the ticket price will go to charity that is re-funnelled back into the community.

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The number of companies going public in Australia is at its lowest since the global financial crisis 15 years ago, leaving a Mexican fast-food chain as the biggest listing in a market once buzzing with new mining and energy stocks.

The 12 initial public offerings so far in 2024 on the Australian stock exchange have raised just $371mn, according to data provided by LSEG, the lowest year-to-date levels since 2009 and little more than a quarter of the historic average since the turn of the century.

The dearth is being partly blamed on Australia’s uncertain economic outlook. Growth has faltered and interest rates have been kept high to tackle stubborn inflation.

Also to blame is voracious competition from private capital for assets, exemplified by the A$24bn (US$16bn) takeover of former IPO candidate AirTrunk by Blackstone this month.

Larger companies have paused potential floats hoping for more stable conditions, said Marcus Ohm, a partner at HLB Mann Judd, which compiles an annual report on Australia’s new listings market. “There’s no certainty” on valuation, he said, adding: “It’s a cyclical market and it’s been a bit of a ‘wait and see’ mentality.”

The only listing of significant size this year has been of burrito chain Guzman y Gomez, which raised A$335mn at a valuation of A$2.2bn in June. The chain was founded by New Yorkers Steven Marks, who previously worked at Steve Cohen’s hedge fund SAC Capital, and his childhood friend Robert Hazan, who spied an opportunity to build a Mexican-themed fast-food chain in Australia in 2006.

The market capitalisation of the company, which also operates in Japan and the US, has rapidly risen to A$4bn as investors have bought into its growth plans. That has encouraged some other companies to dust off their listings plans.

A more esoteric IPO is expected from Western Australia’s Good Earth Dairy, which wants to turn wild camels’ milk into ice cream and baby formula. Having called off listings in 2020 and 2022, it has started talks with potential cornerstone investors, hoping to raise A$20mn.

Milk from Australia’s 1mn feral camels has fewer allergens than other dairy products and could be used in exports to China and the Middle East, according to chief executive Marcel Steingiesser.

Yet ASX, the stock exchange operator, needs a bigger pipeline of larger companies to follow in Guzman y Gomez’s wake.

The lack of IPOs comes despite a surge in Australian equity markets, with the ASX benchmark index hitting record highs this week.

It is also at odds with the huge demand for investable assets from institutions including Australia’s A$4tn pension fund sector. Aware Super, the country’s third-largest pension fund, acted as a cornerstone investor for Guzman y Gomez.

James Posnett, general manager of listings at ASX, said demand from institutional investors was “the loudest it has been” in his 12 years with the exchange.

The ASX also pointed to a string of capital raising by listed companies as a testament to the strength of investor appetite. NextDC, a data centre rival to AirTrunk, has raised A$2.7bn in the past 18 months by issuing new shares. “There’s a lot of money looking for a home,” Posnett said.

A slump in prices of commodities including lithium has stemmed the usual steady flow of small-cap mining listings, although CleanTech Lithium — which operates in Chile and is already listed on London’s junior AIM market — is to raise up to A$20mn with a secondary listing in the coming weeks.

Rob Jahrling, head of equity capital markets at Citigroup in Sydney, said institutional and retail investors were keen for the IPO market to reopen after a number of large listed Australian companies — such as technology company Altium — were taken over and delisted in recent years. “There’s not enough listings to redeploy that capital,” he said. “The universe has shrunk.”

Significant activity is not tipped to pick up until later in the year or early 2025, when the bigger listings are most likely to be by companies that have halted floats in recent years due to market conditions.

They include payments company Cuscal, which is partly owned by Mastercard, and airline Virgin Australia, owned by Bain Capital, have both been tipped to revive stalled IPO plans before the end of the year by investment bankers. 

Karen Chan, a fund manager at Perennial Private Investors, said Guzman y Gomez’s strong performance had “piqued the interest” of shareholders looking for brands with global potential. “The IPO option is now on the table,” she said. “There is demand for high-quality companies.”

Jahrling also said the success of Guzman y Gomez provided “a blueprint and confidence” for other companies. But he added that competition from venture capital, infrastructure funds and pension funds to invest in high-growth companies could yet intensify, as was the case with AirTrunk. “I don’t think that [competition] is going away,” he said.

IF you pay close attention to your change, you might spot an animal on your King Charles III 50p that could make it worth more than £40.

Coins with a distinctive design could be worth a small fortune because very few make it into circulation.

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For this reason, they are very attractive to collectors who are sometimes willing to pay large sums in exchange for one.

One of the most current sought-after coins is the King Charles III Atlantic Salmon 50p, which first entered circulation on November 2023.

The coin was one of eight new special varieties released by the Royal Mint, reflecting the King’s passion for conservation and the natural world.

Despite an estimated 500,000 Salmon 50ps entering circulation in, collectors have been finding them hard to come by, according to ChangeChecker.

The coin is marked with an engraving of salmon fish jumping out of Atlantic ocean water.

It has become much harder to find in change, and prices on online marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon have continued to rise.

Copes Coins previously told The Sun that Atlantic Salmon 50p could become “one of the rarest coins to enter circulation in the last 15 years”.

You can make money from these rare coins by selling them at auction, either online or in person, or through a dealer.

The Sun found that one of these coins recently sold on eBay for £41 on September 22 with 13 bids.

Another sold for £25 on September 20 with 18 bids.

On September 11, one of these coins sold for £28 with nine bids.

The price of a coin varies based on things like demand at the time and how common it is.

It’s important to remember that you aren’t guaranteed to fetch huge amounts if you do choose to sell your change.

Sometimes you’ll get better individual prices if another enthusiast needs your coin to complete their collection.

Anyone can list a coin on eBay and charge whatever amount they wish, but it’s only ever worth what someone is willing to pay.

By checking the recently sold items you will get a more accurate indication of what people are willing to pay for a specific coin.

How to sell a rare coin

If, after checking, you realise you’ve come across a rare coin, there’s a number of ways you can sell it.

You can sell it on eBay, through Facebook, or in an auction.

But be wary of the risks.

For example, there are a number of scams targeting sellers on Facebook.

Crooks will say they’re planning to buy the item and ask for money upfront for a courier they’ll be sending around.

But it’s all a ruse to get you to send free cash to them – and they never have any intention of picking your item up.

It’s always best to meet in person when buying or selling on Facebook Marketplace.

Ensure it’s a public meeting spot that’s in a well-lit area.

Avoid payment links and log in directly through the payment method’s website.

Most sellers prefer to deal with cash directly when meeting to ensure it’s legitimate.

The safest way to sell a rare coin is more than likely at auction.

You can organise this with The Royal Mint’s Collectors Service. It has a team of experts who can help you authenticate and value your coin.

You can get in touch via email and a member of the valuation team will get back to you.

You will be charged for the service, though – the cost varies depending on the size of your collection.

Meanwhile, you can sell rare coins on eBay.

But take into account that if you manage to sell your item then eBay will charge you 10% of the money you made – this includes postage and packaging.

The design of the coin, its condition and whether or not the coin is in circulation also affects how much it could be worth.

You can easily figure out how rare a coin is, by checking its mintage figures.

This relates to how many coins were produced by The Royal Mint.

If a coin has a low mintage, it means there are fewer of them in circulation and is therefore rarer and it could potentially be worth more than its face value.

But remember a coin is only ever worth what someone is willing to pay at the time.

Either way, you’ll want to keep an eye out for some in particular which can sell for big numbers.

A rare Blue Peter Olympic 50p has been flogged on eBay for £205 in the past.

The coin shows an athlete doing the high jump and was drawn by nine-year-old Florence Jackson after winning a competition on the kid’s TV show.

Plus, one seller managed to pocket a whopping £63,000 flogging his Battle of Hasting’s 50p too.

So-called ‘error coins’ tend to be worth a lot too, because there’s rarely more than a few thousand of them in circulation.

One 50p that was mistakenly struck twice sold for as much as £510 on eBay because it was rare.

It’s not only 50ps either – a rare error 10p coin sold for over 1,000 times more than its face value on eBay in the past.

Likewise, there are several rare £2 coins in circulation which could be worth just under £50.

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