Every week, we pull together the most relevant stories for your personal finances.

Summary

⛽ Petrol prices have hit their highest level in over a year - here's what's driving it

🧩 Should you combine your old pension pots into one? Here's what to weigh up

🎓 121 MPs tell the Chancellor student loan repayments are an "unsustainable burden" - what's actually being asked for

🗣️ This week we asked a coach: My child is about to start university - given all this news about loans being an "unsustainable burden", should I be worried about them taking one out?

‍⛽ Petrol prices have hit their highest level in over a year - here's what's driving it

UK unleaded petrol has climbed to around 160p per litre, according to the RAC - the highest it's been since the Middle East conflict that began in February 2026 started pushing oil prices up. That's still some way below the all-time record of 191.5p a litre, hit in July 2022, but it's a fresh high for the past year and a half.

🤔 What this means for you‍

The direct hit is obvious if you drive - but rising fuel costs tend to ripple outward too, nudging up delivery charges, bus and coach fares, and the price of anything transported by road. It's a reminder that global events can show up in everyday costs surprisingly quickly, even without anything changing in your own life.

If you drive for work, it's worth checking whether your employer's mileage allowance still reflects current costs fairly, and if you're self-employed, make sure you're keeping proper mileage records - fuel is a genuine deductible expense, and it adds up faster when prices rise.

‍Worth knowing:

Prices can vary by 10p a litre or more between stations just a few miles apart - supermarket forecourts are usually cheaper than motorway services. Apps like PetrolPrices or Waze show live local prices, and a couple of minutes checking before you fill up can make a real difference over a year of driving.

Experiencing the pinch of rising everyday expenses? Whether it's fuel, groceries, or household bills, a Bippit coach can guide you in crafting a financial plan that suits your needs.‍

‍🧩 Should you combine your old pension pots into one? Here's what to weigh up

The number of people saving into a private-sector workplace pension has doubled since 2012, to 23 million, according to the Pensions Regulator - driven largely by auto-enrolment. The knock-on effect is that most people now build up several smaller pension pots as they move between jobs, rather than one pot for life, which has put fresh focus on whether it's worth bringing them together.

‍🤔 What this means for you

Combining old pensions into one place has real, practical upsides: it's easier to track the total value, simpler to manage as you get closer to retirement, and usually more straightforward when it comes to actually drawing an income later. For a lot of people with a handful of small pots from old jobs, that simplicity alone is worth having.

But it's not automatically the right move for everyone. Some older pensions - particularly older-style defined-benefit or "final salary" schemes - can carry valuable guarantees, like a guaranteed annuity rate or a bigger tax-free lump sum, that you'd permanently lose by transferring out. That's exactly why, if a defined-benefit transfer is worth more than £30,000, you're legally required to get regulated financial advice before you're allowed to move it - a safeguard worth taking seriously given how irreversible the decision is.

It's also worth knowing that the minimum age you can access a pension is rising from 55 to 57 from April 2028, which is worth factoring into any longer-term planning around your pots, whether you combine them or not.

Before doing anything, it's worth finding out exactly what you have - if you've lost touch with an old scheme, you can use the government's Pension Tracing Service to find your pension provider's contact details - and then check each pot for exit fees, valuable guarantees, and current charges. This is exactly the kind of decision worth bringing to a coach with your paperwork in hand, since the right answer genuinely depends on what's sitting in each pot.

🎓 121 MPs tell the Chancellor student loan repayments are an "unsustainable burden" - what's actually being asked for

A cross-party group of 121 MPs and peers - spanning Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Green politicians - has written to Chancellor John Healey calling for an urgent review of student loan repayment rates and thresholds. The letter follows last month's Treasury Select Committee report, which found the government had misled "Plan 2" borrowers about the true cost of their loans. Specifically, it calls for the government to reverse the freeze on the Plan 2 repayment threshold, currently fixed at £29,385 until 2030, and requests a meeting with the Chancellor and Education Secretary. So far only the Department for Education has responded, saying the system it inherited is "broken and unfair" and that it's considering its response to the Committee's findings.

🤔 What this means for you

Quick recap if you missed last month's edition: on Plan 2, you repay 9% of your income above the threshold. Freezing that threshold means more of your salary gets caught by repayments as wages rise with inflation - the same "fiscal drag" effect we covered with income tax bands a few weeks ago, just applied to student loans instead.

Nothing has actually changed yet - this is pressure on the government to review the system, not a change to rates or thresholds themselves. If the freeze is eventually reversed, it would likely mean the threshold rises again in future, easing repayments for a lot of graduates - but there's no commitment or timeline yet, so it's not worth changing your own approach based on speculation either way.

The government has previously said bigger decisions like this would be handled at the Budget alongside a full OBR forecast, so it's worth keeping half an eye on that rather than expecting anything sooner.

Not sure how student loan repayments fit into your wider financial plans? A Bippit coach can help you understand the impact on your budget and plan confidently for the future.

Ask a coach

"My child's about to start university - given all this news about loans being an "unsustainable burden", should I be worried about them taking one out?"

It's an understandable worry given the headlines, but a student loan really isn't like other debt, and the "unsustainable burden" argument is about how the system might need to change over time - not about whether it's risky to take one out in the first place.

Nothing gets repaid until your child earns above the repayment threshold, repayments are a fixed percentage of income above that line rather than a fixed monthly amount, and whatever's left is wiped after 30 years regardless of how much is still owed.

Student loans also don't appear on credit reports or affect your credit score. However, lenders may take student loan repayments into account when carrying out affordability checks for other types of borrowing, such as a mortgage. You can find out more about how student finance works on the official GOV.UK Student Finance overview.

My suggestion: don't let the political noise put you off funding a place at university if that's the right path for your child - there's rarely a realistic alternative for covering course and living costs, and the loan is genuinely designed to flex with what they go on to earn. If repayment thresholds do eventually change, that will affect the size of future repayments, not whether taking the loan was the right call now. If you'd like to talk through the numbers for your own family's situation, that's exactly what we're here for.

Questions (to ask your coach)

I drive a lot for work - is there anything I should be doing differently now fuel costs have gone up? 

I've got three old workplace pensions from previous jobs - how do I find out if any of them have guarantees worth keeping? 

My repayment threshold's been frozen for years - is there anything I can actually do about my student loan while I wait for the government to decide anything?