Why remortgaging could cost more than you think

Remortgaging to pay off your credit card debts can seem to make sense, says MoneyWeek editor Merryn Somerset Webb. But the apparently lower rates offered by mortgage lenders disguise many pitfalls. Using your mortgage to pay for that flat screen TV could end up costing you thousands of pounds more than you expected - or even mean losing your home...

The illusionist David Copperfield is a truly remarkable man. Mugged at gunpoint in Florida last week, he apparently used 'magic' to make the robbers think that his pockets were empty. They gave up and ran away, leaving him still in possession of his wallet.

However the remarkable thing here is not, I think, the magic (I'm guessing the trick comes pretty early on in the Big Book of Magic), but the fact that Copperfield was prepared to risk his life - and those of the two female assistants with him at the time - for the sake of a few hundred dollars.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.