My wife and I booked a bespoke holiday to China last September, to travel in March 2024 from local travel agent, Ocky White Travel. We paid a £1,000 deposit - £500 each - towards the total sum of £3,800. However, sadly, in November, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. We had to cancel our trip to China due to a cancer diagnosis shortly after we booked - however, we've not been able to get a refund from the travel firm or our bank. Can you help?

Around a third will be driving to overseas destinations for the very first time, with the surge in trips coming in August and September, according to a study by RAC Europe. With so many households considering a holiday by car in the coming years, Volkswagen has this week revealed the idea vehicle for a trek across Europe - the Caddy Mini Camper (inset), due to arrive on the market later this year.

The Long Barn is a 200-year old barn that was painstakingly converted over four years and is now on the market for 'offers over £1.9million'. It boasts equestrian facilities and a natural pond that you can swim in. The derelict property was bought for £500,000 and had £1million spent on the renovation and we got a socially-distanced tour from its owner.

Cleo Rocos, who famously starred alongside Kenny Everett in the Kenny Everett TV show in the 1980s, also reveals she had to go on Celebrity Big Brother in order to pay an unexpectedly large tax bill. In 2012, she set up her own tequila business, AquaRiva Tequila, which she says was the best financial decision she has ever made. Now 57, she spoke to Donna Ferguson from her home in London's Canary Wharf, which she rents with her 'fabulous' elderly mother.

Experts predicted that more lenders would reintroduce 90 per cent loan-to-value deals, leading to more choice and lower rates for first-time buyers. But a recovery has so far failed to materialise as the number of deals for small deposit borrowers continued to drop over the course of July, figures from experts at Moneyfacts have revealed.

A rush of investors seeking a safe haven from stock market turmoil is pushing the gold price close to a mythical $2,000 (£1,538) an ounce. Yet many investors are understandably wary that the soaring price of this precious metal might eventually come tumbling down. So is it too late to join in the gold rush? Most experts think it has become risky to buy at the current price - even though it could yet go higher.

I have recently had a combi boiler installed and have found I have to turn on the hot tap quite a lot before the boiler actually kicks in. We're on a water meter so feel we are spending quite a lot on this and it must waste quite a lot of water. Is there some way you can adjust or fix this?

Rights issues are shares offered, normally at a discount to the prevailing market price, by a company to its investors, in proportion to their existing holding. Companies may need the capital to get through a crisis, or want it, to make an acquisition, for example. The convention is that the offer is open to all shareholders, large and small, so the trend to bar small investors during the pandemic has sparked anger.

Diners looking to venture out and take advantage of the Government's 50% discount scheme from Monday should know they can get an additional £5 off at certain shops, provided they use American Express. The credit card provider's 'Shop Small' campaign runs until September, and offers cashback if someone spends at least £10 on their credit card. Coupled with the 'Eat Out to Help Out' scheme, it means two people sharing a £20 meal would pay just £5 in some restaurants.

The Bank of England could launch a further stimulus package worth as much as £100billion before it cuts rates to below zero, economists are forecasting. Economists say interest rates are likely to remain at 0.1 per cent when the Bank meets this week. But data firm Bloomberg said the money markets are already beginning to price in a cut to negative in the second quarter next year. And one expert has even raised the possibility of the Bank at some point introducing restrictions on the use of cash.

John Lewis will announce a radical shake-up of the way that it deals with suppliers as the company seeks to secure its future. Profits at the employee-owned partnership, which also owns Waitrose, fell from £452m three years ago to £146m last year including a loss for the department stores. Staff were also stung as their prized bonus was cut to its lowest level since 1953. Now the coronavirus outbreak has exacerbated the gloom, leading to eight of its 51 stores to close and pushing John Lewis's senior team to make bold changes. Shoppers may also in future be able to rent John Lewis products, rather than buy them, as well as use their website to sell secondhand items to other customers.

Just two weeks before the acquisition by FTSE 100 giant Anglo American was completed, the Sirius remuneration committee led by Labour peer Lord Hutton decided that former chief executive Chris Fraser should receive his lucrative long-term bonuses in full. Meanwhile, Thomas Staley, the former finance director, pocketed a total of nearly £900,000. The revelations are likely to enrage private investors who ploughed millions of pounds of their savings into the company.

After a great deal of fuss about air bridges and people being able to go on summer holiday, things suddenly changed last weekend. A swift about turn saw a 14 day quarantine period imposed for those arriving in the UK from Spain at just six hours' notice. So is this the end of summer holidays for 2024? We talk holidays, travel insurance, refunds, and whether even a staycation is safe.

The number of people paying inheritance tax fell for the first time since 2009 last year, fresh figures from HMRC have revealed. The amount of cash raked in from the death tax slumped by £223m, or 4%, last year, but the charges still bolstered the Treasury's coffers to the tune of £5.2bn. With the Government's furloughing scheme alone costing over £30bn to date, Chancellor Rishi Sunak could have an inheritance tax hike in his sights at this year's Autumn Budget.

Rates haven't just fallen off a cliff - they've somersaulted into the Mariana Trench, and are sinking so fast, it's hard to see them bobbing back anytime soon. In the topsy-turvy world of tax-free savings, if you want to beat the best easy-access deal on offer from NS&I, you'll have to lock away your money for a mammoth five years.

House prices in the capital may have slipped but even the cheapest family house in London would still cost at least £325,000, according to property websites Rightmove and Zoopla. The cheapest three-bedroom house listed on Rightmove is a terrace house in Westhorne Avenue, south-east London, with an asking price of 'offers in excess of that level.

Hundreds of thousands of customers of Barclays and Santander have taken payment holidays on their credit cards, loans and mortgages, as official figures found consumers had cleared billions of pounds of debt over the last few months. Britain's third-largest mortgage lender Santander revealed in its half year results that over a fifth of mortgage borrowers, 239,000 in all, had asked for three-month breaks on home loans worth a collective £37.1bn.

Panicked holidaymakers heading to Spain are turning to specialist warzone travel insurers such as Battleface and Warzonecover to try and get cover for their trip. This type of cover is usually for those who need stronger insurance for heading to terrorist hotspots such as Africa and the Middle East - but is now seeing families looking for cover for their trips to the Costa Del Sol and the like.

The Terrastorm has been created by Czech firm Torsus by taking a Volkswagen Crafter van, adding four wheel drive, bolting on a hardcore suspension system, bull-bar and a load of extra equipment that makes B.A. Baracus' A-Team van look almost wimpy. Priced from just over £52,000 in the UK in minibus form with 20 passenger seats, it can also be converted to a go-anywhere courier van or even an ambulance to attend those with injuries sustained in the most desolate of locations.

Buy-to-let was one of Britain's best-loved investments before crippling tax blows caused many landlords to lose interest. When Sofia Jones (pictured) heard the stamp duty holiday would be extended to landlords, it was all the incentive she needed to buy her fifth property. She began investing in houses six years ago, and now 29, mother-of-one Sofia owns four buy-to-let properties near her home in Buckinghamshire, and just last week had an offer accepted on a £410,000 house that she plans to convert into two flats.

I was horrified when water starting coming through my ceiling, so I rang the British Gas emergency number to report a burst pipe. But what happened next left me in floods of tears. I chased them several times and someone arrived seven hours later. He said he could not fix it then but would come back after the Bank Holiday. This was at Easter. He suggested putting a bucket under it. I did not sleep that night and came down at 6am to a terrible mess. I then rang a local plumber in tears. He came within ten minutes and repaired the leak within an hour and charged £80. So having paid British Gas insurance for emergency repairs I had to pay someone else to fix my burst pipe.

The amount you can save into a pension ultimately depends on what you can afford - but the longer you leave it the more you will need to save. We tend to put ambitious targets on our hoped-for income in retirement and then underestimate how much we will need to set aside to achieve that. So how much should you save?