As living costs rise – from energy and shopping bills to petrol prices – making the most of your savings can help ease the ever-tightening squeeze on budgets.

And for millions of savers, quadrupling the amount of interest that you earn couldn’t be easier.

Savers hold a massive £800billion in easy-access accounts earning as little as 0.75 per cent interest. Simply shift your money to a top-paying account and within minutes you could be earning well over 4 per cent.

Millions of savers end up with a poor deal because they simply open a savings account with their current provider – and the big banks rarely pay competitive easy-access rates.

You may have slipped up without realising by taking out a competitive fixed-term Isa and forgetting to move your money when the deal ended. 

Research from Spring, part of Paragon Bank, tells me there is a huge £338billion sitting in 51 million savings accounts earning less than 1.5 per cent. The average rate here is a lowly 1.03 per cent.

For example, if you were tempted by Santander’s 4.25 per cent Cash Isa with the rate fixed for one year, which was on sale in April last year and matured on May 1 this year, you could be earning a lousy 1 per cent.

Halifax Instant Isa Saver and Instant Saver pay even less – just 0.75 per cent on balances up to £25,000. On higher balances up to £100,000 you get 0.9 per cent and above this level only 1 per cent. 

Lloyds pays equally awful rates on its Instant Cash Isa and Standard Saver.

TSB pays 0.9 per cent after you’ve been in its eSavings, Easy Saver or Cash Isa Saver for 12 months.

NatWest and Barclays don’t move your money to a different account but pay bottom rates from day one.

If you are in one of these dreadful accounts, I urge you to move your money into one of the best-buy accounts in our savings tables. 

You can get a 4.25 per cent easy-access rate with Principality Building Society (which comes with a 1.95 per cent bonus for 12 months) or 4.15 per cent with Coventry Building Society if you prefer opening in branch.

In terms of cash Isas, investment platform Trading 212 offers a top 4.76 per cent with a 1.16 per cent bonus. Atom Bank offers a 4.25 per cent rate if you prefer to stick with a savings provider.

If you don’t move your money, you may find things get even worse. When the base rate rises to quell inflation, you can bet your bottom dollar the providers will not pass on the full increase to savers in these accounts.

National Savings and Investments (NS&I) has started to contact 34,000 estates of deceased customers that have tried and failed to claim a huge £367million that belongs to them, but which the Government-backed bank has failed to pay.

They were turned away when they made a bereavement claim because of an error in NS&I’s computer system. It says there is nothing families, beneficiaries or the personal representatives and executors of deceased estates need to do, as it will do all the legwork.

NS&I says it will pay the money between now and the first half of next year.

The good news is there will be no inheritance tax to pay, nor will there be any tax due on any back-dated interest. Details of the error came to light in March, forcing chief executive Dax Harkins to resign.