What you need to know about household benefits and price hikes coming in February

While February may be the shortest month of the year, the next month will still see several costs changing in a very short space of time.

From energy credit boosts for every household to price increases, there is good news and bad news on the way.

Starting with the energy credit, as announced in Budget 2025, all domestic electricity customers will get a total of €250 taken off their electricity bills in two instalments.

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The first €125 payment was made between November 1 and December 1, 2024 and the second payment will be made between January 1 and February 28, 2025.

In terms of bills, PTSB's new mortgage rates came into effect on January 17 and are now available to new and existing customers.

The new rates see the fourth cut to fixed-rate mortgages since PTSB's announcement in December 2023. Furthermore, January 21 of this year, PTSB is now offering 2% cashback on monthly mortgage repayments to existing mortgage customers.

While cashback amounts do vary depending on a customer's monthly repayment amount, customers could receive €30 back each month based on a monthly mortgage repayment of €1,500.

The good news keeps on coming as Revolut has also announced that they have introduced similar payment methods to Klarna where credit card customers can now pay off their balance in instalments.

Revolut customers can now avail of repayments of three, six, nine and 12 months at a lower rate than Revolut's standard annual percentage rate.

This new feature also allows peope to put together instalment plans for certain purchases on the Revolut app, with multiple purchases able to be consolidated into one instalment plan.

However, the bad news this February comes as Diageo announce that the price of Guinness, Harp, Hophouse 13 and Smithwicks will increase from February 3.

As of January, publications have been informed that the price will rise by 6% per pint before VAT which will see the price of a pint increase to over €6 across the country and in even worse news for customers in Dublin, a pint is now likely to cost over €7.