Martin’s Blog…

The Pet Insurance Article brought back some memories. As a teenager I and a bunch of friends from school, were into ‘exotic animals’. For Richard this was a serious subject, and he went on to study Zoology, before becoming an intellectual property lawyer. For me I think I rather liked the kudos of having strange pets, and the others (Lee and Matthew from memory) were probably somewhere in between.

A couple of green anole lizards were first. Then a praying mantis, garter snake, axolotl (an albino at that - looked something like this (I called him Borris), then stick insects and finally a pink toed tarantula (looks like this ) called Henning.

Now on the first night I got it, its tank was placed next to my bed (I’m about 14 at the time). I was very excited by such a dangerous pet. After a couple of hours my horrified elder sister Debbie (aged 16 at the time) came into my room saying “ha ha, you put a fake spider on the wall to scare me”.

I laughed at her, believing she’d done the same. But no. It was the real thing. A half inch gap at the back of the tank meant it’d snuck through and there it was, legs splayed so it was as big as my hand…. sitting on the wall. Debbie screamed and ran out. I (not as brave with it out of the tank) moved up to it and managed to slam its carry box over it and slide the lid under to catch it.

If you’re wondering, sadly no I’ve none of them left any more. My house is pet free.

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About three years ago I fronted a programme for BBC Education called Webwise For Business. It was a series teaching small businesses how to use the web. It was one of those ‘gob on a stick’ jobs that you sometimes do on TV (the type thankfully I dont have to do any longer)

Perhaps thats a little unfair, I enjoyed it at the time. The problem is they keep repeating it in the middle of the night, and there I am talking about how to get online, with old technology, a bright pink shirt and slow delivered scripted speech.

It’s on again and again and again. I even turned over and shocked myself by seeing myself last night. So please if you see it…. ignore it!

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There’s a discussion on that subject in the forums - talking about ‘what if an admin fee were charged?’. To be honest I have no clue how much the site is worth. This is my baby, and it runs fine. However as some of the conclusions and stats in there aren’t right I thought I’d knock out a little note to clarify how it works.

1. The site has 1.3 million visits a month (visits not visitors)

2. There are 350,000 on the email list

3. There are 60,000 in the forums

The revenue situation is currently fine. The site does make money (there are now 8 full time staff including me) through the affiliate links.

I’ll explain the practical process of that. I write an article. This is done blind to any revenue making impact, purely on the best ways to save money. Once it’s finished it goes to Brendan. His job is to try and make any links in the article (to things recommended) pay. To do this he doesn’t go direct to product providers (one of my rules) he goes to the commercial money sites like Moneysupermarket, Uswitch, the Motley Fool, Moneyextra etc.

These sites have commercial deals with product providers. Where possible we then get a link to a product provider from one of these sites and have a revenue split arranged (negotiated fiercely as you’d expect). However if no link is available, then nothing changes in the article and that’s what non-profit driven means.

Let me give you an example of the impact and look at the current main best buy recommendations of three sites for 0% balance transfer cards:

MoneySavingExpert:
0% for 10 months no fee Barclaycard
0% for 9 months no fee Lloyds TSB
0% for 9 months no fee NatWest and RBS

None of these links pay this site (sadly)

MoneySupermarket:
MBNA Platinum 0% 9 months but there is a fee
Co-op Travel 0% for 6 months no fee
Marbles 0% for 6 months no fee

All of these links pay it (unsurprisingly)

Motley Fool:
Virgin 0% for 9 months with a fee
Amazon 0% for 6 months no fee
Morgan Stanley 0% for 6 months no fee

All of these links pay it (unsurprisingly)

As you can see the links that pay currently aren’t for the best cards, which is why this site’s best buy table has much better cards in it than the others. Now it isn’t always like this. Thankfully last year the Virgin card (before it introduced a fee) was the best buy so I was listing it and it paid well.

Now if I were to look at this site as a business model, as opposed to why it was set up (i.e, with no revenue originally) it’s actually developed into something rather interesting - not by design, but by an organic way. The amount of revenue per user is massively substantially lower, I suspect, than all the commercial money sites, simply because this site has relatively few paid links and doesn’t get as much per link as there are revenue shares.

However this site is now the biggest consumer finance site in the UK, because of its ethical policy, and the fact the best buys are real. Therefore more people are clicking. Now I saw the Moneysupermarket profit figures out this week at £16 million, and I have to say even a fraction of that would be very nice indeed.

Yet this site’s finances are currently strong. It’s well balanced. The problem would come if less and less of the very best buys had paid links - the server costs are heavy these days (£30k plus), the charity fund takes about £40k a year, and I have 7 staff’s salaries to pay. At the moment things are great, no worries. I often mull though what’d happen if the income were to drop, if there were to be a change in the way the market operates.

I would have one of three choices i. to charge a subscription for the email (I wouldn’t like this, but if I balanced it by making it available for free to those in need it may be ok, though i suspect less than 20% of current users would sign up, people don’t like to pay). ii. To accept advertising iii. To start recommending not quite the top buys in some articles.

Well I hate the idea of iii, so what I’d probably do is put options i and ii to a site users’ vote. However let me reiterate, there is absolutely no prospect of that happening in the immediate future as all is very good. It’s just my ‘what if’ provisions.

As for how much the site is worth….. well my answer would be…. priceless!

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My publisher just sent over a copy of the updated Money Diet. It’s bright green and got my pic on the front cover. I must say it feels rather strange to see it. After all that work to have it in my grubby little mits is a bit strange. It’s quite a bit bigger than the old book (there are 100 more pages) so it’ll take a bit of getting used to.

To be honest though, I hate writing books, it’s not much fun. Yet getting it in your hands is great!

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It’s 10.30pm on the train back from Welwyn having got to do a Rolf Harris impression on the telly. Sadly I didn’t use the beard and glasses, though I suspect I’d have been almost unmistakable for him if I had (ut hmm). Cross your fingers Debbie, the series producer, leaves it in!

Now on to the day. A good one over all with a lovely family, the Claytons, with two very cute little boys. Their aim is to move to Australia (Helen is Australian, hence Rolf) in a couple of years and my task was to put their financial house in order to help that happen.

There were a couple of sizeable savings today, but this was more a case of ‘the whole kit and kaboodle’; credit cards, current accounts, food shopping, medicines, nursery vouchers, life assurance, savings accounts, DVD buying, holidays, overseas currency, Tesco vouchers and more. It was all about softly softly catchee monkey and all the little savings added.

I don’t think I’ve done a Make Me Rich yet that better advertises taking a day off work to sort out your products, even if you don’t think they’re bad. Hope it comes across on the telly - we’ll all have to wait and see

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Sadly TV MoneySavingExperts aren’t in high demand for the celeb party circuit, yet last night my agent invited me to the launch of the new jewellery collection for Cartier at the Orangery at Kensington Palace. Not that I’m into jewellery, especially such costly fare, but these things are always interesting to go to…. and the Bellinis and networking are fun.

Luckily my bestest buddy Babs - Barbara Serra from Channel 5 News (see my past blog My best mate’s on the telly) was invited too so we went together. Straight in I bumped into Rosie Millard, who I’ve worked with a number of times (see past blogs: When I met Rosie!, Hmmm, TV can be frustrating and Rosie Millard’s becoming a MoneySaver). It’s always nice to see her, she’s very entertaining and lovely. I’m never that comfortable at these very posh dos, so being with Babs and Rosie certainly helped.

We went for a trundle around the jewellery, with Barbara hinting that if I really was such a good friend, I should buy her a nice red ruby necklace. Needless to say the phrase “MoneySavingExpert” and “£150,000 necklace” don’t go that well together - though I did suggest that if she ever gets married I may buy her a Cartier toothpick as a wedding gift.

Then the big star spot. Standing around and I recognised the cute, bubbly long haired woman in the corner. KYLIE KYLIE KYLIE. How do you start a conversation with Kylie? (Answers on a postcard please). Sadly I just walked past and smiled.

Brendan (web manager) suggested this morning I should’ve said “by the way my web manager is from the same town in Australia as you” but I think that may’ve been just a tad naff.

Anyway all in all a nice evening, though I must admit I did feel a little bit guilty, having scoffed a load of canapes, that after all that high-end glamour Barbara and I went to get a Subway sandwich afterwards!

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My inbox’s been jammed with e-mails about TV ads for a “Moneyexpert.com” website. Many have said “how can they do that?”. Sadly, I’ve checked and the site has been registered for a long time, since before I started this one. Though it wasn’t up and running when I started this site, it has been going for quite a while now. I’ve occasionally tracked its traffic on the days I’ve been on telly or radio. It must sometimes smile at the traffic boost it gets.

My worry is that people confuse it with this one. Moneyexpert is a commercial comparison site. I’m not a big fan, as, if it’s comparison sites you want there are better out there - and comparisons often aren’t the right way to go, it depends on the circumstance.

As for compared to this site, it isn’t a patch on the depth and range of information here, nor is it anywhere near as big. Yet this is confusing for people, and there’s little I can do.

However, I thought you’d appreciate the (absolutely unprompted) email I got from my 11 year old sister when she saw the advert. Of course she’s wrong, it didn’t take my name and do forgive the 11 year old text speak, but still..

“hi i woz gonna send this to money expert but dad told me 2 send it u
write bak nd tell me if i can.

hi “money expert”
i hear your a money expert. if your a moneyexpert then why do you have to be
so pants in taking someone elses name. don’t your so ‘clever’ you know
what i’m talking about. You took the name money SAVING expert’s name. if you
don’t stop this, i’ll i’ll ummmmmmmmmm…….i don’t know but i’ll think of
something. anyway if you want to make a website that works and peeps like
then you need to think of your own name. ye.
pleez write back otherwise your a great big fat hairy chicken. AND i’ll eat
u.”

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Actually no, not if it’s £2 a day for 3 years. That’s over £2000. Yet this is the type of figure Homebuy, a doorstep lender which secures borrowing based on a coin-operated TV, charges. There was a story on it on Watchdog tonight. I was meant to be going in to do an interview after the programme, yet sadly they were tight for time and cut the story down (all because of a story about a ‘Swinging’ hotel in Cancun last week that it wanted to give more time to).

Anyway I was mulling what I was going to say. There were some interesting case studies. Buy a 28 inch widescreen TV for £700, plus £300 in maintenance (warranty type thing) then interest of 40% apr on top and you’re getting on for a couple of grand. Now this of course is a horrible sum, yet there is a need to question why people do this in the first place. These loans are targeted at the unemployed and those with ultra low incomes.

Yet why borrow? OK, a TV is a necessity as are the fridge freezers, cookers and other white goods. Yet why a top of the range one?. People are paying £14 a week for the widescreen TV.

I accept the people using Homebuy cannot get credit elsewhere, but lets do the maths. There’s currently a 28 inch widescreen TV in Sainsbury for £160. Rather than 3 years of debt for the TV, using the same amount of money you could buy it in 3 months. I fail to understand how you stop this type of situation. Legistlation won’t stop it - at least these people are legally expensive and charging 40% not 4000%. When will we learn to educate people about debt and how to do it? Why does our legislation continually concentrate on curing the symptons of debt crisis and not the cause - hideous financial illiteracy?

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I feel like standing up and saying “My name’s Martin Lewis and I’m an X-factor-aholic”. I have to say I find the whole thing ridiculously gripping. It’s great water-cooler TV. This week I thought the sad teaming up of Louis and Sharon totally ridiculous. The poor 4tune got knocked out (and I mean poor both with sympathy and as a review of their performance) in favour of the overly nasal Shaniiiiiiiii - yet it was all really about the politics.

I would like at this point to draw a parallel between X-factor and people’s finances. Unfortunately I can’t think of one - I dont understand why I can’t go out on a Sat night until I’ve seen it (I record the results show), but there it is. So I shall simply have to grin and bear it - though I still can’t face dialling a premium rate number to vote!

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An interesting day. I’m sitting in the back of the cab from Woking, rather happy it was just 10 1/2 hours of filming, rather than the usual 13 or 14 (thank you Gregor and Charlotte the production team for fab planning).

Now I’m going to let you into a wee secret. The premise of Make Me Rich is that I go in completely unawares and save the family as much money as possible. Now this isn’t strictly true. While that’s what I wanted, we need to plan some stunts so the production team goes through a questionnaire first and does a rough appraisal so I know ‘the story’. While I have no problem doing a makeover off the cuff, it isn’t possible to film a TV programme that way and make it visually interesting.

So today the brief I’d been given was “a family that doesn’t overspend. The aim’s for you to free them up enough money to move to a much bigger house as they now have three kids.” So I thought it’d be my favourite programme - all pain-free savings (MoneySaving) and no painful (cutting back) ones.

So suffice to say it was a wee bit gobsmacking when the Budget Planner (http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/budgeting) flagged up a £10,000 plus annual overspend. This turned the plans on their head and it was time to push hard to cut back just to get a balanced family budget, never mind to move house….

As to whether I managed it…. well you’ll have to watch the programme.

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Now I’m all for saving cash (funnily enough) but I was quite surprised by the results of the current poll on the site. Most people finding £50 would pocket the cash with very few questions asked. Funny isn’t it? I’m all for taking companies on but am a wee bit prudish when it comes to this. I’d feel very guilty about grabbing it.

In the ensuing MoneySaving towers discussion Neil, our developer, said “yes but surely it’s a MoneySaving site?” My reply? “and the cheapest way to get a CD is to go in and nick it from HMV, but that doesn’t make it MoneySaving”

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I was doing the voice over for the first few versions of Make Me Rich yesterday. As part of the script I had to say “for more information visit our website itv.com/money”. I soon hastily changed this to “visit the itv.com/money website” - as I think it’d be very confusing for me to call it our.

So you may ask ‘what’s going to be on the ITV money website?’ To be honest with you I don’t know, which does leave me a wee bit uneasy. Yet there’s little I can do. ITC rules don’t allow presenters to plug their own products, so I’m not allowed to mention this site. It does seem a little strange as all the info is here, but not on ITV’s site.

Ah well….. I hope we’ll work something out

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I’m a stats junky (at one stage of my childhood I could name every World, British and European athletics record!). One of my favourite things is to watch the growth of this site using the Alexa Toolbar.

This shows me any site I visit’s worldwide ranking ie. how many sites are bigger than that one worldwide (very useful for working out how legitimate a site is). Well I’m very chuffed now MoneySavingExpert.com has just moved up to be the 4,114th biggest in the world.

While this number mightn’t sound significant, it is. That’s because it means we’ve overtaken Fool.co.uk which for years has been the biggest investment/personal finance website in the UK.

I like the Motley Fool, especially for its investment stuff, and there is some overlap with this site. It has a very good ‘livingbelowyourmeans’ chat board - though I’m slightly less enamoured by its ‘fool emails’ which often are simply adverts. Anyway I digress.

MoneySavingExpert has been the biggest independent personal finance only website for a while now, but this means it’s now the second biggest independent overall Money site.

The current number one is iii.co.uk which is ranked 3,696 in the world. It’s not much like MSE as it’s primarily a stocks and shares site though my hope is it won’t be long before this site overtakes that too.

In many ways I see it as a real vindication that a community-led site can be so big and a real lesson to all those fully commercial sites (all the other sites mentioned plus moneyexpert, moneyextra, moneysupermarket etc) that you don’t have to push for profit to be big.

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I am shattered, on the train back from Banbury. It’s 3pm and this one has taken a day and a half to get all the necessary filming in - a little longer than normal. Even though the premise of the programme is how much money I can save in a day, sometimes it’s necessary to run over simply because of the requirements of filming. One of the things we wanted to do was a bit of a drive.

Anyway, onto the family itself. A really nice couple with good jobs. Suddenly realising, as many do, that they had no pension provision, they’ve recently bought a share in a Spanish flat as an investment the only problem being that it’s substantially stretched their pockets. This has caused them to be overspending, and while on the surface a nice house and place in Spain looks great - the finances are creaking and without some care there could be dodgy times ahead.

Of course, my job is to try and stop that happening. Unfortunately the big savings we’re accustomed to from changing mortgage weren’t available as the family was on a good deal. There were, however, again major savings to be had from using nursery vouchers - something I’m going to publish an article on imminently, as the more looking through people’s finances I do, the more important this feels to me.

Other savings of course started to add up - a little bit at a time though there was a need for quite a lot of ‘pain-full’ savings; cutting back in other words. And of course while I talk through how to budget with Neil and Fiona, ultimately when I leave it’s up to them. In this case I think they’ll do it - they’re aware every penny they save allows them to keep the flat in Spain. Though whether the sacrifice is too great, is up to them.

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What a day! On the train back from Sutton Coldfield and Steve and Julies’ house. They were my nightmare (a great couple, but my nightmare), not because their finances were awful, but the opposite. Julie is a MoneySaver. She gets the freebies, she’s a good tart, she follows the info and she budgets to the penny, in cash. Steve is a bright man who understands his finance.

The problem? How on earth do you save MoneySavers’ cash? The mortgage was an uh urrrr (think Family Fortunes), credit cards - pretty close to being an uhh urrrr. It was creep and save, and push and save time. Desperately trying to get the target up and maintain my reputation!

Overall a fun day though. They’re a fiesty pair, combative, and opinionated, a great thing for telly and interesting people. It’s the first time in the series I’ve been told “nahhh - can’t be bothered to do that” which makes a nice change. It’s a realistic attitude that many people have and in some ways the greatest challenge to MoneySaving.

The day’s over though. Should be an interesting programme to watch. You have to remember I spent a full (12 hour) day there, but it’s only 23 minutes of TV all in all - so I have as little idea as you what it’ll look like (unless you’re name’s Matt and you’re the producer reading this, in which case you’ve got much more idea than me!)

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Thought this transcript of a call I’ve just had may amuse you.

Ringing phone…

Voice: Hi can I speak to Martin Lewis please?

Me: Speaking

Voice: Hi, I’m a producer at BBC Breakfast News working with Declan Curry

Me: Do say hello to Declan for me, we used to work together. Tell him we should grab a drink it’s been a while

Voice: Will do. I’m calling you about a story tomorrow that says most people under 40 overrestimate what they will earn in their lifetimes and we’re looking for a personal finance guru…

Me: Let me stop you there. There are two key questions… when and where are you talking?

Voice It’s the ten to seven sl….

Me: Ok then, thats a no. Ten to seven, no chance I’m a late boy

Voice: Oh, ok then,

Then usual pleasantries and bye bye.

I am a majorly late riser. I normally get up at 9am, but work through until two or three in the morning, that’s my way. Ten to seven is the middle of the night for me - ugh - horrid thought!

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I nipped into the BBC the other day to do a quick interview for Radio 5 Live (the BBC is very conveniently placed half way between MoneySaving Towers and my house) on the way home.

As I was walking through the newsroom I bumped into a couple of old colleagues, the lovely Jane Warr, who was always very nice and was very complimentary about my work since leaving the BBC full time 5 years ago, and Patrick Bartlett BBC European Business Correspondent.

Now Patrick’s an interesting one. In 1997, while I was studying my postgrad in Broadcast Journalism at Cardiff Uni (after leaving the City) I went to do work experience at the now defunct ‘Business Breakfast’. Most of the time was spent on the planning desk, yet one day I was allowed out with a reporter - Patrick Bartlett. He’s a gentleman and was very kind to an aspirational trainee hack, who asked lots of questions and was very interested in learning.

Rather strange to bump into him now - eight years mightn’t sound too long a time, but life’s changed radically for me. It brought back memories of many long years of hard work, but put a little spring in my step thinking that, overall, it’s probably been worth it.

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Just spotted a wee story on the Indian Telegraph. Great to see this site’s reputation spreading far and wide.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050910/asp/frontpage/story_5221235.asp

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I think I may have written about this before but I’ve just watched a trail for this on BBC1 and it reminded me. I remember getting the call from my agent to be on it. Fear….. my legs were so shaky I thought I was on the washing machine! The problem, as regular readers of the site will know, is I can’t spell. Never could. It’s why I became a broadcaster in the first place.

So there you go. High profile event on BBC1. Star-spell…. great profile, good for the career, but what if, as was likely, I misspell something very very easy (remember everything you read on the site, including this, goes through someone else these days before it’s published, hence there are less errors).

How does that impact my credibility? People thinking I’m stoopid, doesn’t really help the whole MoneySaving mission I’m on. The funny thing is while being good with numbers and money, and being able to spell are vastly different things, I simply poo’d m’pants at the idea (and yes I often use too many apostrophe’s too) and said no, m’reputation would’ve been down the pan.

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