Martin’s Blog…

My gran called me just before I went away. She’d been called by a British Gas salesperson telling her she should switch because she’s wasting money. Actually I’ve made sure she’s with Staywarm (see gas & elec article) which is the best for her.

What’s so annoying is she always calls to check because she thinks these people are public servants, because she’s remembering the pre-deregulation days. I find it hard not to get frustrated each time telling her “they’re salespeople, they’re there to flog to you, they don’t know you or care about you, they’re lying to you to sell you things, just put the phone down and tell them never to call again.”

Yet she finds this difficult. These calls and persuasive technique are divisive enough but when it’s to older people who find the whole situation difficult it is offensive. My gran gets upset by these calls worrying she’s got it wrong - with comments such as “but he says I’m paying too much.” Really these cold calls must stop, the person that called didn’t know what her tariff was. It’s outrageous and sickening.

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While I’m still on the screens at the moment, I’m taking a break until 2 Jan, way out west to have a rest and a bit of winter sun. It’s been a wonderful but hard six months so I’m really looking forward to it. On my last break in May I took the laptop with and spent the time rewriting my book. This time, the laptops coming with, but just to check a few emails and keep my eye on the site. I’m not planning to write any more blogs (unless one jumps out at me while I’m way)

Wishing you all a wonderful break

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I’m very pleased to say we managed to raise over £200 in the MoneySavers charity auction. However I think I trapped myself in a corner. With the books I promised “I will sign whatever you want to someone”. Now the requests are coming in and I see the error of my ways. One wants “Dear XXXXXX, you are the very best MoneySaver on the site, thank you so much, yours Martin Lewis, MoneySavingExpert.”

Now I’m worried. Am I going to have to write “Dear XXXXX, I owe you £500″ or “Dear XXXX, will you marry me” Gulp, be careful what you promise!

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The Guardian this week wrote a profile of me (see here for my comments). In it, it mentioned that this site commercially was worth £30m-£40m and as you know I own 100% of it. Now before you get excited, let me relay the entire conversation to you.

“Martin, ITV just bought Friends Reunited for £175 million, Moneysupermarket is worth around £800 million, how much is your site worth?” My answer: “I suspect if I went fully commercial and dropped the ethical stance, and the fact I only ever link to best product regardless of finance it’d probably be worth £20 to £30 million, however that’s not what I’m about.”

Now you see, this sadly means I of course don’t have anything like that cash and never will. The site isn’t fully commercial and I don’t have anything even remotely resembling that much cash. Yet once it’s been in the paper….

I was out on Saturday night to a friend’s birthday and then on elsewhere. At both places friends of friends I didn’t know came up to me and said something like “saw the guardian today, looks like all the drinks are on you! Hmmpf!

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MoneySaving towers is very male today. There are only four of us here, and poor MSE Jenny is the only woman. Sadly this meant that having just bought her outfit for the Christmas party and being very proud that she’d done it for ten pounds (she isn’t working here for nothing) MSE Dan, MSE Brendan and I had to nod and pretend we were excited about the cool black top she bought from Peacocks (normally MSE’s Andrea and Archna would’ve gladly discussed it). We tried quite hard but it was tough.

However I was extremely proud that having found a shiny black hair-slide for £2 reduced to one pound, she’d seen a tiny glitch on it and asked to get it reduced by a further 10p. That’s my gal!

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The BBC has appointed Robert Peston of the Sunday Times to take Jeff Randell’s old job as Business Editor. The BBC also has a very talented economics editor in the form of Evan Davies. Yet where is the Personal Finance Editor? Or even the (grade lower) personal finance correspondent?

It doesn’t have one. BBC news continues to ignore the personal finance agenda. When stories do arrive it uses its business or economics specialists to cover the detail.

Think of the stories: Equitable Life, Pensions and Endowment Misselling, the pensions crisis, the rise of house prices, and the trillion pound UK debts. All handled by people outside their subject moving into personal finance.

And for those who think the discipline differences are narrow, well I know I would struggle to talk about the economy like an economist, or analyse finance results like a business journalist, so how come in this most important area for real people they just throw in ad-hoc non specialists?

Now before anyone thinks it, I’m not looking for a job. I don’t want to work in news, I prefer ‘programmes’. It’s not my thing, this site and my newspaper work massively over working in news – guest appearances, great, working there – never! And to make it crystal clear let me say if I were offered the job I wouldn’t take it (this isn’t a politican’s posturing).

There’s no shortage of good candidates such as the very experienced Paul Lewis MoneyBox presenter, Patrick Collinson PF Editor of the Guardian, Simon Gompertz off Working Lunch, Jeff Prestridge from the Mail on Sunday, David Prosser of the Indy or take someone like the talented Richard Dyson on the Mail on Sunday as a correspondent with a view to moving him up later (sadly only men sprang to mind, I’m sure they’re are some great female PF hacks who should be in the fray too, but as I’m writing at speed none popped into the grey cells).

However systematically the Beeb has ignored personal finance in its news bulletins. I fail to understand this. When I was a news journalist at the Beeb, the enormous research project called the programme strategy review revealed that what people wanted was ‘news that impacts the pound in people’s pockets’. So what did they do? Appoint a business editor with a remit to “understand and explain the agenda of the UK’s business”. Yet where is the editor to look after consumers and their interests?

This isn’t an anti-Beeb statement, it’s more a ‘please, please, please’ find yourself a good personal finance journalist and start to set the agenda.

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Bizarrely after watching Make Me Rich yesterday, I was straight over to South London to film Ready, Steady, Cook. It will be shown in March. Quite an experience, I was up against Jay Hunt, the lifestyle expert from BBC3 Shopaholics. We got to do a budget bag for £3.50.

Now let me tell you a secret (sssh). In the ‘celeb’ ones you don’t take the food yourself, but fill out a food questionnaire of likes and dislikes and they do it for you. With mine, though, they bought branded mushy peas - branded - I ask you MoneySavers….

However the chefs really have no clue about the ingredients before the show, and have to quickly think on their feet to decide the recipe. I was with the very funny Ross, and Jay was with Bryan. Sadly poor Ross was perplexed as my bag had peanuts in it and he’s allergic so we swapped it for half a cabbage. It was fascinating to watch him work out what to cook. I won’t tell you and spoil the show.

Then I stood there and assisted. Now I’m about as bad at cooking as I am good with money! Most of the time I felt more like I was in the way rather than helping, I even messed up opening the can of mushy peas! Though I did my ‘breadcrumbs’ well but forgot to put eggs in one of the things I was supposed to do. Yet don’t worry I learned the TV knack. Even if you’re standing like a sore thumb waiting to do what you’re told, if Ainsley comes over and the camera’s on, repeat what you’ve just done with an earnest look on your face!

The time clicks down so quickly it’s incredible. I was also staggered by the quality of the food. It was genuinely superb, and so cheap even though he did three courses. Really, really amazing stuff on such little, cheap ingredients!

There was another wee problem too (almost literally) having had a glass or two of champagne at the MMR party, then a glass of wine at the green room, I may have been a wee bit squiffy. As someone who never drinks midweek, I’m not exactly a big drinker, so hope I didn’t come across badly.

The programme ended (it’d be unfair to give the result away) and Jay and I scoffed the food in the green room, it was so good. We actually had a great chat, really good fun in there before going off home….

One final thing. You get to keep the apron, which I then got all the chefs to sign. I’ve signed it, as has Jay and now I’m going to flog it on eBay. Don’t worry though, all the proceeds are going to the site’s charities and it’ll be in next week’s tip

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So yesterday I watched the first Make Me Rich. Funnily enough I was nervous. Not the being on telly, that’s my job. Yet this is obviously a very important step for me. I watched it in the bar/restaurant which serves the office complex MoneySaving towers is in. Champagne was opened and about 30 people were there to watch on the big screen (not bad for a Thurs mid-afternoon).

The group was interesting. Some friends, some fellow journalists, some contacts. It was nerve wracking to watch. Afterwards it was very funny. Most of the production team of Radio 4 Moneybox were there, and they started asking questions and feeding back on the programme. At one stage it felt like doing a media studies seminar on the programme, with me and Cat, the Executive producer answering questions. Overall thankfully the feedback was very good, they liked it.

For me it was strange to watch the whole show. Actually it’s funny because the first episode is perhaps not so reflective of the series as a whole. In eight of the programmes I don’t do ‘pain-full’ as it’s not necessary. I also think both me and the production team get much better during the series and some of the later ones will be much more enjoyable - so please keep watching

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My sister and niece need a laptop, and I’ve volunteered to do my brotherly duty and get them one. So I go to Comet which has a great front page promotion of a £399 entry level one. When I order it, it says “your order can’t be fulfilled” and then blames me incorrectly entering details.

When I call the number, (now 30 minutes in) it turns out the machine is out of stock and has been for some time. So why, I query, is it on the front page of the site? Why did I go through the process? Why did I have to call? Why can’t they offer me another better laptop at the same price? Their answer, effectively, “computer says no”

Well MoneySavingExpert says get lost

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Just had some disappointing news. Rather annoyingly there’s been a problem with the counting of the sales of the Money Diet. Funnily enough exactly the same thing happened the first time and I thought we had a handle on it. None of the sales from Amazon have been counted in the first week due to a technical problem. The vast majority of the book’s sales are Amazon and Play - Play never counts in the lists, but Amazon should do. However they forgot to take the pre-order tag off.

This means my debut listing is much lower than expected, not close to the top 10. The figures will be added in next week, the problem being the competition gets much more fierce in the run up to Christmas, so I won’t come in as high in the charts as I’d expected. In a normal week the sales I’ve got would put me number 1 or 2 in the non-fiction bestsellers list. Because of when it counts I’m going to do well to get in at number 5. Rather disappointing and annoying!

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Update Note:

A&L contacted me after it read this blog. Its PR consultancy incorrectly sent me an early draft of the release. A&L itself had rewritten it to delete the reference to consolidation and this is the one I should have got. It’s apologised I got the wrong one and I’m pleased to see it wasn’t pushing consolidation after all!

Original blog:

I received a press release from A&L today titled “INDEBTED CONSUMERS FAIL TO RECOGNISE FINANCIAL BENEFITS OF DEBT CONSOLIDATION”. Frankly I was spitting teeth afterwards and immediately filed back the following email to the press office: “I find this press release morally reprehensible. Consolidation is NOT a good thing for consumers. Cutting the cost of debt is. To get the two confused plays into the hands of the evil secured debt sellers. A&L should know better!”

It’s this imprecise use of language that lands people into severe debt and one of our biggest banks should know better.

Consolidation for consolidation’s sake is ridiculous. If I had debts at 4%, 2% and 1% what’s the point of consolidating them into a loan at 33%? That’s not the point. The two prime considerations for those in debt crisis (regarding the debts themselves this is) should be i. to reduce the cost of the debts ii. to ensure the monthly repayments are manageable.

The A&L press release is actually talking about moving to a cheaper one off personal loan. For some this isn’t a bad strategy. For many, moving to cheaper credit card balance transfers is an even better option and even those wanting to move to a loan can find cheaper than A&L (see Cheapest Personal Loan Article).

The problem is, like many, A&L has confused cost reduction and consolidation. The problem with this is it plays into the hand of the hideous debt consolidators advertising secured debts on the TV or in the red tops. This of course means many people risk their homes to consolidate and get debts, which aren’t necessarily cheaper. What gets me about all this, is A&L isn’t stupid, it knows what it’s doing. What saddens me is read the papers this Wed and Sunday and many of the money pages may well just pick up on this story - press releases often make fodder for some lazy journalists (I’m not castigating some of my colleagues, but there are many junior hacks out there who rely on releases like this for stories).

If you have severe debts please ignore A&L and read my ‘Problem Debts: Where To Start‘ Article

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As you’ll see from today there’s a new logo at the top of the site. Now this isn’t a redesign, in some ways it’s a bit of a cheat. All we’ve done is swapped the images that were there - which enables a speedy cosmetic makeover. A proper redesign is planned for next year, but it’s a whopping job.

The reason for the quick touch up is because of Make Me Rich. Many new people (hopefully) will start to become MoneySavers, so it was important that people should be able to more clearly identify me on the site (lots of you have said the old pic doesn’t look like me). Also as the links from the ITV.com/money website will be going to the articles page not the home page, it’s important people clearly identify where they are.

I hope you like the changes. Funnily enough it looks as if we’ve given more space to the logos, actually it’s exactly the same size, it just looks bigger.

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Just finished a series of meetings this afternoon. Rather excited that after Make Me Rich ends, I’m going to be on a new ITV series that starts in January. I can’t tell you too much as I’m not sure how much of it is public, but it’s a magazine type programme and I’ll be doing a weekly slot for them.

It’s quite strange, someone said to me the other day “you’re becoming an overnight success”. I nearly spluttered out my cranberry juice. Six years, 80 hours a week to get here, working gradually up the system - from Simply Money to Open House with Gloria to This Morning to Tonight with Trevor and then to my own series. Yet people always associate you with where they found you first.

That of course ignores this site too, which without doubt is a. the best thing I ever did b. the thing I’m most proud of and c. the most powerful medium for helping people take on companies that I’ve been involved in.

It’s all very good at the moment, though rather intimidating to see what 2006 holds. The big problem is fatigue. I haven’t really stopped for about 6 months, working weekdays and weekends, and my energy levels are gradually starting to drop. I’ve got a ten day break from 21 December, (I’ll be flying west to the sun) which I hope will recharge my batteries.

When it’s good it’s good, but boy it doesn’t stop!

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