Martin’s Blog…

I was in a swanky London bar last night for a friend’s birthday. As we weren’t staying long, the order was simple…. two diet Cokes. Yet when the bill came it was for £5.63, now let’s ignore the extortionate cost for a second (difficult as that is!) but how can a bill for two drinks come to an odd number?

I asked the waiter, who told me it was due to the 12.5% service charge! For that to happen it must have a quite bizarre rounding up policy. To check I then made him put the cost of one diet Coke through the till. Yes you’ve guessed it (well you have if you’re nerdy enough to still be reading this) a single Diet Coke cost £2.81. In other words had I ordered two separately I’d have paid only £5.62 - thus there’s a penny premium for ordering two together. Ridiculous!!!!!! I asked for my penny back, and the manager (who by now was looking over the waiter’s shoulder) agreed. Then I gave it as a tip.

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Ian Barber, the Head of Communications for Barclaycard came to MoneySaving towers the other day, to have lunch. This is one of the ways as a journalist you get to keep in touch and discuss whether anything of interest is likely to come out. However at such an irresistible occasion, the moment he walked through the door, we pressed the button and the darker bit of Star War’s ‘Empire’ tune played out.

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I get fed up with small companies desperate to try and flog their wares on the site. The latest was sent through to my agent, which is the wrong place to start with.

“Please find attached a partnership pack, detailing what a partnership would entail and an example of the variations of the appearance of contextual adverts. This will cost you no money, we will be paying you to render our advertisers on your site (the amount paid to you is negotiable at point of agreement). The advertisers will be relevant to the theme of your page and can be completed customized to suit your site. You will also have total control over who appears on your site. This is a great opportunity for you to generate revenue from your website, www.moneysavingexpert.com, and could be suitable for any other sites you may have.

Our home page is mirago.co.uk and an example of a site that we are working with is… please have a look around these and you should find all the relevant information you need.

Please contact me etc.

Kindest Regards etc�

“Hi,

I’ve just read the email to my agent, I’m not sure which bit of the following sentence about contacting my agent, i.e. “Please do not use them as general contacts. These contacts are not to be used to send press releases or information about products (see the above)” or which bit of the phrase which appears on every page of the site “Free to use and Free of ads” you didn’t quite understand.

I thought the following link may be helpful… click this

All the best,

Martin�

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I had my haircut today, at one of the Mr. Toppers in Central London on my way to a meeting. It cost £6. After it’d finished a man who recognised me said “Why do you get your haircut here… you’re on the telly?”

It made me realise my job may seem an interesting contradiction. On the one hand I’m on the TV so I should be in designer clothes, swish car and top barbers. On the other I’m a Money Saving Expert, so I should be getting the best value of each. Actually I don’t think there is such a contradiction. I buy best value, or try to, as all MoneySavers do.

For me as I have my hair cut roughly every two weeks (the roughly applies to how often, not to my hair cuts!), I think it’s good value to have a regular cheap trim rather than a six weekly expensive cut (no jokes about how I’m still getting poor value per individual hair please!)

I drive my Smart car, as it’s great to park and economical, though I must admit to being tempted at times to get a flashier model (my girlfriend has a much more glam car than me, which is a treat to go in), but the Smart in my eyes is still pretty cool.

In a way there’s no inherent paradox here. MoneySaving, as I always say, is about cutting the bills, not cutting back. So cheap barbers here I stay.

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I’ve been conspicuously avoiding tube travel at the moment as my publisher has put cross- platform ads for the book at about 80 stations! (More Details). Yet of course I couldn’t resist going for a peek at it. So on Sunday night (the quiet time), just after 9pm we went. I’d wrapped a scarf around my chin (purely for the cold obviously) and as it was the weekend, I wasn’t actually wearing a stripy shirt (shock… horror).

Luckily the westbound train just left as we descended , meaning it was a very empty platform. So, sneaking on, we walked down to the far side and hey presto there I was. What a strange experience! The poster was uncannily life-sized. It hadn’t been designed that way, I actually thought it would be bigger than life. So I stood near, quickly had my picture taken and then snuck back upstairs, without even a soul seeing!!!!

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I’m knackered. It’s nearly 5 o’clock and I’m sitting in the green room at the Richard Hammond show waiting to go on. It’s been a tiring day. I was picked up at 7 to do the Wright Stuff on Five. Great fun to do.

The panel was Anne Diamond, Dr. Mark and I was the guest panellist. It’s quite funny to be talking ‘non-money’ and reminded me a lot of my student politics days.

The scary bit was that part four was about ‘kinky sex’ and the three of us were panicked Matthew was going to ask ‘what kinky sex do you like?’ After all you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

Plus my new girlfriend and grandma were watching. Thankfully I managed to keep my head down (no jokes please) and got through it. It seems they quite liked me as they’ve now asked me if I’ll do a week on the panel, which sounds fun, so it’ll be sometime in Feb.

Then there was lunchtime news. It was actually recorded last week, but I only just got back to the office in time to turn it on and cringe (I always do whenever I see myself). And now here to do two slots (the same as I usually do but split into two). Cross your fingers for me it goes well. Off to the studio now…

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Just finished filming a series of five packages for the ITV lunchtime news. Now the most important thing to start with is that while they will look like five days’ worth, actually all were filmed in one day. So no comments (again) in the chat forum about “Martin’s only got one shirt” please!

It was a fun day. The reporter for the piece was Keir Simmons. Rather interestingly we know each other from Uni days. Keir was President of London’s Goldsmiths University Students Union when I was the President (though the official title is General Secretary) of the London School of Economics. In those days we were either scheming or slagging each other off over the political scene, yet this time it was two old (well early thirties) men doing some efficient work together.

The funniest part of the day was at Sainsburys. Keir wanted to film the beep beep of the scanning machine, so arranged for the camera to be positioned at the checkout. This meant the silver shopper who was there couldn’t pack her bags. At the end, Keir in his pin-striped reporters’ suit, admirably, immediately went to pack her bags and did a swift job of it. The lady asked “do you work here?” “No,” he says “I work for ITN”. “Lovely I didn’t know they did packing now”.

Pic snapped on my phone below

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When you have my job PR people constantly badger you to cover a story which plugs their company. Often I give them very short shrift as there’s only ever one best product in each category and if it ain’t best it’s pants in my view. However the other day I got my best pitch ever, from Jo at Octopus PR.

She emailed me to suggest talking about foreign exchange would be great in my new slot on the ITV1 Richard Hammond show and coincidentally did I know she looks after ‘Currencies Direct’ and proceeded to tell me how much money they’d save people. Within my reply, having already pointed out that CD were mentioned in my ‘Sending Money Overseas‘ article already (CD is just one of the cheap providers and you should always try all of them) I said anyway “To be honest the subject of large foreign exchange transactions is about as likely to come up on the show as I am to marry Jennifer Lopez.”

Five minutes later I received the following email from jennifer_lopez1@hotmail.co.uk titled “Will you marry me?”

“While I realise that this isn’t the most conventional of proposals, the sentiment is heartfelt and sincere, it would be my honour to be your bride. I know you may be worried about the fact that I am currently married to Mark Anthony but I set the divorce proceedings in motion the moment I heard you were interested.

PS any chance Currencies Direct will get a mention in your slot on Richard
Hammond’s new show?”

Now of course in reality I won’t be swayed, but top marks for the attempt (and five minutes to set up a hotmail account and send it - impressive!)

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I’m sitting here in the BBC’s Broadcasting House. As is the rigmarole for anyone with a mainstream book, you spend a day in what’s called GNS being plugged through to scores of different local/regional radio stations doing interviews about the book, from one to the next.

Having done this a couple of times before I always know to expect to meet interesting people. And who’s the first to walk in….? Alvin Hall, plugging his new book. Now Alvin and I of course know each other having worked together before, but it is of course a little bit bizarre as in a way we’re plugging competitor books.

However, it’s always fun to get together as he is the most amazing raconteur. It’s interesting what you talk about. One idea we did have that’d be interesting is why not do a programme together with me doing ‘pain-free savings’ about product changing and system beating and Alvin doing pain-full about managing your relationships and your personal impulses, in a way the best of both worlds… we may well meet for a lunch to come up with something and then see if someone wants to do it.

Also around today are Claire Sweeny and her publicist Jackie Gill for her new workout DVD Perfect Fit (looking great), Linda Gail Lewis (Jerry Lee Lewis’s sister) with her daughter and a few other people who were carrying books with them but I didn’t recognise.

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It was sales shopping weekend for me this weekend. I’ve been waiting to buy stuff for my house and was fortunate enough to manage to persuade my girlfriend to come with me, for the sake of style (she has it, I don’t).

Now this is a new relationship, so I am of course still on best, trying to impress, behaviour. Rather scarily she has almost finished reading the Money Diet and thus her MoneySaving skills are already being honed.

So now the test…. we’re in John Lewis, not my favourite shop normally, but good sale prices and not bad for home furnishings. The new light now chosen, already heavily discounted, I asked if the sales assistant would throw in some spare bulbs. He said no, at which point she’d nipped off to grab the halogen bulbs she needed for her own home.

Hastily using my own “chutzpah” ruling on how to haggle, I stepped up to the sales person (who thankfully didn’t know what my job is) and said “look, I really need you to throw in the bulbs. I’m going to look a fool in front of this beautiful woman I’ve brought with me, can you help at all?”

Once in the queue, now together with all bulbs, he walked up to us took both my spares and hers, and said “OK, I said I’ll throw them in, let me take those too”. And promptly took both sets so they were unpaid for.

Now let me tell you chaps, it worked a treat. I had an impressed lady discussing how “I never knew you could do that!” and she promptly asked for a discount in the next shop we were in and blagged 10%.

Who says MoneySaving isn’t sexy?

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You’ll read this week that rather shortsighted commentators are giving plaudits to the Government and regulators for allowing data sharing amongst the big lenders. The laudable aim behind this is that if the lenders can truly see the extent of their customers’ lending they won’t lend to the over-indebted. Sounds good?

What a ridiculous farce! Only in the UK when we have the most competitive credit situation possible, could we decide to lose that by sheer laziness. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out what’s going to happen. We have put control of debt in charge of the companies who make money out of it.

For years credit card tarts, system players and others have reaped the reward of competition. Now the banks have access to data that can score them out. The potential worst case scenario is anyone who correctly borrows is refused credit because it won’t be profitable…. and we’ve given them this power. If you think this is me scare mongering, I’ve heard the whoops of joy from back office credit crunchers at various lenders at the enormous new customer filtering power this gives them.

The problem stems from the evidence that was given. The wonderful debt counselling agencies were asked “how do we stop people borrowing into debt crisis?” Their answer understandably was “don’t allow them to borrow”. Yet the question “what impact will this have on the whole market?” was never asked. So to protect the bottom 10% of the market, we’re risking cutting the credit for the top 90%. This means more expensive borrowing, and guess what that means? …. yes more people in debt crisis!

The knee jerk stupidity shocks me. We are a nation educated into debt with student loans, but never educated about debt. And now when people are finally starting to learn, we hand over the reins to the industry. Glory be GB!

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There’s a new BBC programme starting this week on how to pay off your mortgage in two years. Now, don’t get me wrong, it sounds absolutely wonderful being able to pay off your mortgage in two years. In fact, it wasn’t the first I had heard of it. The production team came to talk to me about the programme quite some time ago and to see if I’d be interested in taking part. Now, I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t say no. What I did say, however, is that the entire programme concept, which was thought up by a team of non-money people in a development meeting, was extremely worrying for me. What I actually thought, was that it was potentially dangerous, as the idea was to force people to committing into doing whatever it took to pay the mortgage off resulting in the potential people’s finances being pushed to a place where they no longer work for them.

Paying off your mortgage in two years is a great concept. But from what was being discussed with me at the time, the idea that people should take in lodgers, take on second or third jobs, do anything that they possibly could to be able to pay off their mortgage in two years, worried me greatly. I told them that I really didn’t like the idea. And I don’t. If it’s the same format I don’t think the BBC should responsibly be encouraging people to do it. Good sustainable financial management comes from being a savvy consumer and getting the best possible deals on everything. That’s the only sensible way to deal with your finances and that’s what I try and teach people about. Budget, plan, prepare and don’t pay more than you need to for anything, but do live your life in a way you’re comfortable with and that you can deal with. If you try to be too austere, if you try to push your finances to a point that’s not sustainable, you won’t succeed, you’ll end up falling off the wagon and hurting yourself. The idea that a mortgage should be got rid of at any cost isn’t right. It is good, cheap, sustainable borrowing so why pariah people who’ve got a mortgage.

I was very forthcoming for a good 20 minutes about how potentially dangerous I thought this programme could be. Luckily soon after ITV offered me Make Me Rich based on my own methods so all is good. Well, now it’s going to be on the TV and they’re using an independent financial advisor as an expert. Enough said there. They also have a presenter who is a motivational speaker to lead the programme. I’m not going to make any further comment on it. All I can say is that I hope they’ve listened to and taken on board what I’ve said. It will be very interesting to watch and see!

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