Martin’s Blog…

When writing last week’s email (http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1145980667,29052,) about the Great ‘Ways To Save Water’ Hunt, when saying I wasn’t planning to have a bath, I’d written “don’t worry I’m not a smelly munter, I’ll still shower.”

When checking the tip before sending, it suddenly occurred to me - what is a munter? My view is it’s an ugly person, but then it’s not in the dictionary, and the dictionary of slang defined it as a ‘very, very, very ugly woman’. So is munter a taboo word? It’s very difficult to work out. Of course I don’t want to offend anyone, it’s there to use nice fun language. In the end I played safe and switched it for minger, made famous by last year’s Big Brother - that at least can be cross-gender - though I still think munter sounded better.

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Last night I went to the Chuckle Club a great comedy venue. It’s based at my old Uni, the LSE, right in the centre of London’s West End, but is primarily a non-student audience. Its big selling point is it has all the normal top acts on, at roughly the same cost to get in, but the bar serves drinks at student prices - a huge rarity for the West End (it’s well worth a visit).

Now before I explain what was said about me, I need to give you some background, so stick with me here. Last night was a special night as Gary Delaney was one of the three main acts. He and I were at University together; in fact when I was General Secretary of the Students Union (equivalent to President elsewhere) he was the Entertainments sabbatical and was in fact responsible for bringing the Chuckle Club to the LSE. We were always mates, so much so that when I decided to try my hand at doing stand-up the next year, Gary wrote for me, as frankly he’s one of the naturally funniest people I’ve met.

At Uni he was always the funny one, yet I was much more comfortable with a microphone, hence why I did the comedy and he wrote. My comedy ‘career’ was great fun, but by no means my calling, though it did teach me a huge amount. Yet in the end real talent will out, and Gary put his nerves behind him and has ended up a superb comic, still a touch more polish needed before he hits a big time TV audience I expect, but with the quality of his gag writing I doubt it will be long.

He’s been a pro for five years, but as he lives in Birmingham this has been my first time seeing him (see his website www.garydelaney.com) and he was superb. For comedy aficionados, he’s a cross between Milton Jones and Tim Vine - lots of very clever one liners.

During his act, he admitted he used to write jokes for Basil Brush, and then informed us when he started that official policy was “Basil has no opinion one way or the other on the issue of fox hunting!” and “all of Basil’s jokes must end with Boom Boom!â€? At which point his response was “These two suicide bombers walked into a pub….”

Now feeling overly comfortable, when he first announced his work for Mr. Brush, I called out “Boom Boom”. This wasn’t too sensible. I’d already been named during Eugene Cheese, the compere’s, opening song (he runs the Club and thus I know him back from LSE days), and Gary quickly moved into a tale.

He first explained how he’d written a joke for me once that I didn’t think was funny, so I’d said to him “if you think it’s so good, why don’t you do it?” and that was the germ of his comedy career. Yet he then told how he’d been telling his mates about this and that “I wrote the joke for the guy who now does all the Money Saving TV programmes,” to which their reply was “what the black American guy?â€?

You can imagine the reaction of the six friends I was with to this (even the MSG laughed), and Gary ended it with “you see Martin, I always win!” And to be fair, he always did!

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Just spent the day at Thorpe Park as a sexy backdrop for the filming of a Tonight with Trevor McD I’m presenting on reclaiming unfair bank charges. Lots to tell, so I’ve split the blog into three bits – the rides, the terrible unfairness of the story of the family I interviewed, and m’lost luggage!

You spin me right round, baby right round!

It’s my first ‘theme park filming’ experience, and it kicked off with a bang. Straight onto the Nemesis rollercoaster to do a piece to camera with legs dangling (you’re hung underneath the ride). The pressure is on, as make a mistake and you need to wait to do it again. Now I never do my pieces to camera scripted, I do it freehand, but still I made a little fluff first time, but think I got it spot on (I hope) the next two.

It still needed four consecutive rides to get all the shots though, while the production crew smugly watched from the sidelines, barring brave Suzanne the researcher, who sat next to me so I didn’t look like a sad man riding alone! Interestingly after the first ride, the fear goes. By the fourth time, there’s not even a spot of adrenaline, just a little nausea.

Yet that was peanuts compared to the next one. After a few tame shots, it was onto the free-fall Detonator ride. Here you sit in a chair at the bottom of a huge tower, you’re then whisked upward at about 50-75m (at a guess), and sit on the top, at which point it free-falls back to earth.

This is a seriously high ride, so your natural instincts are to lean backwards and not look down. And everyone else was sensibly doing that. Sadly, as I was talking to the camera, which was positioned on the ground, I had to look at it leaning forward in the chair to do so. This really wasn’t a pleasant experience, as I suspect you’ll see when it’s shown (currently planned for 5 June). So much so, that after the third take, all done for different angles, when the tittering film crew, all of whom were safely anchored to the ground this time, asked me to go again I ‘politely’ declined!

Benefits and banks don’t add up

In the afternoon it was time to meet the case study Chrissie, and her lovely family; she’s a single mum with three kids living at home (and two older ones). I have to say the tale made me genuinely angry.

This is a single mum, who is a carer for her son, and on benefits. Two years ago, for no reason, the benefits office failed to pay in for a couple of weeks. And the same situation repeated itself recently. The bank thus charged her for going over her limit, and some of her Direct Debits failed to pay out. This of course, understandably, left her finances in turmoil, and once behind, she had no money to catch up, meaning more charges, and the charges snowballing. Now she’ has debts of £3,600 because of it, which of course she has no way to pay off.

So there I am the ‘Money Saving Expert’, yet frankly there was no way out, pure impotence; not only is there no real solution, but she also hasn’t made any past mistakes herself. This is not a frivolous woman – our conversation ran something like this: did you budget? Yes, carefully. Do you overspend? No, we never buy new; we sell the kids’ stuff at car boot sales to buy new stuff. Did you ask benefits office to help? Yes, but wouldn’t. Did you ask bank to cut back charges? Yes, but wouldn’t.

What other solution is there? Based on an admin error she now may have to declare bankruptcy. The one hope is she will get a big chunk of these charges back…. and we can only cross our fingers (see Reclaim Unfair Bank Charges article).

My bag, my bag, a lock-cutter for my bag!

Having started early, I wanted to leave the park at 6.30pm for the hour and a half drive to Newbury for a meeting, then early (6.30am ugh) filming for something else in the morning.

Not a chance. When arriving I’d left my laptop and bag in the internal staff security area. Yet it was a little too safe. The park shuts at 5, but we filmed until 6 and security had already left for the night, my stuff locked away and no spare key!

So while the crew departed, I sat waiting, eating more and more packs of crisps from the dispenser while the person who had the keys to the key cupboard, which had the keys to the engineering store room, where the bolt cutter was located, so the padlock which clamped the security gate down, could be found. Unfortunately, finding them wasn’t easy; it took an hour and a half before I rejoiced at hearing the snap of metal.

One lovely outcome of the day though was the kids had an amazing time at Thorpe Park. Obviously on Chrissie’s budget, theme parks and many treats are totally out of the question, so a day out with us, with everything paid for is a rare experience. Best of all, the “throw the ball and win a teddy bearâ€? type games where the price soon adds up at £1 a pop, were needed in filming with the kids too. You should have seen the littlest girl (aged 5’s) face when she won a giant cuddly toy - it was beautiful!

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PS. A big hello to the nice MoneySavers who came up to me while there and said Hi. And a special hello to the kind father and two daughters who asked me to sign their tickets as “we got them after reading about the two for one on the site anyway!�

Capital One has just sent me some credit card cheques, delightfully telling me I’m lucky enough to have been specially selected. Well I don’t feel special, I feel insulted, and I feel an industry that perpetuates this type of action is acting irresponsibly.

Much has been written about the evils of credit card cheques, not just from Capital One, but most Credit Card providers. Yet often these complaints just skim the surface - there are many more hideous terms hiding beneath.

The Usual Reason To Spit

Most normal bile for CC cheques arises because they’re an obvious incitement to over borrow. They make it easier to use the money for anything or just to withdraw cash. They look and feel like normal cheques, and have that ‘oh it’s not real money’ spending pattern on them.

The Real Reason To Spit

Take a closer look at CC cheques and you realise where the real problems stem from:

That’s why CC Cheques are devilish. If you do receive a credit card chequebook shred it, burn it, eat, it, bury it, just don’t use it. (To any children reading, of course I don’t actually mean eat it, it’s just to make a point!)

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Went to my first ever boxing night on Friday - the English Amateurs versus Russian Amateurs night Boxing in Bethnal Green. I’ve never been before and the MSG and I were invited by a friend to go with for ringside seats. I’ve always rather guiltily liked watching boxing on the TV, though like most people the focus has always been on the pro-stuff rather than the amateurs.

Amateur Boxing is a bit different. They’re wearing protective head-gear to start, and it’s far more about the scoring rather than whether people are knocked down. I believe the rules are, if two of the three judges press their button within a second of each other signifying a clean hit of suitable strength you get a point.

We were sitting near enough to the ring that the whole thing was very vivid (though the MSG and my friend Annika seemed more intent on catching up with each other than watching the sport) yet thankfully near enough not to be blood spattered on the one occasion a nose went kaput!

What’s very difficult to work out is how some of the boxers can weigh less than 8 stone and look bigger than me (I weigh 12). As the weight divisions increased, it was intimidating to work out I’d have been in the third heaviest division, which was peopled by seemingly massive blokes - I thought they said muscle weighed more than fat?

The only problem with seeing it live, is you can’t see the scoring. Which means for non-aficionados, it’s actually quite difficult to follow what’s going on. The boxing establishment would probably hate the comment, but it really would’ve helped the thrill of sporting spectacle to be able to see the scores and thus keep up with what was actually happening. My only other complaint was I was told off for eating my favourite salt and vinegar crisps during the fight…. felt like a naughty schoolboy!

Even so, it was a great night, so if you do fancy something very different, worth a visit.

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Finally I wholeheartedly agree with Kirstie and Phil. Nope this isn’t about their recent ‘buy to let’ programme, which I have to say seemed to far too strongly plug ‘going for it’ in a time where the risk factor behind such an investment is high. No, it’s much more about the location of MoneySaving Towers.

You see our office is now conveniently located along the corridor from Gu, the maker of luxury puddings. And just after lunch today, one of their team popped in with a lovely big, chocolate, orangey, almondy thing on a plate saying “we’re taste testing some of our range next door, we’ve finished with this one and thought it would be a shame for it to go to waste.”

Think of pigeons pouncing on rotting worms and you’ve got the scene. Now needless to say, I demurely hung back… ut hmmm, but somehow managed to grab the biggest slice…. and it was fantastic - well worth trying (don’t ask me what it was called). You see… location, location, location!

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This really is quite amazing, don’t worry it’s not about me showing off. I’ve just started reading a book called the Trachtenberg System of Speed Mathematics (Amazon Link*). I found it on my father’s bookshelf when I was sixteen, but never read it properly. I picked it up again, and it’s incredible - and while I sound like one of the newspaper adverts for ‘enhance your memory’ products, put some work into this and the results are great.

The first thing it teaches is how to multiply any number, no matter how long (say 30 digits) by any number from one to 12. Once you know what you’re doing it just takes a few seconds to do, so you can see the number written down in front of you and by following a simple process do the multiplication there and then, without a calculator.

Then it gets much better - how to do long multiplication in your head. I started on two digits by two digits and am now starting (sometimes incorrectly) to do three digit times three digit multiplications (e.g. 922 x 443) in my head. It takes some unlearning and re-learning maths to do it, yet it’s easy to pick up very quickly. In many ways it’s more of a test of memory than maths.

Now you may be thinking “what a sad nerd��? and indeed you’d probably be right. However, if you enjoy doing Sudoko, I suspect you’d enjoy this too - and it has practical usage too. Well worth it. Grab it from the library.

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* Using this link helps the site stay ad-free and free to use, as it’s an ‘affiliated link’ which invisibly takes you via a link that pays

You shouldn’t notice any difference, the link doesn’t impact the product at all and the editorial line (the things I write) is NEVER impacted by the revenue. If it isn’t possible to get an affiliate link for the best product, it is still recommended and still included. The following www.amazon.co.uk is an identical, unaffiliated link provided for the sake of transparency. Click on the following link for more details on this site’sethical stance.

I feel honoured. I’ve just received an e-mail from “Mrs.Cathrine Taylor,the second wife of Mr.Charles Taylor the former president of Liberia” and shockingly he’s “now under detention at Sierra Leone war crime tribunal.I was with him in the Jeep car at the Nigerian boarder with Cameroon when he was arrested and we were taken to Sierra Leone but I was released later based on the fact that I wasn’t directly involved in the case.Few days after my release,I travelled to London where am now staying as instructed by my husband but under strict survillance by the interpol which has made it impossible for me to move from London to any other place.”

You see rather sadly all “his monies are locked awayâ€?, there’s $10,500,000 there, and apparently if I pay just a few thousand pounds I will be able to get this cash released. How can I fail to help when it’s such a sad story, and of course they’ll give me a cut too!

I hope no-one out there isn’t aware this is a good old standard scam. Like most people I get scores of these every day. Yet what’s fun about this one is first of all they actually link to a news story to try and prove it (see it here) and even better the number to call back on is +44 870 XXXXXXX, in other words an 0870 number.

Laugh? I almost hurt myself. Just in case the cash scam doesn’t work they’ve an 0870 number to profit from (read my Saynoto0870 article) if you don’t know why that’s bad.

You’ve got to give them credit for trying! Actually on second thoughts, the worst thing you should do is give them any credit at all!

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Happy Birthday to the MSG! Her birthday’s on 10 May, the day after mine - in other words I’m a day older (ut hmm!). This ‘one day apart’ birthday is a rather strange phenomenon. As we’ve been going out less than a year, it’s the first time we’ve shared birthday time - and with both birthdays butting up against each other it becomes a bit like Christmas; we’re both buying prezzies, and receiving cards and good wishes at the same time. Rather strange!

In the end we settled on going on for dinner late on the evening of the 9th, so it overlapped onto the 10th, as a joint birthday do. Funnily enough I was more excited about her birthday than mine; well I’ve had 33 of them before, whereas it’s my first ‘MSG birthday!’

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I’ve been mulling this over. It’s a staggering thought, but much of the UK’s current pension crisis is caused by a simple lexicographical issue; it’s all down to a missing word!

No pension has ever performed badly!

Ever heard someone say “don’t put a penny in a pension, my pension’s performed abysmally?” Of course you have, but they’re wrong, no private pensions have performed badly. You may be about to call me a madman and tell me I’m wrong, but hold fire for a moment. Your private pension hasn’t performed badly even if you think it has.

The reason for my contrary statement is simple - a private pension isn’t a product, it’s a tax wrapper; you put you pre-tax income in a pension, then pick an investment and hope it grows to provide for retirement. It’s exactly the same as ISAs in that they’re not a product they’re a wrapper too, you simply choose to put cash or shares type investments inside them.

Blame the investment, not the pension

The type of investment most people chose to put their pension savings in performed badly… very badly…. hideously badly. This was often the fault of an overly optimistic and commission hungry financial services community. Yet this is a crucial point, it was the investment that was at fault not the pension.

The missing word is ‘endowment’

The type of investment most people put their money in was called a ‘with-profits investment’ and these beasts promised to smooth out the returns in good and bad years. Yet in reality they were non-transparent investments no one could understand, which companies could easily massage the figures of to make them look better (look at Equitable Life).

In the mortgage world these with-profits investments were called ‘endowments’ and when ‘mortgage endowments’ underperformed, people were furious, however they didn’t blame the ‘mortgage’, they rightly blamed the ‘endowment’. These days, say the word endowment and rightly it’s mud in most people’s books (read Endowment Mis-selling Compensation article).

Yet with pensions, they were simply called ‘pensions’ not ‘pension endowments’. It’s quite possible if they had been called ‘pension endowments’ it would’ve protected the reputation of pensions but further nailed the reputation of the underlying investment, the endowment. However that wasn’t the case. Word spread about pensions and now the common perception of a relatively financially illiterate society is ‘pensions are bad’.

Who’s to blame?

No one. There’s no blame. It just happened. And of course it’s not the only pension problem, many final salary company pensions have also been a major problem, but that’s another story.

The tragedy of this is no-one has communicated the problem, explained what a pension is. All the kafuffle over stakeholder pensions didn’t address the basic confusion that ‘a pension is a tax wrapper; it’s the investment that decides the risk’. It is perfectly possible to get the pensions tax break and yet put the money in what is effectively a safe savings account - yet people still think a pension automatically means taking a risk, and a bad one at that. I wish the Government had or would put some budget into promoting that message!

I’m a fan of pensions you see. They’re not the only way to save for retirement – a good way is a mix of property, ISA investments, pension investments and other investments. Yet the public perception on the back of this missing word means a whole generation may have to grow up and eat cold baked beans in retirement. Scaremongering? Possibly, but it’s unlikely the state will pay out any more than the minimum when we retire, and if we don’t do it ourselves because ‘pensions are bad’, then who else will pay for things?

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In a blog a few weeks ago (read it here) I said to remind me to write what Alison Hammond did to me on a plane a couple of years ago. Well, like elephants MoneySavers don’t forget and I’ve read chat forum posts and had emails about it, so here goes.

I was flying to Edinburgh (from memory), to do some filming, and saw Alison on the packed plane. Once in the air I went to speak to her, as we know each other from This Morning and always got on well.

There I am standing up by her aisle seat, talking to her, when the air hostess needed to walk past with the trolley. Politely I said, “I’ll go and stand in that gap up there”, but Alison loudly replied, “don’t be so silly”, then swung her arm round, scooped me up, and sat me on her knee!

Now those who watched Alison on Celebrity Fit Club will know she is a larger lady, but you may not realise she’s also tall, taller than me I think (I’m 5′11). So much to the great amusement of everyone else on the plane, I sat there, looking like a six year old, swinging my legs while the hostess walked past.

There you go - story told!

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I hope he forgives me, but yesterday in MoneySaving Towers, MSE Dan made one of the most bizarre mistakes I’ve ever seen. Now this is a very unlikely slip because our Dan is a very bright boy, however in conversation with MSE Neil, he by accident called him Dan! In other words he mistook Neil for himself.

How on earth do you do that? When I occasionally confuse MSE Archna and MSE Andrea (obviously I don’t say the MSE bit!) it’s one thing but to get someone confused for yourself?!

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PS., sorry Dan, whoever you are!

We all know banks are nasty and cunning baskets. Nowhere more than in the world of credit cards, which seems to be the test bed area for devious schemes to grab even more of the unsuspecting public’s money. And here’s yet another. We’ve seen it for a good year or so, but now it’s becoming commonplace, deserving of that hideous name ‘a trend’.

What is it?

They develop a credit card brand, advertise it, but then even though it’s the same card with the same name, the actual terms and conditions you get depend on where you apply. This means if people see an advert for a card and think ‘why aye, sounds a canny one to me’ but then don’t apply in exactly the way specified, you can forget the terms.

Take a look at a few examples.

• Halifax One. Currently apply for the Halifax One card in one of its branches and there’s a balance transfer fee of 2% of the amount transferred capped at £50. Take that leaflet home, and apply for the same Halifax One card on the internet, and suddenly the balance transfer fee is uncapped.
• Barclaycard. Apply for a Barclaycard in a Barclay’s branch and you get 10 month 0% on balance transfers no fee. Apply online and it’s 10 months with a fee.
• Barclaycard (again). As an existing Barclay’s customer, apply for a Barclaycard online at barclays.co.uk and you get 10 months 0% on balance transfers without being charged a fee. Yet do the same at barclaycard.co.uk and you’ll get the same card with a fee.

Transparency, summary boxes, what’s the point?

This makes a mockery of the whole ‘transparency’ movement that the credit card industry tries to pay lip service to. What’s the point of picking up a leaflet with a summary box only to find if you apply for EXACTLY the same card, you may get different terms?

The examples run on and on and on. Currently the top 0% deals on the market belong to a range of charity cards (see Best Balance Transfers article) such as the NSPCC, however this is ONLY if you apply via the right website, otherwise you’ll get different terms that don’t make them the top buy.

It’s already difficult enough for consumers to decipher the myriad of technical terms, and now there’s this trend… ridiculous.

The new golden rule

This sadly means I’ve to include a new ‘never, ever’ rule. I’ve already done it in articles. When I specify a product you’ll note these days it often includes a ‘make sure you only apply in the branch’ type note. However, if you see an advert or a leaflet for a product you think is right for you I’ve a new one.

“Never, ever, ever, ever assume that product will be the same if you apply in any other way!â€? Two websites may have different offers and neither is the same as phone, which differs from a branch application, and again still from the direct mail (and that’s forgetting targeted e-mails too!)

Confusion marketing? You can bet your bottom dollar on it (not your top dollar as that one has a fee!)

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