2008 annus horribilis.
While doing a little preparatory work for upcoming e-mails, I stumbled across the note below. It was my intro “hiya” note from the top of the tip of 28 Dec 07… “2008 is likely to be the worst financial year in a long time. Sorry to be so gloomy in betwixt the festivities, but with the credit...
Rate-jacking rules USA style
Also see the guide: How to fight unfair rate-jacking The UK credit-card summit called by Peter Mandelson a few weeks ago had some rather paltry results. Now, as I’ll explain in a moment, the US has launched a similar new set of rules and perhaps we can learn something from them. Our own summit produced very weak...
I lost 1 stone in 6 weeks on the “do I really look like that?!” plan.
Hoorah. I’ve just hit my target of losing a stone, not a Money Diet but a real one. It all started when I saw myself on the beach in a friend’s wedding video, and my belly didn’t resemble my own self image. So I immediately said to the MSF “I’m on a diet”. She asked “when?” and...
I wear David Beckham aftershave…
OK I feel better now I’ve come clean. It’s been playing on my mind for a while; there’s something about the scent you wear that says a lot, and this is my dirty secret.
Have pre-Christmas sales finally started?
Today we heard Tesco is reducing 1,000 lines by up to 50%. House of Fraser doing something similar, and of course there’s the Woolworths closing down sale. Is this finally the beginning of pre-Christmas sales? You may be surprised by that question; after all, the one day sales and shopping vouchers deals notes on the site have...
Making Google’s Top Ten. Above Hannah Montana & below Cheryl Cole…
The following Telegraph guide to top search terms on Google has just been pinged to me by a friend. I was quite surprised when I read it that both the website and I make different Google top ten search terms.
Giving autographs on five pound notes…
Rather bizarrely I’ve noticed a trend of people asking me to sign five pound notes. It happened again recently. The MSF and I had gone to the food hall in the Westfield shopping centre to have a ‘sort it yourself salad’ (I’m on a mini-diet… more on that another time) and were playing Scrabble (I won 436-322 this time, which is good as the MSF’s been doing too well in recent games).
£300 US Biz Class Return on British Airways
I’ve just booked BA business class return flights to the USA for the MSF and I, for a total of £600; the cash price is £4,500. Sadly, this isn’t a deal anyone can grab hold of, as it was with BA Miles and it’s made me re-evaluate the British Airways American Express credit card as an even...
RIP It Pays To Watch.
The team and I found out yesterday that the planned series four of It Pays To Watch on Five isn’t going to happen. It was quite likely to be the last series anyway, as I’d already discussed that the additional workload it added was too much, but that’s been overtaken by commercial pressures from new management at...
Scrabble – an easy way to win.
During one of our regular scrabble games (see past ‘I scored 596 at Scrabble: why does it depress me?’ and ‘Rude words in my new Scrabble dictionary’ scrabble blogs) I used the term “DELINKED” as an eight letter word scoring me around 90 points. The MSF challenged this saying she’d never heard of it. I explained it...
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Recent Blogs
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Is it time to ban Christmas presents?
14 September 2020
Update September 2017: It’s eight years since I first braved this subject, expecting a snowstorm of protest. Instead, year after year more join in, like Julia who recently tweeted me, “@MartinSLewis, finally took your advice and told my family I can’t afford Christmas presents. What a weight off my mind. Thank you.” One year even the Archbishop of... -
Martin Lewis: I confess, I did a 'decoy effect' experiment on my Twitter and Facebook followers… and it may be why they're buying more Jaffa Cakes
7 September 2020
Behavioural economics is a powerful science. Some retailers are undoubtedly using it to make us pay more to get less. One element is the 'decoy effect' – where a higher-priced item is sold, to make items next to it look like bargains. So I wanted to do a little experiment to test it -
Martin Lewis: Payment holidays extended – but should you take one? Mortgages, credit cards, loans, payday loans, car finance and more
11 August 2020
Within the last week, we've seen the extension of coronavirus credit card, personal loan and overdraft help to 31 October 2020, with mortgage payment holidays already extended. The regulator's other help schemes are also likely to be extended too, including car finance and payday loans, yet should you do it?
