
Is it time to ban Christmas presents?
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...

I’m obsessed with email on my phone
My inbox is my crucial self-managment tool. It’s my ‘things to do list’ as I send myself emails all the time to remind me to do stuff. On top of that I get about 200-300 emails a day, excluding my public inbox, which gets 1,000s. So as you can imagine keeping on top of it isn’t easy,...

Mrs MSE’s pregnant – or so a newspaper told us!
I woke up this morning to find out that my wife is apparently pregnant – or actually she’s not, but what a weird experience… started flicking through The Independent and found a profile had been written of me… http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/martin-lewis-money-man-1829892.html (30 Nov – the ‘who is expecting her first child’ line has now kindly been taken out after...

Champagne Beats Bank Charges: Biggest Ever Day of the Site Part III
I seem to be writing this all the time recently (see over 1m visits in a day and over 900k visits in a day), but the site’s beaten its record traffic for the third time. So to keep stats nuts happy here’s the latest stats and a shock ‘most popular page’ The Overall Stats: 1.13m visits We...

Explaining Bank Charges To Grandma
On my way back from GMTV this morning, I called my wonderful 87 year old Grandma, as I normally do when I’ve a spare minute in the day. Sadly she struggles a bit with some concepts these days – though her protective instincts are as strong as ever – I thought the conversation may make you smile....

Michael McIntyre’s a Closet MoneySaver
Well, he’s the second celebrity to come out of the closet (bought with a voucher one hopes) as being an MSE user in the last week. First there was X-factor’s Jamie Archer – and now according to the Daily Mail so is… Michael McIntyre (see the Mail’s Michael McIntyre profile). This comes as no surprise and clears...

Q. Does a website make money when someone visits it?
A. I’ve been asked this question a couple of times this weekend & many times in the past. Not specifically about MSE (for that see how this site’s financed guide) but far more generically about the internet. Being someone so immersed in web culture, I always find it slightly surprising that people think that way, so I...

Finding quiet in a madding crowd
I’m currently sitting in the midst of a giant shopping centre, laptop on knee writing my News of the World column (or I was until I interrupted it now to write this). The place is packed with shoppers, lunchers and browsers – babies are crying, multi-lingual conversation springs from every corner – yet bizarrely I find it...

Why is the UK’s web traffic dropping?
I was doing a check of Google Trends today, which I do every once in a while. It’s a great free tool as you can plot search terms or web traffic and compare different terms and sites (see my past Kate Nash v Amy Winehouse blog for how to use it). Yet when I looked at the...

Jamie Afro reclaimed £1,200 of bank charges!
Occasionally in the GMTV green room, when someone I want to meet is on air, I sit on the outside chair, so that when they come from the studio I ‘bump into them’. I was planning to do just this with Jamie Archer, one of this year’s X-factor contestants, and a major favourite of Mrs MSE and...
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Recent Blogs
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Martin Lewis: The one thing everyone aged over 66 needs to know
9 August 2022It is a national tragedy that getting on for a million pensioners, many of whom have been paying into the system for years, are missing out on a critical boost to their income. It's called pension credit, and this year it also means you get an extra £650 to help with energy bills. -
Martin Lewis: Don't shop at Zara before you go to Spain, Greece, France or Italy
11 July 2022Update 17 July 2017: We tend to think since Brexit that the pound’s weaker than it has been for decades. While somewhat true against the dollar, against the euro it’s only a tad worse now than when I first wrote this in 2014. The logic of this blog stands just as strongly now. On the Spanish-English website...