It’s not often you marry another woman in a meeting with the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, but these things do happen… Alana was in a meeting with me to discuss changes to the savings safety rules due on 31 December, mainly the max. compensation rising to £85,000, as they want me to help with communicating the changes...

For years my standard line has been "it’s not just about responsible lending, we need to learn to be responsible borrowers too" Yet how do you regulate for those who can’t be responsible for themselves? I’ve written many times before about mental health and debts, and indeed our new mental health and debt guide is coming very...

For years we’ve educated our youth into debt when they go to Uni, but never about debt.  Now, like or loath it, it looks like we’re about to have a radical change in how student loans and funding works. That must be coupled with education and the universities themselves need to step up to the plate… The other...

It’s freezing, the heating’s on full blast, yet the bitter irony is the energy companies price rises are happening THIS WEEK. While I know many feel spit inducing anger, hold on, are you really venting it at the right people?… The timing really couldn’t have been any worse, a month ago when Scottish & Southern Energy announced...

Sharing a cab yesterday with my Uncle ‘tax’ Tony, we got onto the rather sexy topic of ‘tax codes’. While the phrase itself is normally enough to bore drying paint, these codes are the knife behind the mammoth errors in tax affecting millions (see the Tax Code Checker for whether you can reclaim), and for me one...

In this week’s Viz magazine, there’s a new column called ‘Look After the Purple Pennies with Money Saving Sexpert Ingledew Botterill’, and it only gets ruder after that… I got it after a tip off from a fellow personal finance journalist who sent me this email: “Hi Martin, 1) Go to your nearest newsagent. 2) Buy issue...

One day, when I’m old and grey, I’ll read back this blog and think – was my life always like that? On paper it seems much more surreal than the reality – most of it took place in the Daybreak green room…   Ban Christmas Presents! I was on the show to discuss my ban Christmas presents campaign, which...

The fight to be King of the virtual high street gets tougher each year, with e-tailers bashing up against longstanding bricks and clicks players. So as a list junky, I must admit a frisson of excitement when the official top 50 contained in the email below popped into my inbox…. The following is a press release from...

Not an insult, just a usage fact. Recently we got new software which allows us to see how many people are on the site at different times in the day, and like a Bactrian there’s a very distinct double hump… I thought some of you stats nerds may be interested to see how it works (I’m obsessed...

Popped over to No.1 Parliament Street yesterday with MSE Guy for a meeting with Council Tax Minister Bob Neill MP, and was delighted to get a warm welcome from him and his advisors, who seemed genuinely interested in the idea. This all started on Radio 2 back in September. He was on explaining why the Govt. didn’t...