“I’ve not always been a model moneysaver, I frequently don’t listen to you, but… heartfelt thanks”
Some emails just makes you smile. We’re fortunate to get many thank yous, but the mood around MSE Towers after the email below was sent around was a real high. And as the MSE community is credited, I wanted to share it with you. Thanks to Mia for her kind permission to print it. I’ve added links...
Why? Because they can!
In journalism, we’re taught there are six key questions: "who, what, why, how, where and when?" My mailbag, whether via Twitter, Facebook or email, is swamped with all these questions, far more than I could ever hope to begin to answer. Among those, by far the most difficult to answer are the "why?" or "how can they...
“So glad you told me to try to reclaim PPI again, I got £10,400”
Mrs MSE and I went out for dinner (it was date night) in a local restaurant the other day. As one of the waiters bounded up to say hello, I remembered we’d been there a year before and he’d told me how he’d tried to reclaim PPI. The bank had said no, so he’d given up. At...
“Once I’ve got a student loan, can the government change the terms?”
Invariably after giving a talk on how student finance 2012 will work, a hand pops up and asks: "can a government change the terms on my loan after I’ve taken it out?". Well, the New Zealand government has done just that, and that may increase those worries. As head of the snappily titled Independent Taskforce on Student...
Parking ticket appeal upheld WITHOUT a fight
I’m slightly stunned. I’ve had unfair parking tickets before, I’ve fought them, I’ve won. But this time – well, it was all thankfully a bit easy really. So if you get an unfair ticket, let it be inspiration to not just pay up, but explain.. Note, this is a personal blog. For step-by-step help on unfair council...
Smoking peace pipes with the Money Advice Service
The Money Advice Service (MAS) is the official agency tasked with closing the advice and knowledge gaps people have about financial services. It also has a new role distributing public funds for debt advice to the various non-profit debt counselling agencies. In June I was asked to give evidence to a Treasury Select Committee investigation on it....
Nerdvana: The important maths of supermarket self-service checkout queue speed.
My heart sank a touch on Tuesday at the potentially dire state of public maths. While queuing at the supermarket, there were two neighbouring banks of self-service tills each with six people queuing. The issue? One had four tills, the other two. This blog is dedicated to the inspiration that is Dr Sheldon Cooper It seems many...
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Recent Blogs
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Martin Lewis VIDEO: Should you pay off your Plan 1 student loan?
7 January 2020
If you started university between 1998 and 2012, or since then in Scotland and Northern Ireland, you'll have a Plan 1 student loan. While much is written about whether those with savings should overpay the current English Plan 2 student loans, there's little out there about Plan 1. I wanted to change that, so here's a video explaining how to decide... -
How much the Govt expects you to give your children for university
16 December 2019
Update Note 25 May 2017: The ready reckoners below have been updated with the new 2017/2018 living loan amounts. Also since first writing this blog, and seeing the strength of feeling it attracted, I have written an open letter to the Uni Minister asking him to start telling people about this. Yet sadly received his no we won’t...
