The MSE Towers Christmas Quiz – the ANSWERS
On Tuesday I published the questions I put to the MSE Towers team at our annual Christmas party quiz. If you’ve not read it, then try your luck there before reading the answers below. Round 1: What year did it happen in the 90s There is one answer for each year 1990-1999, no year is duplicated. The...
Is it time to change energy pricing to ‘meter rent’ and ‘kettles boiled’?
I’m aware this is a bit of an off-the-wall idea, but I want to play with it and test the water. It’s all about the confusion over energy bills, which is one of the things that makes the market less competitive and leaves many – especially older people – overpaying. I wonder if even just tweaking the...
The MSE Towers Christmas Quiz – can you beat them?
Each year at the MSE Christmas party the team are forced to love to play my Christmas quiz. So this year, ably aided by MSE’s Yasin and Catherine, I donned my sequined jacket (seriously), slicked back my hair (not seriously, I’ve not got enough) and turned Quizmaster. Now it’s your turn to have a go (no googling),...
Sadly no Morrisons £9 Baileys – but please don’t berate me!
Last year at the end of the second week of December, Morrisons ran a litre of Baileys for £9 promotion. And a cracking deal it was too. This year and last year we’ve published the Christmas Deals Predictor on the site and I do a similar ‘Festive Forecaster’ on my TV show too (watch it here). This...
Some people just don’t recognise sarcasm – my bizarre conversation with Nationwide’s ad agency
I think this email conversation with Golley Slater, the ad agency for Nationwide, pretty much explains itself. Email from it to me: (via our press contacts, which are only for press, even though they are not press) “Good afternoon, I am working on a Direct Mail pack for home insurance for Nationwide and we have come across...
The Lords mustn’t miss the chance to treat payday ads like gambling or alcohol
Payday lenders want to financially groom the next generation of borrowers. They’ve plastered their adverts on children’s TV channels and family TV shows, used puppets and kid-friendly slogans, and even had people in Disney-esque costumes handing out lollipops in the streets. These ads pressurise parents with pester power This is a danger for our entire society. It pressurises parents...
A staggering 10,000,000 now on the Martin’s Money Tips weekly email list – thank you
In 2002 I began to send tips to my friends, as and when I spotted a good deal, and jokingly used the subject line ‘Martin’s Money Tips’. It went to about 40 people and it was only done when I discovered some info I couldn’t use in my then Sunday Express column, or on Open House with...
Why David Cameron writing for MoneySavingExpert is not ‘bonkers’, ‘biased’ or ‘showing your true colours’
According to some on Twitter today I’ve been "duped". That’s because David Cameron has written a guest piece for the site called ‘We will give pensioners security and dignity’. He asked if he could do it and we said, "why not?" After all, part of what MoneySavingExpert.com is about is providing a forum for people to engage in the big discussions and debates on consumer finance policy.
It seems an ISA is nicer than a NISA – so we’re going to call them ISAs
Last March in the Budget, the Chancellor announced ISAs were to become new ISAs, or NISAs. The main changes were a bigger £15,000 limit, the ability for all of it to be cash savings (so more than doubling the tax-free savings cash limit in effect) and the ability to convert old shares ISAs into cash ISAs. The...
Shame on you Virgin – using a hokey-cokey marketing trick to spam you
Richard Branson’s Virgin brand is supposed to pride itself on treating its customers right. Whether it lives up to it in practice is open to question, but I was shocked to see what I suspect is a deliberate attempt by the Virgin Atlantic credit card to befuddle consumers into signing up to its marketing, effectively a spammer’s...
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