If you’re planning to shop this Black Friday week or beyond, then I’ve a simple message for you, given on my show…

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...

The joy of good salt 'n' vinegar is you bite them, and they bite back – the flavour needs to be strong, sharp, and leave your tongue feeling like sandpaper. So it's time to focus MSE's data-crunching expertise on to the ultimate investigative challenge... finding the UK's best salt 'n' vinegar crisps.

A stopcock is your mains water tap (the off switch). Everyone should know where theirs is, especially at this time of year when pipes can burst due to frost. If you don’t know where yours is, your house could be flooded with water everywhere, while you have no idea how to stop it.

The 2023 academic year is about to start, and it'll see the biggest shake-up to student finance in England for a decade. The changes are both subtle and massive. On the surface they look like a tweak, in practice they will increase the eventual cost of going to university by over 50% for many typical graduates. I recognise that isn't what you want to read, and it's tough for me to write it too…

Between 2002 and 2011, every UK child was given £100s in a tax-free savings Child Trust Fund (CTF) by the state, which parents could then add more on top. The money was set to be accessible when the child turned 18 – giving everyone some cash to start their adult life. Now many with CTFs have hit that age, but for 80,000 children in England and Wales with special educational needs or disabilities, their cash can't be accessed without a nightmare, costly, often unaffordable process for their parents.
 

Harry Potter's got nowt on the pharmaceutical industry. It's full of real wizards - both those who make drugs that help, and the marketers who have a raft of tricks to persuade us there's hidden magic in their brands. Drug companies spend millions promoting 'only-use-the-name-you-know' messages... but it's often marketing baloney, balderdash and any other 'b' words you can think of.

My well-documented fixation with the 'quantified self' has not yet abated, though according to my tracker, I didn't quite hit last year's high. In 2022 I did 8,989,908 steps – a little under 300,000 fewer than 2021. That, put another way, is 8,230km in the year, an average of 22.5km (14 miles) a day.