Martin's Blog

A dozen years ago, in June 2012, MSE joined the Moneysupermarket Group and I pledged £10m to go to charity. As that was a public pledge and I feel a duty of transparency, every year or so I bash out a blog report to explain where I'm up to, and who's got what money.

Financial abuse is the hidden financial cousin of domestic abuse – it's all about dangerous, unfair control using finances. It can be subtle or brutal. So be aware of it both for your own relationship, and for others – but this blog's about more than that too...

On the 9 January 2024, Jeremy Hunt the Chancellor of the Exchequer was a guest on ‘ITV The Martin Lewis Money Show’, it was a wide ranging consumer finance interview, you can watch it here. As part of it when I was pushing some key campaigning points, his response was to ask me to write to him. Below is the letter sent today (which I will also send to the shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves)…

Outrageously, most people will pay £300 per year just for the facility of having gas and electricity, even if you don't use any. This is due to the high energy standing (daily) charges. These are a moral hazard and should, at the minimum, be substantially reduced – something I am, again, campaigning with the regulator Ofgem to change. So I wanted to bash out this blog to run you through it.

If there was a big red CANCEL CHRISTMAS button, would you press it? While the festive season is usually portrayed as unerringly joyous, not everyone feels that way. It can put stress on you and on your pockets. So, forgive me, but to relieve that pressure, and possibly increase happiness, it is worth considering going cold turkey.

In 2016 I set up the Money & Mental Health Policy Institute charity, and I've chaired it and provided core funding ever since. Last week I was in a trustees' meeting, and got a summary of some of the year's activities from the acting chief exec Conor D'Arcy. It made such good reading, I wanted to share some of it to show exactly how many pies the team there have their fingers in (and how they improve the pies, which is probably where my analogy breaks down).

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

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…