Martin Lewis "Moneysavingexpert" or stating the bleeding obvious?

I watched a bit of Martin Lewis 'The Money Show' last night.
Martin Lewis is a self-proclaimed "moneysavingexpert" and sold his website of the same name to MoneySupermarket.com for a massive £87 million last year. He is described in TV Times as a "financial guru".
Martin Lewis so called money saving advice can best be described as stating the bleeding obvious!

He has made a career out of it and is now very wealthy.
His financial gems include advice like "pay your credit card off each month so you don’t incur any interest."People would if they could - I have never paid any credit card interest or overdraft fees or interest in 35 years!

"Put cash in an ISA so you don't pay tax on the interest!"
Great advice, but can there really be anyone in the UK that doesnt know this? He was suggesting people put in £5640 before 5th April and then another £5760 straight after giving a total of 11,400 earning a maximim 2.8% (best rate Santander) interest £319.20 a year.

These are people who dont pay off their credit cards and dont know about ISAS! Does Mr MoneyExpert really think they have a spare £11,400 lying in an account doing nothing?

And if all this still isn’t getting through, there are word pop-ups like in Batman saying "tax-free" and the like. And I thought Safestyle’s "read the red writing" was bad!

Yet despite this, I was amazed at how STUPID some of the people on the programme actually are.
Among the examples were a rugby player that had a £66 a month direct debit for a Gym but hadn’t used it for six months. His coach, quite a bit older who could barely kick a rugby ball also amazingly had a gym membership that he was paying out for each month and never used. The coach also paid for Homeserve at £100 a month (he didn’t even know what this was for!) Apparently Mr “MoneyExpert” tells us that this guy could be “saving” over £2000 a year if he stopped the monthly payments for things he doesn’t actually need!

Mr MoneyExpert also said the record for unused gym membership payments was three years, wasting a total of £3,600. I think the guy had even moved!

Can people really be so thick that they do not know what every payment out of their bank each month is for? No wonder companies love direct debit if people are this stupid.

I only saw 10mins yesterday and won't be watching ol sticky out ears' childish rubbish again!

Re: Martin Lewis "Moneysavingexpert" or stating the bleeding obvious?

Oh dear - "sticky out ears' childish rubbish" hey - nerr dee dee nerr dee
All I can say is that this chap must be doing somethng right if he had a multi-million pound website to sell. A bit of your green eyed monster surfacing, Elbee, I think.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of folks who don't have much money acumen (this applies to those who have a bit of money and those who don't hae much) - some might not have £11,000+ to save as well and a bit of advice never goes amis, however basic. Also don't forget he is doing a TV programme and needs to appeal to the wider audience and most of the people who watch this type of programme are not going to be financial whizz kids- but not necesssarily idiots and stupiid either.

Re: Martin Lewis "Moneysavingexpert" or stating the bleeding obvious?

For that sort of money, I would state the bleedin' obvious, as well.

Re: Martin Lewis "Moneysavingexpert" or stating the bleeding obvious?

I think we forget when he started he may have been stating the obvious but he did educate many people. Certainly we found his advise very helpful at one time.

Many people are much more savvy about things now but a few years ago not so much IMO.

Re: Martin Lewis "Moneysavingexpert" or stating the bleeding obvious?

I helped an elderly lady recently widowed to fill out a form, and while there she mentioned about sending off a direct debit she had signed, I asked her what it was for and she said she didn't know.
I got the phone number of the company and she found it was for home insurance she already had with someone else too. The company said she wasn't allowed double insurance and refunded her some money.

Re: Martin Lewis "Moneysavingexpert" or stating the bleeding obvious?

Quite right, and further more if you don't like a TV programme don't watch it. I realised many years ago that Martin Lewis aims his advice at people who might be too busy earning a crust, or elderly and slightly confused, or even youngish and not too financially savvy.

I'd like to think I'm not in any of those groups so I don't watch him unless I'm channel hopping and he pops up in which case I'll listen and nod my head in agreement, I don't think it's necessary to belittle his physical appearance.

Re: Martin Lewis "Moneysavingexpert" or stating the bleeding obvious?

OK Martin Lewis is doing a great service for the moronic knuckle-dragging majority.
We should be grateful to him for telling people to cancel direct debits for things they no long need or use as they havent got the ounce of intelligence to realise this for themselves!

Arise Sir Martin! Educator of Idiots!

Re: Martin Lewis "Moneysavingexpert" or stating the bleeding obvious?

Thank you as one of those knuckle dragging idiots you seem to think will be the only people helped by his programmes etc, although I have always thought of myself in less derogatory terms.

Re: Martin Lewis "Moneysavingexpert" or stating the bleeding obvious?

In my opinion, Martin Lewis, (like many other "well to do's") was in the right place at the right time, a decade or so ago. He jumped on the bandwagon whilst the balloon of the engineered BOOM was still inflating, and folks were pushing a lot (of mostly borrowed) cash about. Like all savvy folk, I guess he knew was on borrowed time, as such advice can be only tendered so many times, and sold out at the peak of his companies worth. It's been done before, and I daresay it will be done again, good luck to him, as for the IQ of his potential information recipients, derogatory generalization would have more impact, verbally delivered to the group concerned, in a locked room.

Re: Martin Lewis "Moneysavingexpert" or stating the bleeding obvious?

I've found his website useful for some quick comparisons eg. the best savings accounts, but I agree that he does state the obvious quite a lot.

My tip is : Check that you don't have any holes in your pockets or you may lose money.