MoneySavingExpert.com® is dedicated to saving you money on anything & everything by finding the best deals and beating the system. It's based on detailed journalistic research, cutting edge tools and has one of the UK's largest web communities.
Created, and still 100% owned, by Martin Lewis in Feb 03 for just £100, its ethical stance and Consumer Revenge approach have made it the UK's official no. 1 money site with nearly 10 million unique users a month.
In other words, as the average person in the UK can give themselves the equivalent of a 25% payrise, by being an active, savvy consumer and shifting to the very best deals; this site's here to show you how. To start see the Money Makeover guide.
In this guide
Related Information:
How the Site is Financed, The MSE Charity, Site Stats, Martin Lewis' Biography
Honours: The site's honours include Radio 2's Most Useful Website of the Year, a Parliamentary Motion commending the site and the B&B; Personal Finance Awards New Media winner.
How the site works
The site never charges to save people money, nor does it take any advertising - companies cannot pay to appear on the site (see the How the Site is Financed guide for more info). Any top deals, best buys, tips or suggestions on the main site are purely down to journalistic research from Martin and the Team.
The underlying philosophy is that we live in an adversarial consumer society...
"A company's job is to make money. A consumer's job is maximise their cash. Companies spend billions on advertising, marketing & teaching their staff to sell; yet we don't get buyers' training"
We want to redress the balance.
There are four key avenues to this...
The Weekly MoneySaving E-mail.
This isn't a site with an e-mail, it's an e-mail with a website to back it up! The most important route is to get the free Martin's Money Tips weekly e-newsletter. Over two-thirds of the best deals date within a week; the aim of the newsletter is to make sure you hear before it's too late. Get the weekly e-mail.
MoneySaving Best Buy Guides & Articles.
The main site has a huge range of articles, from Childcare Vouchers to Cheapest Contact Lenses; Balance Transfers to Boots Bargain Hunting. Rather than saying ‘shop around’, the articles are prescriptive, and include unique super-detailed product research; for a start point go to the Money Makeover guide.
Each guide takes many days of detailed research; and many are then updated on a daily basis. As well as directly writing a good chunk of the guides, Martin is also directly involved in all product analysis and top picks.
MoneySaving Tools.
MoneySavingExpert.com is happy to be a cuckoo; if another website has built a great tool, we'll send you there so that you get the best of the web. After all, why be precious? If something's good, it's good.
Plus where tools don't exist or aren't good enough, we build them here including the FlightChecker, Premium Bonds Calculator, CallCheckers, Demotivator and the Budget Planner.
The MoneySaving Forums.
Taking companies on isn't the job of any one individual. This site has a huge community of MoneySavers; at any one moment thousands of people are in the Forum talking about ways to save. In fact there are roughly 30 paperback books' worth of MoneySaving info written there daily.
Thus it'd be impossible for anyone to read everything there, so it's split into many different subjects, each with their own mini-community, including Debt-Free Wannabe (mutual support for those in debt), Grabbit While You Can (top bargain spotting), MoneySaving Old Style (thrifty ways from older days), The Benefits Boards (making sure you're getting your entitlement), Credit Cards (from debt cost cutting to profiting with plastic) and to relax, the MoneySavers' Arms.
Watch Martin's Money Rant Video
Terms and Conditions of Use
It's important to let you know information on this site does not constitute financial advice. All information is based on journalistic research and analysis rather than tailored advice aimed for individuals. Decisions should be taken only after considering the effects of all specific circumstances. Please read the Full Legal Terms and Conditions. To protect the site both Martin Lewis® and Money Saving Expert® are registered trademarks owned by Martin Lewis.
The history and the growth of the site
The easiest way is to let Martin tell the tale...
I'm a specialised consumer finance journalist and had been working as the 'Money Saving Expert' since June 2000. I was already lucky enough to have a national newspaper column and regular slots on different TV and radio programmes. During the course of my research, 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'.
After a couple of months, I was at a party and people I'd never met before were thanking me for the e-mails. It turned out my friends were forwarding it to their friends, so to make it easier, I set up an e-mail list built around a basic homepage so anyone could get the info.
The e-mail soon had 1,000 recipients, and was rapidly growing, so I decided the site had potential to help me promote my journalism work, and I paid a web designer in Uzbekistan £100 to design a more professional version. This was launched on 20 Feb 03, which, for me, is the site's real birthday. It luckily coincided with more high profile broadcast work, which helped build my reputation and thus bring people to the site. And vice versa, the site's growth also helped bolster my reputation, bringing more TV work.
Frankly the growth of the site after that astounds me. Now, only eight years later, (as at March 11) there are 16 million visits a month to the site from 8 million people in the UK and people have added well over 5,000,000 email addresses to get the weekly e-mail.
Writing and running the site now takes most of my week, and I'm more than ably assisted these days by a loyal and dedicated team. I'm staggered by how it all happened, but very grateful, and hope the site will go from strength to strength, continuing to be a true force to be reckoned with by companies, and a place consumers can call home!
The MoneySavingExpert Team
For a long time the site was a one-man band, then in May 2004 Brendan joined as full time web-manager looking after the technical side of the site. And the huge growth of the site has allowed a good few more to join (read 'How The Site Is Financed').
| Editorial Team | Technical/Office Team |
|---|---|
| Alana. Senior Researcher (money) (biog) | Adam. Senior Web Developer |
| Andrea. Forum Editorial Liaison (See biog) | Brendan. Head of Operations |
| Archna. Planning Editor (See biog) | Carol Team Assistant |
| Dan. Web Editor (See biog) | Darren. Lead Designer |
| Daniel L. Senior Designer (See biog) | David. Junior Developer |
| Deborah. Researcher (See biog) | Ian. Web Developer |
| D'lena. HTML Coder | Jason IT Technician |
| Guy. News Editor (See biog) | Judy. Co-ordinator /Martins E.A |
| Helen. Editorial Assistant (See biog) | Kate. Office Administrator |
| Jenny. Senior Writer (See biog) | Katherine. Legal Counsel |
| Lee. Editorial Assistant (See biog) | Mark. Assistant Designer |
| Penelope. Editorial Assistant (See biog) | Michael. Link Executive |
| Rose. Writer (See biog) | Neil. Lead Web Developer |
| Sam. Editorial Consultant | Richard. Head of Marketing/Web Analysis |
| Samantha. Editorial Admin Assistant | Shrey. Assistant Developer |
| Wendy. Senior Researcher (money) (biog) |
Behind the scenes
We're based in what we like to call MoneySaving Towers, in an office Shepherds Bush, West London. Having the team has enabled the site and best buys to be much more up to date. In the old days I did all the data compiling, now I lead a group effort for that and the weekly e-mail.
Originally I only updated when I wrote a new article, yet now most of the big credit card, loan, bank account, savings, phones and insurance articles are updated daily and many others monthly. So this site has the accuracy of a super-independent price comparison service, but with the ability to give more guidance and direction as it's in an editorial style
Yet while there's a team and huge traffic, this is still a personal site, following a cohesive MoneySaving logic, and hopefully one you can trust. My aim is to keep standards, MoneySaving logic and high-end, accurate research consistent even with a bigger team.
The MSE Charity Fund
This site's dedicated to empowering consumers and putting money in their pocket and the MoneySavingExpert.com Charity Fund does it even more directly. With nearly half a million pounds donated so far, it's MoneySavingExpert.com's way of giving back to users.
Two thirds of the money goes to support The MSE Charity which provides grants to individuals and groups to provide education and information about consumer and debt issues; and the rest to five general charities nominated by site users.
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