Martin Lewis
Ones Not To Miss

Cash ISAs: Earn 6.5% instant access tax free

ISA
Every UK adult can save up to £3,600 a year in a Cash ISA; which to cut out the guff, is simply a tax-free savings account.

Savings Accounts: Earn 6.5% instant access plus rate guarantee, or 7% for a year.

Savings
This is a full best buy guide to maximizing your interest; including a unique calculator which will tell you how much, how long, or how big your savings should be.

Best Bank Accounts: Get £100 for switching, or 8% interest & a 0% overdraft.

Moving to the best paying bank account can add £100s a year to your pocket; right now banks are fighting for current account business, so compare the best to yours, then ditch, switch and save.

Bank Charges Reclaiming News: Result in the High Court test case!

There’s a result in the high court test case; it's decided bank charges ARE covered by Unfair Contractual Terms rules. This is a major victory for bank charges reclaiming and a huge step. Find out all the latest whether you’ve started reclaiming, or plan to, this is a guide to what you should do.

Premium Bond Probability Calculator: A unique tool to predict what you’re likely to win

This premium bond calculator, delves into the Premium Bond probability to show you the real odds of winning in your specific situation. Developed with help from post-doctoral probability experts, the results are shocking.
Two thirds of the top tips close within a week of being available!
The 'Martin's Money Tips' weekly e-mail ensures you don't miss out.

It's Free, Ad-Free and Spam Free!

Are your savings safe?: Full guide to protect your cash

As 2008 is the year of financial contagion, it's crucial to ensure your cash is safe. This is a full savings safety check-up, including how the Financial Services Compensation Scheme really works, the different protection for UK and overseas banks, plus the safest place for savings.

Up Arrow Top

Bank Accounts

Best Bank Accounts: Get £100 for switching, or 8% interest & a 0% overdraft.

Bestbank
Moving to the best paying bank account can add £100s a year to your pocket; right now banks are fighting for current account business, so compare the best to yours, then ditch, switch and save.

Your Credit Rating: How it works and how to improve it

Credit Rating
Actually credit ratings don't exist. Each lender scores differently. Find out how banks use them to assess whether to lend you cash, and also how to check all your credit files totally free.

The Budget Planner: Free tool and guide to managing your money

This detailed guide includes the unique, free fully automated budget planner tool; which assesses your finances to see if you spend more or less than you earn and then helps you work to stick within budget

Bank Charges: Reclaim them, they’re unlawful, includes free template letters

Bank charges for exceeding overdraft limits and bouncing payments are commonly believed to be unlawful. The major victory in the bank charges test case, means its important to get your claim in, to join the up to a million people who’ve reclaimed £1000s.

Debt Problems: Where to start, what to do, where to get help

This step-by-step checklist for anyone worried about problem debts includes how to get cheaper credit, challenge loan agreements, budget. Plus full details of non-profit counselling services if you're in crisis.

ID Fraud Protection Loophole: Get protection and help for free

Two credit card companies offer free ID fraud help services. Best of all, these apply even when the fraud is on other cards or products. So simply grab the cards, and you're protected even if you never use them!

Direct Debit D-Day: Stop wasting your cash

Whether it’s a Direct Debit, standing order or regular payment, it’s possible there’s £100s of millions of regular payments dripping from our bank accounts for things never used. Find out which to ditch, which to savour and how to stay safe.

Spending Overseas: The cheapest way to pay

Trip abroad or spend on foreign websites and the correct plastic beats everything else. However use the wrong one like Halifax, Lloyds or NatWest Debit cards and you'll pay large!

Refer a Friend: Bag free cash from current accounts

Team up with a friend and there's serious free cash available by playing current account providers. Better still you'll also end up with one of the best current accounts on the market.

IVAs are they worth it?: Free guide to download and print

Contrary to the TV adverts’ hype, Individual Voluntary Arrangements won’t magically wipe out your debts; they’re are a cut down form of bankruptcy, only suitable for specific people. This detailed free PDF, will explain how they really work, whether they’re right for you, and the alternatives.

Top Student Bank Accounts 2007-08: Slash borrowing costs

There's a huge difference between special student accounts - grab the best early and you could save over £1000.

Top Graduate Accounts 2007-8: Cut the cost of banking

If you graduated this year or in the last three years, there's a cash prize awaiting you. Switching to the top graduate account could boost your finances by £100s.

ID Fraud, 25m people's details lost: Are you at risk? Protect yourself for free

Twenty five million people’s details have gone missing; and ID fraud fear is at fever pitch. Yet is there really anything to be scared of? And if there is, how can you protect yourself the cheapest way?

Student Loans: Should you pay them off?

It's one of the cheapest forms of borrowing, so is it worth paying it off early? What's the impact on your credit score of keeping it? How does it effect your mortgage? Full answers here.

Teen Cash Class Guide: Free Guide to turn yourself or your kids into Money Saving Experts.

This free 40-page PDF guide is based on Martin Lewis’ lesson plans for his ITV1 programme ‘Tonight: Teen cash class.’ It’s designed to teach children and adults about the three key Money Saving lessons, and can also be used by teachers as a basis for class room discussions.

Student MoneySaving: Funding, Borrowing and Living as a student

No one should be put off studying because of student debts. Do it right and it's possible to get an education without money worries! This comprehensive guide to student life the MoneySaving way, suitable for current and future students, shows you how.

Sending Money Overseas: Moving money large or small

Sending cash to friends abroad, or moving large sums yourself, can cost a fortune. Yet there are ways to radically reduce the cost.

Up Arrow Top

Saving, Pensions & Investments

Are your savings safe?: Full guide to protect your cash

safe
As 2008 is the year of financial contagion, it's crucial to ensure your cash is safe. This is a full savings safety check-up, including how the Financial Services Compensation Scheme really works, the different protection for UK and overseas banks, plus the safest place for savings.

Savings Accounts: Earn 6.5% instant access plus rate guarantee, or 7% for a year.

Savings
This is a full best buy guide to maximizing your interest; including a unique calculator which will tell you how much, how long, or how big your savings should be.

Cash ISAs: Earn 6.5% instant access tax free

Every UK adult can save up to £3,600 a year in a Cash ISA; which to cut out the guff, is simply a tax-free savings account.

Premium Bonds: Are they worth it?

They're the UK's singularly most popular savings vehicle, but serious crunching of the numbers shows that for most, they simply don't stack up as a place to put real money. A must read for any premium bondholders.

Discount Brokers: Get more investment for less money

Discount brokers allow you to buy investments more cheaply than going direct to the investment company. This full guide to cheap investing shows how they work, and uses the unique Buying Funds calculator to find which gives the biggest investment for your cash.

Pay off debts with your savings!: The Golden MoneySaving Rule

If you've both debts and savings, your bank will laugh at you as it rakes in your cash! It's likely you shouldn't be saving, not even for an emergency fund, but instead use spare cash to pay debts off, possibly even your mortgage!

Transfer your Cash ISAs: Boost the interest to 6.25% on past & present years

Providers push the view that once a cash ISA is open it's done. Wrong. Transfer and you could get 6.25% interest on everything in it.

Free £20 or more of Tesco Deals: Savings Account Loophole

A quick briefing on how to bag up to £80 worth of Tesco Deals if you've got savings. Just put more than £1,000 in its savings account by the end of the May and you're quids in.

Reclaim Forgotten Cash: Get back old bank accounts, pensions & investments

It’s never been easier to get your or deceased relatives' money from old bank accounts, pensions, life assurance and investments. Just click on some websites, fill in your details, and it should come to you.

Christmas Spending Boost: Earn a year's interest in a day!

Supermarket savings schemes want you to save all year and then spend in their store. For that, they'll boost your savings by up to 5%. Yet a loophole means you only need have cash with them for a day to get this!

Full ISA Guide: How to save and not pay tax

Individual Savings Accounts allow you to save cash or shares without tax. A full guide to how they work.

Pension MoneySaving: Buy a different way to boost returns

A full guide to getting a MoneySaving pension, including a trick to beat the system that can add £1000s to your pension, just by buying it a different way!

Best Child Savings: Use your child for a sneaky tax free allowance

Grab the freebies, grab the best interest rate and utilise all the allowance your children have for tax free savings. Not pretty, but it works!

Starting Saving: Where to put your money

Should you bung your cash in ISAs, savings accounts or somewhere else? How to prioritise your savings.

Interest Rates Guide: Everything you ever wanted to know!

Whether it's saving or borrowing, companies manipulate rates to confuse and mislead. Yet this five minute read covering the very basics, through compound interest, onto APRs, AERs and flat rates, gives you a powerful consumer weapon.

Should I pay off my mortgage?: Saving v mortgage overpayments

Using spare cash to overpay a mortgage can save you a fortune. Yet questions abound over whether it’s better to dunk it in a cash-ISA, how mortgage interest calculations work, repayment penalties, emergency funds and more. This guide takes you through it and includes a specially designed calculator.

Regular Savings Accounts: Earn up to 7.5%

It's possible to earn 7.5% on your savings, even though the best buy tables say around 6% is the maximum!

Child Trust Funds: How to make the most of your voucher

Just got your voucher? A full guide to how it works, who's paying the most, and whether you should add to the account.

Shares: The cheapest way to buy, sell and hold

The stockmarket's risky enough without dealing charges biting off any gains. Anyone with shares (or looking to buy) can now do it as cheap as blue chips.

Cheapest Sipp: Build yourself a low cost DIY pension

It's possible to unleash yourself from pension providers and totally manage your own pension investments. Charges vary hugely, but pick the right provider and they won't eat away your gain.

Financial Advice: When to get it, how to find a good one, and how to pay

Want financial advice for such things as protection products, annuities and financial planning? The aim is get truly independent advice, cheaply and from someone who really knows.

Repensioning: Increase your pensions return without any risk

Existing private pension holders can increase the size of their pension fund by up to 4%, by snatching back the commission you're unknowingly paying. A massive boost at no extra risk.

Toisas: Maximise the tax free growth

Whether your Tessa is maturing or already matured, boost its power.
Martins Weekly Money Tips
Two thirds of top tips close within a week!
The weekly e-mail ensures you don't miss out.

Get The Email »
View FAQ's          
It's Free, Ad-Free & Spam Free
  • £5 European flights: Bag a cheap summer break
  • Get 7% on savings: Is it time to fix?
  • 2 for 1 Burger King vouchers: More cheap food deals
  • Free Anti-Virus software: Protect your PC for nowt
This website is based on journalistic research. It does not constitute financial advice. Any information should be considered in regard to specific circumstances. All tips are followed at your own risk and should be followed up with your own research . See Full Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy (last updated 19.12.06). © Martin Lewis and Martin S Lewis Ltd. 'Martin Lewis' and 'Money Saving Expert' are registered trademarks belonging to Martin Lewis.