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Gap 30% offMoneySavingExpert.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 as well as cutting edge tools and has one of the UK's largest web communities.
Created, and still 100% owned, by Martin Lewis in Feb 2003 for just £100, its ethical stance and Consumer Revenge approach have made it the UK's official no. 1 money site with over 13 million unique users a month.
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...
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The weekly MoneySaving email.
This isn't a site with an email, it's an email 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, and the aim of the newsletter is to make sure you hear before it's too late. Get the weekly email.
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MoneySaving best buy guides and 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.
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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.
It'd be impossible for anyone to read everything there, so it's split into many different subjects, each with their own mini-community. They include 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'd been working as the Money Saving Expert on TV as well as writing a national newspaper column since 2000. 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 emails. It turned out my friends were forwarding it to their friends. To make it easier, I set up an email list built around a basic homepage so anyone could get the info.
The email grew quickly and soon hit 1,000 recipients, 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 22 Feb 03 - which I count as the moment this site was born.
By fortune, that coincided with a step up in the profile of my broadcasting and the two became symbiotic, building my reputation and thus bringing people to the site.
After that the growth was nothing short of exponential. Now, only nine years later (Feb 2012) that same Martin's Money Tips is sent to over 7,000,000 email addresses. And there are 23 million visits a month to the site, from 13 million different people in the UK.
These days, running the site is my main job, though I'm now more than ably assisted these days by a loyal and dedicated team - who suffer my extreme MoneySaving pedantry to make sure everything we do is as good as possible.
Looking back, though, I'm staggered by how it all happened and how many people we've helped. I'm delighted the site's morphed from its original 'cutting bills without cutting back' remit into also campaigning for financial justice. Overall, though, I'm 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. The huge growth of the site has allowed a good few more to join since (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 |
| Anthony. Insurance Analyst | Carol. Team Assistant |
| Archna. Planning Editor (See biog) | Daniel L. Senior Designer (See biog) |
| Becca. Tech Researcher | Darren. Lead Designer |
| Dan. Web Editor (See biog) | David. Assistant Developer |
| Darryl. Sub-editor | D'lena. HTML Coder |
| Deborah B. Editorial Assistant | Ian. Web Developer |
| Deborah H. Senior Researcher (See biog) | Jason. IT Technician |
| Guy. News Editor (See biog) | Joseph. Assistant Developer |
| Helen. Editorial Assistant (See biog) | Judy. Co-ordinator /Martin's EA |
| Jenny. Senior Writer (See biog) | Kate. Office Administrator |
| Paloma. Researcher | Katherine. Legal Counsel |
| Penelope. Editorial Assistant (See biog) | Mark. Assistant Designer |
| Rose. Writer (See biog) | Michael. Link Executive |
| Sally. Editorial Assistant (See biog) | Neil. Lead Web Developer |
| Samantha. Editorial Admin Assistant | Richard. Head of Marketing/Web Analysis |
| Wendy. Campaigns Co-ordinator (biog) | Shrey. Assistant Developer |
Behind the scenes
We're based in what we like to call MoneySaving Towers, in Shepherd's 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. The rest goes to five general charities nominated by site users.
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