Martin Lewis biography

Beyond TV, he hosts the twice weekly The Martin Lewis Podcast. In 2016, he founded the Money & Mental Health Policy Institute charity, which he still chairs and funds. In 2026, it was awarded the rare super-complainant status by the Treasury and Competition and Markets Authority (read more on Martin's wider charity fund).

Martin has spearheaded major financial justice campaigns, including reclaiming bank charges and PPI (helping consumers get £10bn+ back on those two alone). Plus, he's successfully lobbied on causes including getting financial education on to the national curriculum (providing the free Your Money Matters textbooks for state schools), reducing energy bills, bringing in stronger laws on scam ads and countering aggressive Council Tax debt collection.

Born in Manchester in 1972, he grew up in Cheshire's Delamere Forest, though today he lives in London with his wife, technology broadcaster Lara Lewington (aka Mrs MSE), and his daughter Sapphire (aka Mini MSE).

The credibility (show-offy) bit: things he's been called in some profile pieces…

That's the summary… now the long read

If you're the Wikipedia type and want the exhaustive (ie, exhausting) "Who is Martin Lewis?" list of stats and facts, read on. And do remember: if there's a conflict between this page and the crowd-sourced Martin Lewis Wiki entry, it's correct here, not there; that's one of the reasons this is so detailed.

Founder & Chair, MoneySavingExpert.com

Martin set up this site in his living room in 2003 for a total capital outlay of £80. With a focus on how to cut bills without cutting back, it soon saw explosive growth. It very quickly became the UK's biggest consumer site, a title it has held for over two decades, with over 9.5m monthly users (see the history of MoneySavingExpert.com).

Its success was powered by the 'Martin's Money Tips weekly email' (now called the MSE weekly email). Over 14 million people have signed up to be sent that email and it's received by over nine million active addresses each week.

In 2012, MSE joined what's now the MONY Group, with Martin continuing in his role as Editor-in-Chief. At the end of 2015, the period contracted in the sale was over and Martin could have left (or been asked to leave). Yet neither side wanted that.

So in 2016 he moved from Editor-in-Chief to MSE's Executive Chair, overseeing the site, its journalism, content quality, ethics, strategy and creativity. It's a role he continues to relish today – still writing lots, overseeing the editorial line and directing MSE.

The Martin Lewis Money Show & journalism

Martin is proudly a journalist by trade. His flagship broadcast output is the prime-time ITV current affairs programme The Martin Lewis Money Show which started in 2012. Earlier series were recorded, first with themes before morphing into roadshows across the country, always intercut with up-to-date filming the day before transmission, to keep the info current.

Although there had been one-off live specials since 2017, in 2020 after a one-off emergency pandemic The Martin Lewis Money Show Live special, it then ran weekly for a total of 15 shows. The format proved so successful the show permanently went live.

The 15th series started in January 2026 and it almost always tops the broadcast 'most watched current affairs programmes' charts with a typical 2m to 2.5m viewers and a 17% to 20% share of available audience.

Viral clip, courtesy of ITV, from The Martin Lewis Money Show Christmas Special 2018 (16m views & 310,000 shares on Facebook alone)

For over 20 years Martin has appeared as the resident expert on ITV daytime shows Good Morning Britain, This Morning and Lorraine. He cut it down to just This Morning in 2021 due to other commitments. In March 2023 he started working as a regular guest presenter of Good Morning Britain.

Martin is on air every Thursday at midday on BBC Radio 5 Live's Ask Martin (the show's been running for well over a decade now) and since 2022 a chunk of that content is used as a base for one of the two weekly episodes of The Martin Lewis Podcast, which regularly hits the Apple top 100 UK podcast charts.

Other programmes he has presented over the years include ITV's Martin Lewis's Extreme Savers and Martin Lewis: How to win at boardgames, Channel 5's The Price of Fame interview series, and his early TV shows Channel 5's Martin Lewis: It Pays To Watch (2008) and his first series, the daytime show Make Me Rich? (2006) on ITV.

He has had columns in many of the major newspapers, from The Mirror to the Financial Times, and a syndicated column across more than 50 regional newspapers. Due to time commitments though, he no longer writes for any newspaper.

Picture credit: The Martin Lewis Money Show, ITV

Charity Founder

Martin has set up two charities, and provides time and resources to a number of others. He said in his life lessons lecture:

"I've been very fortunate to have more financial success than I could have ever dreamed of in my career – it feels almost accidental. So I accept that as with anyone's success, an element of that is due to luck... therefore it feels important to acknowledge that what comes with that is a responsibility to give back. That doesn't just mean writing a cheque, but by fully engaging in projects too, with the same energy you give the day job."

His three major standalone charity projects are:

• The MSE Charity (founded 2008) which gives grants to small charities involved in consumer education and empowerment.

• The Money & Mental Health Policy Institute charity (founded 2016), which he still funds and is Chair of trustees. It is now a sizeable charity with over 20 full-time employees. In 2026 it was awarded the rare super-complainant status by the Competition and Markets Authority and the Treasury.

• The Coronavirus Poverty Fund (founded 2020), set up as an emergency response to the pandemic.

Martin's donations to the charities above and others are through the charity fund he set up in 2012. Full info, facts and figures are in his What happened to my pledge to give £10 million to charity (2026 update) (spoiler alert – it's now over £25 million).

Campaigns

In the early days of MSE, the site's motto was 'a company's job is to screw you for cash, our job is to screw them back'. That gradually morphed, as Martin dedicated more of his time to campaigning, until it became the current 'cutting your costs, fighting your corner'.

Much of the work, backed up by the MSE campaigns team or his Money & Mental Health Policy Institute charity, is "soft influence": meeting with ministers and shadow ministers, giving evidence to committees and regulators, plus more, all trying to push the consumer perspective. Here's just a selection of some of the main campaigns he's been involved in:

• Reclaim Campaigns. He is often credited as the "big gob in chief" behind campaigns to reclaim bank charges (over six million template letters downloaded and £1 billion back), PPI (over £10 billion back via his and this site's work), and Council Tax (with many tens of thousands rebanded).
  

• Financial Education. Back in 2014 Martin was at the centre of a successful campaign to get financial education on the secondary school national curriculum (England); a recent further push means from 2028 it will be in the core curriculum, so all state schools, including academies, must teach it.
  
  As part of that he funded the UK's first curriculum-mapped financial education textbook via the Young Money charity, and 340,000 copies have been distributed to every English state school (100 copies each). It's also available as a free PDF download (51MB), and now there are Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish versions too.
  

• Scam Ads. Martin launched a campaigning lawsuit against Facebook to stop it publishing 1,000s of fake scam ads which target vulnerable people. To settle the case, Facebook agreed to donate £3 million to set up the new Citizens Advice Scams Action project and to add a 'scam ads' reporting button to Facebook UK (the first of its kind in the world). See his interview about the lawsuit.
  
  He was then at the forefront of the campaign to successfully push the Government to reverse its decision to exclude scam ads from the Online Safety Bill. However, implementation of Ofcom's new powers for scam ads is still frustratingly not scheduled to happen until 2027. See the joint letter from MSE & Which?, PM you've done almost nothing to tackle scam ads!, urging for faster change.
  

• Council Tax Debt. Within 18 months of starting a campaign against aggressive, destructive Council Tax debt collection, in April 2026 the Government announced the first reforms in 33 years, coming in 2027, to give people breathing space to repay.
  

• The Pandemic. Martin became one of the most visible intermediaries between the Government and the public on pandemic financial-support schemes – urgently explaining, in plain English, how furlough, self-employment support and other schemes worked, while pressing ministers and officials to fix gaps as they emerged.
  
  He helped secure changes and clarifications to furlough rules, including for some workers who had left jobs for new roles which then fell through, though he continued to warn that many people remained excluded from support.
  

• Cost of Living. In May 2022, he was credited by many as being one of the main driving forces that pushed the Government to intervene and launch around £20 billion in help.
  
  Then in summer 2022, when the Conservative election campaign meant there was a 'zombie government', he pushed for intervention to stop energy bills tripling that winter, leading to the introduction of the Energy Price Guarantee (EPG; though the exact method wasn't his favoured route). By 2023 when the EPG was due to rise 20%, he succeeded in getting the Chancellor to reverse this, even getting a Budget name-check.
  
  Similar campaigns since have included ensuring all those on fixed tariffs got the so-called '£150 off energy bills' in 2026.
  

• Student loans, mortgage prisoners and more... The former head of the Independent Taskforce on Student Finance Information, Martin has berated both Conservative and Labour governments over retrospective student loan hikes.
  
  He's also pushed the plight of mortgage prisoners and got the Government to introduce the Mortgage Charter, plus has successfully argued for buy now, pay later regulation, against hidden car finance commission, a better Carer's Allowance, and improvements to the Severe Mental Impairment Council Tax discount, among others.

This follows winning the headline awards at three events in 2024: the Special Recognition Award at the Broadcast Awards, the Outstanding Achievement Award at the Edinburgh TV festival, and the Royal Television Society Special Award for "changing an entire genre of journalism", with a speech that went viral after he launched a broadside.

Outside of TV, he's been awarded the Beacon Philanthropy Fellowship (link opens 230KB PDF), the New Statesman's Positive Impact in Society Award, Consumer Journalist of the Year, Trading Standards National Consumer Hero, Business Journalist of the Year and Citizens Advice Consumer Champion.

Before the EU referendum, polls named Martin as the UK's most trusted voice, and by the end of the campaign he was the only person still trusted by supporters of both sides. His How to vote in the EU referendum guide was read over a million times.

Martin is an emeritus governor of his former university, the London School of Economics (LSE), and has an honorary fellowship in journalism from Cardiff University's School of Journalism (2017), where he studied his journalism postgraduate. And he has honorary doctorates from: The University of Sheffield Litt.D (2026), The Open University D.Univ (2016), Leeds Beckett D.Arts (2016) and his home town Chester University D.BA (2013).

And the worst accolade... Martin continually tops the metrics as the person used in more scam ads than any other. So be aware – any ad with him in is a fraud.

Martin's books

Martin's books were all written earlier in his career. His main one, The Money Diet, twice topped the Amazon bestsellers' list and was also a Sunday Times Bestseller.

He is also editor of Thrifty Ways for Modern Days, a book written from the wisdom of the MSE Forum, and a short book, Three Lessons (an early predecessor to his financial education work).

Interests outside the world of money

Martin is steps obsessed, and was gutted on 2 August 2023 when food poisoning meant he couldn't hit his minimum 10,000 steps a day for the first time since October 2016 (he's not missed it since). In 2025 he averaged over 26,000 steps a day, though vowed that was too much and that his aim was to cut back.

He plays a mean family game of Monopoly, Connect 4 and Monopoly Deal – and has a chart of the over 1,200 Scrabble games he's played against his wife (barring "the first 17 games, because that would've been weird!"). His average score is 407 a game.

That average is a little higher than his average golf round. He loves golf and is proud to have progressed from "being bad at golf to being a bad golfer", with a handicap of around 17 (though notably did get a hole in one in two successive rounds).

Martin's dream as a teenage athletics stats nerd was to be a commentator. In 2016, he fulfilled a lifelong ambition and started in-field presenting at major athletics events, including the Olympic trials and the London Anniversary Games, culminating in the London World Athletics Championships 2017 – where he got to run the 100 metres in front of 60,000 fans, just before Usain Bolt (though in a considerably slower time).

On TV, as well as BBC One's Question Time, BBC Radio 4's Any Questions? and similar, he's hosted Have I Got News for You, been a panellist on Would I Lie To You?, appeared in sitcom Mandy, made a cameo in Saturday Night Live UK, played Noel Gallagher's accountant in Oasis: The Reunion for Comic Relief and featured a good number of times in Dictionary Corner on Channel 4's Countdown.

Martin was a Celebrity Mastermind champion in 2012, won £150,000 on Celebrity Millionaire (which he directed to Citizens Advice), captained the LSE team (which tragically lost on a tie-break) in Celebrity University Challenge 2015, won his week on House of Games in 2021 and came mid-pack in the Taskmaster New Year 2024 special.

And despite claiming not to listen to music, he's had two Top 40 chart hits: first a featured credit on I Fought The Lloyds, then, to cap it all, a Christmas Number 1, with Food Aid in 2022 (yes, you did read that right). He also appeared in a one-off performance on ITV's All Star Musicals, donning a technicolour dreamcoat to sing as Joseph.

Roll further back in time, and way back in the 1990s Martin was a part-time stand-up comic, (not so) funny that.

Watch Martin's 'life lecture' on BBC One's The One Show, from January 2017

Profiles – recent and over the years

Many profiles have been written or broadcast about Martin in newspapers, online and radio. Most of the main ones still available online have been included below – though don't take all of them as 100% accurate.

• The Independent (May 2026) Martin Lewis is the most trusted man in Britain for one clear reason

• The Times (May 2026) Martin Lewis: 'How I went from 'Spreadsheet Boy' to unlikely BAFTA star' [behind paywall]

• The Guardian (Feb 2025) 'We have to protect people': Martin Lewis on his fight to stop money worries worsening mental health

• The High Performance Podcast (Mar 2024) Martin Lewis: It's time to stop being taken advantage of [YouTube]

• BBC Radio 4 (Dec 2023) The Media Show: Martin Lewis, Britain's most influential journalist?

• BBC Sounds Test Match Special (Jul 2023) Ashes Daily: View from the Boundary – Martin Lewis

• Sunday Telegraph (Mar 2023) Martin Lewis: 'I won't be applying for the House of Lords again' [behind paywall]

• BBC Radio 4 (Jun 2022) Political Thinking with Nick Robinson: The Martin Lewis One

• The Guardian (May 2022) 'I'm begging the Government to listen': Martin Lewis on getting political, mental health, and the cost of living crisis

• The Big Issue (May 2022) Martin Lewis: 'I can't shut up because there really are lives at stake'

• The Economist (Apr 2022) Martin Lewis faces up to a world he can no longer fix [behind paywall]

• BBC Radio 4 (Apr 2022) Martin Lewis: What drives the MoneySavingExpert who wants to help millions save money?

• The Sunday Times (Mar 2022) Martin Lewis: the real Shadow Chancellor [behind paywall]

• New Statesman (Jul 2021) Martin Lewis interview: Capitalism has become 'less predatory' [behind paywall]

• BBC Radio 4 (Jun 2020) Martin Lewis: Desert Island Discs

• The Sunday Times (May 2020) A Life in the Day: Martin Lewis on working from home during coronavirus lockdown [behind paywall]

• The Guardian (Apr 2020) Martin Lewis: 'I sit and cry at the hardship caused by coronavirus'

• The Sunday Times (Aug 2019) Martin Lewis interview: Some people play piano. My gift is stopping you getting screwed [behind paywall]

• The Guardian (Jan 2019) The Money Saving Expert: how Martin Lewis became the most trusted man in Britain

• The Times (May 2018) Martin Lewis interview: 'Facebook puts profit before morals and has got totally out of control' [behind paywall]

• The Guardian (Jun 2016) 'I've had my dark days.' Why Martin Lewis knows mental illness and money don't mix

• The Sunday Mirror (Mar 2016) Martin Lewis has given £2m to a debt charity after suffering severe stress

• The Huffington Post (Feb 2016) Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis Reveals He Will 'Probably' Back UK Remaining In The EU

• The Guardian (Jan 2016) Welcome to the bank where financial advice is free – it's a foodbank (scroll down to 'The man helping to fund the scheme')

• The Huffington Post & The Spectator (Nov 2015) Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis Could Influence EU Referendum, According To Poll

  Who will influence the EU referendum? Martin Lewis [behind paywall]

• The Financial Times (Oct 2015) Martin Lewis, the Money Saving Expert, talks to Lucy Kellaway

• The Express (Aug 2014) Millionaire Martin Lewis: Teach our children to be experts with money

• The Telegraph (Aug 2014) 'We have educated our youth into debt' [behind paywall]

• The Sunday Times (Dec 2013) Bah humbug! Scrimping's made me bigger than Beyoncé [behind paywall]

• The Telegraph (Nov 2013) Multi-millionaire Martin Lewis: 'I still shop at Poundland' [behind paywall]

  ('Important' note from Martin: A Scrabble rematch with the article's author was played the next week, where the result was 1-1)

• House & Garden magazine (Sep 2012) Driving Passions [opens 460KB PDF]

• Manchester Evening News' Business Week magazine (Aug 2012) 'I'm not motivated by money', says £87m advice expert Martin [opens 1.82MB PDF]

• Press Gazette (Jun 2012) Martin Lewis: The journalist who broke the rules and hit the jackpot

• BBC (Jun 2012) Martin Lewis sells MoneySavingExpert.com for £87m

• The Guardian (Jun 2012) Martin Lewis sells MoneySavingExpert for £87m

• The Daily Mirror (Jun 2012) Money making expert: Cash guru Martin Lewis flogs MoneySavingExpert website he set up in bedroom for £87million

• Woman magazine (Jan 2012) 'My wife's tighter with money than I am!' [opens 4.5MB PDF]'

• The Guardian (Jun 2011) Martin Lewis answers your money questions

• The Times (Aug 2010) Meet the Money Saving Expert [behind paywall]

• The Guardian (May 2010) Pass notes No 2,778: Martin Lewis

• The Independent (Nov 2009) Martin Lewis: Money man

• The Observer (Mar 2009) This much I know

• The Guardian (Jun 2008) 'I feel ashamed. Very ashamed'

• Sunday Herald magazine (Jan 2007) Lend me your arrears

• Metro (Dec 2005) 60-second interview