Archive: MoneySavingExpert's Money Tips Email

9 Sept 2004: Debt help, Stock Market Growth+5%, £20 for Egg cardholders, Cheapest Broadband, Whois?, Free Newspapers and much more MoneySavers

This info may be out of date. Read this week's emails

The following is the text of Martin's Money Tip emailed on 9 September.
At the end it also includes an additional urgent tip sent 14 September

Hiya, I've spent the last week with m'head down on these new debt help articles. It's a first real hardcore look at the debt crisis area. I hope it helps. If you've friends with problems do let them know.

NEW ARTICLES DEBT HELP CHECKLIST & CHEAPEST SECURED LOANS. Secured loans are those advertised on telly for homeowners with debt problems. Usually they shouldn't be touched with a bargepole but in specific circumstances they are MoneySavers. Cheapest secured loans runs through the whys, whens and cheapests. Also Where to start with problem debts is an easy-to-follow checklist.

STOCKMARKET GROWTH PLUS 5% IN PERFECT SAFETY! Sounds like a con, but it's from National Savings (& Investments) and is government backed. Its new product pays 105% of the stockmarket growth, but if the market drops you get all your original investment back. Updated Article: More than the market or your money back

FREE COMPUTER HELP: MoneySaver Fran has kindly made over the Chat Forum's Techie Questions & Discussions board making it easier to use. Now you just start with main topics like Computer Security Free!, Fix It! Computer hardware and software problems and Cameras, Webcams, Printers etc.

FREE £20 FOR EGG CARDHOLDERS: Existing Egg cardholders allowing a second cardholder on their account before 3 Nov will get £20. Do it - after all the second cardholder doesn't ever actually have to use the card: 2^nd cardholder details & contacts.

Reminder: Amex dropping cashback. Best cashback credit card article

Reminder: Free Accurist Ladies & Gents watch set with 0% card. View/apply*, Article.

Reminder: £50 off car insurance car insurance article including egg loophole

UPDATED CHEAPEST BROADBAND ARTICLE. With broadband the prices seem to move as fast as the internet connection; in the last two weeks two new services of note have appeared. Both are 512Kbps, unlimited and include installation and modem. Dial-Start is £17.99/month providing you sign up before 30 Sept & Tesco's is £19.99. Updated Article: Cheapest Broadband Provider.

NEW CHEAPEST HOME PHONE. Last week's tip's ‘home-phone stop-press' turned out to be a seismic shift (see brief home phone changes note), so much so I'm fully rewriting my home phone articles. Sorry they're not available yet, but the MoneySaving is so huge, I want to get it spot on. On the site Sunday & in next week's tip.

LATEST QUICK CHAT TIPS (also see Chat Tips GOLD)

· Bagless vacuum cleaner £19.99 Suck up the price

· New York weekend £20 plus taxes (if you can beat the t&cs) Big Apple, Little Chef

· Microsoft Office Pro £17 for NHS & BT staff Company perks

· T610 mobile, 150xmins, 50 texts £4.99pm or less Mobile madness

· Refurbished DVD recorder £85 Sainsbury's

· Free newspapers (p&p) (revisited tip) Read all about it

· Nominate a September Post of the month winner Post of the month

· Most Popular Chat Tips Ever (with links)

LOST FAT-FINGERS FOUND! Regular MoneySavers will remember a site that finds eBay products with typos as they've less bids & are cheaper. The Chat thread bizarrely disappeared so now there's FatFingers II

DEADLINES APPROACHING. Self Assessment & Tax Credit Renewal. 30 September is the deadline for submitting your tax return if you want a guarantee the revenue will do the calculations for you plus tax credit renewal forms are due that day. Discussion Areas: Cutting Tax, Tax Credits

DID YOU KNOW? Find out who owns a website. Two main ‘whois' sites will tell you who owns any website, very useful to check a site's legitimacy Web-owner checking details. Plus a toolbar from alexa.com, allows you to see a site's worldwide ranking (e.g. Moneysavingexpert.com is the world's 11,400^th biggest) Alexa discussion.

Andrea's Freebies: Ferry voucher, free glass hire, Quick and easy Craft, Organic Beauty products, Letraset materials Try Me Free Summary, Freebies GOLD

NPOWER 11% PRICE RISE: STILL DON'T SWITCH. NPower has just announced a huge price hike to follow British Gas, yet more from other companies are expected to come, so I'm repeating my call “don't switch yet!” Today's cheapest may well be tomorrow's most expensive; it's happened before. Wait until the playing field is level, I'll remind you when its time. Meanwhile my energy switching article also includes a few general ‘bill-cutting' tips.

CAPITAL ONE BACKS DOWN: Capital One has backed down on its hideous policy which meant some customers were charged interest for cash withdrawals even when the bill is paid in full each month. The U-turn comes after lobbying from here, customer complaints & Radio 4's MoneyBox. Read Moneybox Article or Discuss this.

MONEYSAVERS FANTASY FOOTBALL: There are now 64 teams. You can still join (champange to winner). I'm currently in 14^thbut plan the ultimate MoneySaving; winning my own prize! Join the league

THIS WEEK'S POLL: FANTASY PRIME MINISTER: Take a Chance-llor. If you were Mr Blair would you drop Mr. Brown? Last week's charity T-shirt slogan winners were “Your money for nothing & your tips for free” and “If you think this T-shirt's tight, visit MoneySavingExpert.com”. See all the slogan results

That's it for this week. Next week as it says above, full home phone mania, real hardcore savings to be made so it should be fun. As always – please do tell people about the site and especially suggest they sign up to the e-mail – much thanks for anyone who has.

I hope you save some money

Martin

*Via a price comparison site which then makes a contribution to MoneySavingExpert.com. It doesn't impact editorial decisions (what I write), costs or the product. For an identical link which doesn't help the site go to www.moneysupermarket.com (for MBNA). For more on the site's non-profit driven ethical and financial policy click here.

________________________________________________________________

ADDITIONAL URGENT TIP 14 SEPTEMBER

Tue 14^th September. Additional Martin's Money Tip
URGENT! FREE FLIGHTS GIVEAWAY & SPECIAL METHOD TO GRAB ONE

Two of the UK's no-frills carriers are currently battling in a two-day free-flight war. If you're quick you can take advantage, and easily grab a flight, using a clever trick.

Ryanair is giving away flights from most of its UK airports until Thursday; and BMI Baby has 35,000 free seats available from Birmingham until Wednesday. There are of course two major problems with these give-aways. First, free doesn't include the taxes and, secondly, actually getting one of the free flights isn't as easy as it seems.

However, one of MoneySavingExpert.com's users has developed a free piece of technology to get round this so you can grab the flight. Go quickly though! Full urgent article and how to grab the flight