Archive: MoneySavingExpert's Money Tips Email

Which charities should share £100,000? In the five years since it started, the site’s donated nearly half a million pounds to charity. These days the money's split; two-thirds to the new consumer & debt education The MSE Charity, and the remaining third's shared between charities picked by you. The charity vote's on this week.  We had over 600 charity suggestions. Huge thanks to the dedicated regular forumites who had the tough job of shortlisting just 12.  Which four will be the official charities is now up to you; please vote for a charity (find out more about the site's charitable fund). Where the money comes from.   The site's rules are simple and highly ethical;  no one can pay to be on the site and no adverts are taken.  Products are only included if they’re the top deal and save you money.  Yet once they’re picked, we see if we can find a link to them that pays, called an ‘affiliate link’.  If we can find one, and the product’s identical going that way, we add a star* to the link and use it; if not we stick with the normal link. For more read how this site's financed

The difference between Instant Access and No-Notice savings There are two types of top savings accounts that let you get cash whenever you want. Instant Access means you can withdraw cash immediately via a branch; whereas No-Notice generally applies to internet or phone account and means you needn’t warn them of withdrawals, but in practice it takes a few days to get the cash in your hands. Discuss This / Suggest A Note

The Ones Not To Miss MSE

New cheapest home phone provider. Line rental & broadband for £16/mth.  New Article
Whether you’ve Virgin, BT, Talk Talk or owt else, you’re overpaying.  No one provider's ever cheapest, but luckily dialling special access codes gets you the cheapest rate for EVERY call.  This re-researched step-by-step guide also includes the new top main calls providers. Phone & Broadband:  At £16.24/mth all-in Tiscali's* Option 1 gives line rental, broadband and free weekend calls; BT line rental alone's £10.50 so it’s seriously cheap.  Phone alone: Add Primus Saver 2* to BT line rental and you get free weekend and evening calls at no extra cost.  Full info in this new guide which also includes savings tips for Virgin Media customers. New Guide: Cheapest Home Phones Related Articles: Cheapest Mobiles, Cheapest Broadband, Cheap Calls To Mobiles

2 x £15 off £50 Waitrose online vouchers & more discounts/deals. It's one of many in the new Shopping Vouchers deal list which joins Eating Out 2for1s & Theme Park Vouchers. Updated 3x a week, they're now permanently on the home page for easy access.

Summer package holiday late deals: find the cheapest then cut the price. New Article
Regulars will be familiar with my strategy to get cheap package holiday deals by finding the holiday you want, then haggling it down at different travel agents. I've fully updated this cutting edge guide, including new comparison websites to benchmark prices. It shows when to book, where to book, how to source the best prices then haggle down already-reduced deals by a further 15% plus.  Many people report savings of up to £600 off even the cheapest family holidays. New Guide: Cheap Package Holidays Related Articles: Travel Money, Travel Insurance, Cheap Flights

2GB SD Memory for £6 and other Gadget 'Food'. Whether to feed a camera, PDA, MP3 or mobile this is a rundown of the cheapest SD, MS, MMC, xD and CompactFlash cards. Can you beat it?

LAST CHANCE! Earn 10% interest for a year. Top-paying Regular Saver ENDS Sunday.
The massively market-leading Halifax Regular Saver, which pays 10% AER, provided you put money in every month, closes to new customers this weekend.  You can save £25 - £500/mth there for a year and unlike other deals, don’t need to be its customer to get it. Yet be careful, withdraw money or miss a month, and the rate plummets.   Do note your first payment must get to the account by Sunday, so act urgently to open it.  Already set it up? The 'getting money in by Sunday' rule counts for you too, if you haven’t, hurry!  Pros, cons, calculators and alternatives, in the Updated Guide: Regular Savings Related Articles: Instant Access Savings, Cash ISAs, Pay Off Debts with Savings

Free New McFly CD Album. It's being launched as a giveaway in the Mail On Sunday. Forum Note: It's a McAlbum

STOP YOUR FRIENDS WASTING CASH! PLS SUGGEST THEY GET THIS EMAIL

Are your savings safe? Fresh trouble in the US makes it time to do a check-up
The credit crunch has chomped again. There's been a $4bn rescue of US mortgage bank Indy Mac, plus rumours the US treasury will step in to rescue the bizarrely-named Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; state-backed institutions that provide behind the scenes funding for the US mortgage market. All this draws money out of the financial system, potentially weakening it. Thus if you’ve got savings, do your own quick safety check. The golden rule is the first £35,000 per person, per financial institution is protected; yet as with all things like this there are a few complications. For a detailed explanation read the Updated Guide: to Savings Safety Related Articles: Top Savings, Top Cash ISAs.

Train Deals. Sub £10 Manc-Lond & B’ham-Scotl £2.50 rtn. Virgin’s now got sub-£10 print-at-home fares until 14 August, and Megatrain's got £2.50 returns on the Birm-Scot route. Forum Note: Train Fairs Related Guide: Cheap Trains

Student Loan rate likely to DROP to 3.8% in Sept. Don't repay it more quickly than needed.
The student loan interest rate’s set at the rate of inflation (RPI), yet it only changes annually, in September based on the prior March’s rate. Currently it’s a hefty 4.8% as March ’07 was anomalously high, yet March '08's inflation was only 3.8% (it's much higher now), so expect a cut in two months. If like many, you’re wondering ‘should I try to pay it off?’ the answer’s no.  It’s the cheapest form of long term debt possible, so repaying earlier than necessary risks needing to borrow more expensively from elsewhere in the future, and meanwhile you can earn more than it costs in high interest savings.  Updated Guide: Should I Pay Off My Student Loan? Related Articles: Top Savings, Top Cash ISA, Student Loans Guide, Student MoneySaving

Heads Up... 0% overdraft with £100 bonus launches this week. I’ve had an exclusive tip off that this deal's imminent. When it happens (prob Thur) a full review’ll go in the Best Bank Accounts guide, plus I’ll remind you next week.

Going to Spain? Say NO if cash machines offer to let you pay for Euros in Pounds
Some Spanish banks have started to ask UK cardholders if they want to have the cost converted into Sterling when withdrawing Euros. As a general rule say NO, as the rate is often much worse than the rate you’d be given by your own plastic provider when it converts Euro withdrawals. Of course the exact rates you get depend on which plastic you're holstering… the best are the specialist overseas credit cards from Abbey, Post Office* and Nationwide, for more read the Full Guide & Tool: Cheap Travel Money Related Articles: Cheap Flights, Travel Insurance

Free Twink’s HobNob Recipe. Lots of complaints that Old-Style MoneySaver Twink’s super-popular HobNob recipe wasn't in last week’s favourite biscuit poll. So to make up for it, here’s Twink’s Recipe

WARNING! Pruhealth scrapping its free/discounted gym loophole in November
If you’re one of many MoneySavers using the Pruhealth loophole to save £100s on Virgin, Cannons, LA Fitness gym membership, there may be bad news. From November it's changing and the new deal doesn’t look worth it for most people; we’re still confirming with Pruhealth whether the change is a fait accompli, so keep going for now, but be prepared to ditch it in October (a reminder will appear here).  Discuss this: Pruhealth Changes Related Guides: Half Price Gym Loophole, Stop Smoking, Private Medical Insurance

£23 annual car insurance challenge. That’s the record using the Cheapest Car Insurance guide, can you beat it?

The Big & Easy Ways to Save Checklist

Assess Your finances: Free Budget Planner to see if you spend more than you earn Give Yourself a Money Makeover: Special guide to overhauling your finances Best Balance Transfers: Short Term 0%: Virgin* 15 mths, 2.98% fee, HSBC* 13 months 2.5% fee. Long Term Low Rate: Barclaycard 6.5% for life* or read Balance Transfers New Borrowing: Best Card For Spending or Cheapest Loans New Bank Account: 0% overdraft at A&L* or read Best Bank Accounts Mortgage Makeover: Read the free Remortgage Guide Motor Insurance: Read the Car, Van or Motorbike articles Top Savings: Kaupthing* 6.5% or read Top Savings article Reclaim £1,000s: on Mortgage Fees, Council Tax, Endowments, Bank Charges, PPI Cashback Credit Card: Amex Plat* or read Best Cashback Cards Get Quick Cash for Old Mobiles: Envirofone*, Mopay*. Recycle Mobiles article Teen Cash Guide: Free 40 page PDF guide to teach your kids about money Switch Gas & Elec and Get up to £30 Cashback! Energyhelpline* or Gas & Elec Article Cut Car & Home Insurance! Car Insurance/ Home Insurance Cost Cutting MoneySaving Books: The Money Diet, Thrifty Ways, Three Lessons Free MoneySavingExpert Car Sticker MoneySavingExpert.com/carsticker

More MoneySaving MSE

The proposed Abbey and Alliance & Leicester merger. What it means for customers
Giant Spanish bank Santander's proposed a takeover of the Alliance & Leicester to then merge it with Abbey which it already owns. In terms of shoring up the balance sheet this is probably good news. For products, short term it may help inject cash in the mortgage market where A&L’s a big player.  In a couple of years' time though, there are competitive worries; for example A&L and Abbey are vying to be top current account, both paying 8% or more in credit and offering 0% overdrafts, so a lack of competition may mean lower rates. For the moment, for most customers, no change really. Related Articles: Best Bank Accounts, Remortgage Guide

Use ZoneAlarm free firewall? It's been causing some people problems with web access, but the solution's simple and free. Don't pay to get it fixed, even if your provider says you need to. Full Details in the updated Free Anti-Virus article.

Act Now! Beat energy hikes with a capped tariff. But don't get tricked into a fake cap!
Energy price rises of 15% to 40% are predicted by the end of the year, so grab a capped tariff now while there's still time. However a new tariff to be careful with is Scottish & Southern Energy's Fixed Discount 2010. While it sounds like a capped tariff, it isn't. It promises to stay 2% below its standard rates yet this doesn't stop its prices increasing when the standard tariff does, plus you may need to pay a big £100 to cancel before July 2010. Top Pick Comparison Service: Energyhelpline* pays £15 cashback per switch. Alts for dual fuel: Moneys'market* pays £30 cashback for dual fuel and uSwitch* gives a £40 crate of wine per switch (don't go direct). Full Info: Switch Energy, Get Cashback Related Articles: Boiler Cover, Grant Grabbing, Budget Planner

A 91 year-old travel insurance MoneySaver. Thought you’d smile as I did about the lovely e-mail from a 91 year old MoneySaver, who used the site to save £100 on travel insurance. Fab! Full Guide: Cheap Travel Insurance

MONEY MORAL DILEMMA. Should Arkwright give Granville his money back?
Granville walks into a computer shop, where he’s assisted by the shop owner, Arkwright. He chooses a £399 laptop and takes it to the till, where he’s served by one of Arkwright’s trainee shop assistants. He doesn’t notice it's rung up at £499 by mistake, and absentmindedly puts his pin code in and pays. When he gets home he notices the problem and calls the shop… should Arkwright give him the money back? Enter the Money Moral Maze: Should Arkwright give him his money back? This dilemma was suggested by MoneySaver John Harvey, to see how it differs from Should Alan give the laptop back? where the boot was on the other foot.

Reminder: London Motor Show ticket giveaway. The names have been picked. Have you been lucky?

Quick Forum Tips Warning! Bargains listed here tend to sell out quickly Daily Bargains Update Tips, Tricks & Treats

Top Deal: D&A eye test free with £3.30 mag. It's in this month's Cosmo. Eye spy! Sell for free online 10 free trades on Playtrade in July. Free Play Leappad Learning toy £24 in-store. Grebbit! 50 Nectar Points for answering 2 questions. Quick hit £4 UK Disabled Motorists' Atlas. Good for Blue Badge holders Worth £12 Free Chess sets for schools You need to apply before the summer holidays. Go Quick! Londoners! Claim tube costs if you're delayed over 15 mins Tube reclaims Cheapest Kids' Party No need to spend a fortune Party!!! Tesco donating to Marie Curie Cancer. Just withdraw cash there, it'll donate each time Kids go free to the theatre Just add one adult and perhaps a spoonful of sugar Debt Free Wannabe chat of the week: You know you're too stingy when... Old Style (Thrift) Board thread of the week: Old Style things you never thought you'd do Nominate Post Of The Month for July

Great 'Starting a Vegetable Patch' Hunt: share your top tips on home cultivation
Growing fruit and veg at home is all the rage with celebrities and old-stylers alike, and given rising food prices there's never been a better time to start. So I'd like to call on greenfingered MoneySavers' knowledge of getting a vegetable patch together, to help out those who don't know how to begin. What do you need to get going? What are the easiest things to grow? How much time do you need to spend tending it? Add your ideas/read other peoples': Great Starting a Vegetable Patch Hunt Past Great Hunts: Isn't it obvious? MoneySaving, Win on Hotel Bidding Sites, Best No-Contract Deals

CHEAP FLIGHTS SALES ALERT Airline: Thomsonfly. Price: c.£30 e/w. Ends: When tickets sell out.
My top pick budget airline sale this week is Thomsonfly’s sub £30 inc. most taxes & charges to various European destinations from a range of UK airports. Tickets are at this price until they’re sold out but are only available on selected flights. How to quickly find the sales flights: Don't go direct, instead use the Budget Airline FlightChecker and ask it to find all flights under £30. Non-Budget Airline Tools: These are listed in the Cheap Flights article. Related Travel MoneySaving: Cheap Hotels, Spending Abroad, Cheap Currency, Travel Insurance, Mobile Roaming

Board of the week: Silver Savers (over 50s) Money Saving. There's a host of discounts and deals exclusively for the more mature MoneySaver. The Silver Savers board is a mine of information for the over 50's. Recent discussions include Improving and Increasing Brain Function, Adjustable beds and Can I afford early retirement?

Great 'Isn't it Obvious? MoneySaving' Hunt Result
Last week I asked you to detail those general MoneySaving things you do so often that they've become second nature. There was an excellent response, and loads of great simple-but-clever tips, including Just Use Half, Re-use your PJs! and Don't Be A Brand Snob!

Andrea's Freebies Freebies, Freebies, Freebies

Storytelling Tips Comic, Waterbutt (Portsmouth only), How Safe Is Your Home? DVD Nestle Coffee Mate, Always Envive Sample, Water On Mars Picture

Odds and Ends MSE

MoneySavingExpert on the box/wireless
If you like to watch as well as read about MoneySaving, I'll be appearing on the following programmes over the next week or so.

• LK Today, ITV1, Wednesday between 8:45 & 9:15am. Flick through newspapers and you'll be bombarded with product ads, yet avoid the gimmicks and know what to look for.
  
  
• Tonight, ITV1, Monday 8pm. Desperately seeking mortgages special. Discussing the new struggle for many when it's time to Remortgage.
  
  
• GMTV, ITV1, Tuesday between 7:30 & 8am. The topic's news reactive so you'll have to wait and see!
  

Watch/listen back to past appearances: Including Radio 1's Jo Whiley, Radio 2's Vine, Radio 4's MoneyBox and GMTV. Listen/watch here
Keep updated on appearances: Changes and updates go in the Updated appearances list

This week's Martin's Blog: First Plus Closes. Good and Bad News
"The hideous curse of insomnia", "Great inventions of my lifetime", "Four Horsemen of the financial Apocalypse" and "The Radio in the loo at Radio 2". Read m'blogs (or RSS users access)

Pick the site's new charities. This week's poll. Vote and Charity Vote discussion.

What's your favourite biscuit? The Choc Digestive reigns supreme! Last Week’s Vote. Almost 10,000 of you cast a vote in this crunch without credit poll, and in the end it was a showdown between two tea-break giants; Chocolate Digestives just about took the vote with 15%, leaving Hob Nobs trailing marginally behind with 14%, and the widely disputed 'it's not a biscuit!' Jaffa Cake lagging with 8%. See the full Fave Biscuit poll results.

Archna's Free Game of the Week! Use your detonation & physics skills to save the little man! Totem destroyer

That's it for this week, however, when looking through last week's poll discussion, I was reminded of a site that combines a boy-racer mentality and tasty food to hilarious effect: Pimp my snack!

I hope you save some money

Martin

Explanation of * Links

FSA NOTE: Referring people to insurers or insurance intermediaries can in some circumstances require FSA authorisation. For this reason, Martin Lewis of Shepherd's Studios, Rockley Road, Shepherd's Bush, London W14 0DA is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority.

How this site is financed.  Any links with a * by them are affiliated. That means go via this link and a contribution may be made to MoneySavingExpert.com, which helps it stay ad-free and free to use. You shouldn't notice any difference, the links don't impact the product at all and the editorial line (the things I write) is NEVER impacted by it. If it isn't possible to get an affiliate link for the best product, it's still included in exactly the same way. As I believe transparency is important, I'm including the following 'un-affiliated' web-addresses for the same things: tiscali.co.uk, planet-talk.co.uk, postoffice.co.uk, virginmoney.com, hsbc.co.uk, barclaycard.com, alliance-leicester.co.uk, kaupthingedge.co.uk, talktalk.co.uk, americanexpress.co.uk, envirofone.com, mopay.co.uk, energyhelpline.com, moneysupermarket.com, uswitch.com. Read more about this in how this site is financed.

MoneySavingExpert.com is the free to use Consumer Revenge website focused on how to save you cash. It’s owned, and run by ultra-specialised journalist and bestselling author Martin Lewis. On TV amongst other things Martin has his own show It Pays To Watch on Five, is GMTV’s Money SavingExpert, presents money programmes for ITV1 Tonight. On Radio Martin has regular slots on Radio 2 Vine and Radio 1 Whiley. He’s also a columnist for the News of The World, Moneywise and the Sunday Post. Find out more: About the site and its funding.

Disclaimer: This e-mail is based on journalistic research. It does not constitute financial advice. Any information should be considered in regard to your own specific circumstances. All tips are followed at your own risk and should be followed up with your own research Full Terms & Conditions.