Martin Lewis (financial journalist)

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Martin Lewis

Born May 9, 1972 (1972-05-09) (age 36)
Manchester
Occupation Television presenter, journalist, author
Website
MoneySavingExpert.com
This article is about the British financial journalist. For the UK TV newsreader of similar name, see Martyn Lewis (journalist). For other people named Martin Lewis, see Martin Lewis (disambiguation).

Martin Steven Lewis (born May 9, 1972 in Manchester, England) is a journalist, television presenter, website entrepreneur and author in the United Kingdom, who specialises in ways to save money. He is often referred to in the media as a "consumer campaigner" or "consumer champion" and goes by the title of "Money Saving Expert".

Contents

[edit] Career

[edit] Internet career

Perhaps most influentially, he created and runs the website MoneySavingExpert.com. This is ranked the biggest consumer and personal finance site in the UK with over 4,000,000 users each month and over 2 million receiving the Martin's Money Tips weekly e-mail. [1]

[edit] TV and radio career

He has his own prime time show on Five called It Pays to Watch![2] as well as presenting money specials for ITV1's Tonight, and is regular "Money Saving Expert" on several others (including a weekly slot on GMTV and LK Today). He also appears on ITV1's This Morning, Five's The Wright Stuff and as well as often appearing as a guest expert on many news and other programmes.

He also has a regular phone-in on BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show and BBC Radio 1's Jo Whiley. He also had his own daytime TV series on ITV1 during December 2005 called Make Me Rich.

[edit] Print career

He has a weekly column in the News of the World; a fortnightly column in the Sunday Post and a monthly regional syndicated column in the Manchester Evening News amongst others. He has been a past columnist for the Sunday Times, Saturday Guardian and the Sunday Express. All of his columns are on the theme of saving money.

He is the author of two bestselling book, The Money Diet [3] and The Three Most Important Lessons You've Never Been Taught[4][5] and has edited another, Thrifty Ways for Modern Days[6], which was written on the back of contributions to the Old Style Forum on the MoneySavingExpert.com website.

[edit] Early career

His undergraduate degree is in government and law from the London School of Economics, and after graduating he spent a year as elected general secretary of the LSE Students' Union. After this he worked for London financial public relations firm Brunswick [7] and did stand-up comedy part time [8]. In 1997, he left to do a postgraduate degree in broadcast journalism from Cardiff University's Centre for Journalism Studies [9].

After graduating he went to work at the BBC Business Unit as a producer on BBC Radio Five Live business programmes and was then an editor of the BBC Radio 4's Today Programme business slot [10]. This was followed by the satellite TV channel Simply Money where he developed the Money Saving Expert role.

After Simply Money ended in 2001, Lewis started writing a weekly Deal of the Week column in the Sunday Express newspaper, and doing MoneySavingExpert slots on Five TV's Open House with Gloria Hunniford, BBC Radio 4's Moneybox [11]. and as a business and personal finance reporter for BBC1 Breakfast News. [12]

[edit] Campaigns

During late 2005, the issue of reclaiming unfair bank charges was highlighted and a few small websites started to highlight the issue. Since, he has been at the forefront of the media campaign to reclaim what are believed to be unfair and unlawful fees charged by UK banks (although this has still to be determined)[13]. He presented the first mainstream TV programme on how to get your money back (ITV1's Tonight) and followed it up on 23 February, 2007, and in November 2006 published a step-by-step guide, including template letters which speedily achieved its 1,000,000th download towards the end of February 2007 and as at 28 August 2007 has over 4,000,000 downloads [14][15] as well as regularly appearing across the media to champion the issue.

On 26 January, 2007, he presented a programme Tonight on Council Tax Cashback [16], a campaign to get everyone in the UK to check and potentially challenge their council tax band, that first started on his website MoneySavingExpert.com leading to thousands in backdated windfall payments[17].

Other large scale campaigns, with ensuing TV programmes include reclaiming payment protection insurance [18] (it is predicted that this may grow to the same scale as bank charge reclaiming [19].), reclaiming mortgage exit fees [20] and reclaiming credit card charges [21] all of which have had over 100,000 people using template letter downloads. [22]

[edit] Petitions

Martin Lewis, in conjunction with MoneySavingExpert.com, has launched two petitions relating to the advertising of secured loan products on television.

  • The first aims to have the adverts banned from children's television which received 43,000 signatures [23]
  • The second appeals to Carol Vorderman to stop appearing in secured loan advertising. Lewis felt that Vorderman was seen by the general public as a credible figure because of her mathematical skill demonstrated in TV programmes such as Countdown. This petition was officially supported by the UK's two largest debt charities, Credit Action and the Consumer Credit Counselling Service. The petition had over 80,000[24] signatures and newspapers reported that she threatened legal action to try to stop it[25]

Both of these campaigns have been the subject of parliamentary early day motions[26].

[edit] Recognition

Lewis was specifically named in an Early Day Motion of the House of Commons. [27]

Lewis and his website MoneySavingExpert.com were specifically cited as being at the forefront of the new virtual democracy as a 'remarkable new body' according the UK Government Cabinet Office report "The Power of Information"[28].

[edit] Personal

He is engaged to Five News weather presenter Lara Lewington.[29][30]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Statistics from bottom right of MoneySavingExpert home page stats. Retrieved on 2008-04-21.
  2. ^ It Pays To Watch Website. Retrieved on 2008-01-23.
  3. ^ The Scotsman, Martin Lewis, moneysaving champ. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
  4. ^ The Three Most Important Lessons You've Never Been Taught. Retrieved on 2008-01-23.
  5. ^ Martin's Money Tips inc. Bestseller info. Retrieved on 2008-01-23.
  6. ^ Thrifty Ways for Modern Days. Retrieved on 2008-01-23.
  7. ^ Martin Lewis MoneySavingExpert Biography. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
  8. ^ MoneySavingExpert Forums Martin Lewis comedy background post. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
  9. ^ Martin Lewis MoneySavingExpert Biography. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
  10. ^ MyVillage website Martin Lewis interview. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
  11. ^ Martin Lewis MoneySavingExpert Biography. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
  12. ^ BBC Business Report 2001. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
  13. ^ Bank Charges: Reclaim your money. Retrieved on 2006-08-27.
  14. ^ The Independent. Retrieved on 2007-02-22.
  15. ^ MoneySavingExpert.com Stats section. Retrieved on 2007-08-28.
  16. ^ "Council Tax Cashback: Reclaim £1000s. Retrieved on 2007-01-20.
  17. ^ "Council Tax Reclaiming Success Reports. Retrieved on 2008-01-23.
  18. ^ "Loan Insurance Reclaiming. Retrieved on 2008-01-23.
  19. ^ Independent Newspaper: £4bn protection racket. Retrieved on 2007-01-20.
  20. ^ "Mortgage Fee Reclaiming. Retrieved on 2008-01-23.
  21. ^ "Credit Card Reclaiming. Retrieved on 2008-01-23.
  22. ^ MoneySavingExpert.com Stats section. Retrieved on 2007-08-28.
  23. ^ Debt: Not In Front of the Children. Retrieved on 2006-08-27.
  24. ^ The "Carol Vorderman: Secured Loan Ads Don't Add Up" Appeal. Retrieved on 2006-08-27.
  25. ^ Martins Money Tips Email 9 May 2006 (scroll down for details). Retrieved on 2006-08-27.
  26. ^ Early Day Motion - Debt: Not in Front of the Children Campaign. Retrieved on 2006-08-27.
  27. ^ House of Commons Early Day Motion Number 564. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
  28. ^ Martin Lewis's Blog. Retrieved on 2007-08-28.
  29. ^ Blog MoneySavingExpert. Retrieved on 2008-01-03.
  30. ^ Lara's Biography. Retrieved on 2008-01-03.

[edit] External links

[edit] Articles