Martin Lewis: Cunt or Not-Cunt?

[H-O-W-L]

Keep seeing this bloke and his "money-saving tips"  pop up here and there. Dear old mum watches his show on ITV religiously. Seems like pro-commercialist terrordome stuff to me, but have any of you got better experience? Can you enlighten my sad, dowdy little clown-like moral compass as to whether he should get in grave or head to rave?

[New folder]

Looks like a cunt, sounds like a cunt -- I'll put him down as a probable cunt.

[Cuellar]

Well if he looks like a cunt and sounds like a cunt he probably is a cunt, yes

[Jerzy Bondov]

Honestly his website is good and has probably saved a lot of people from bad debt and all that. It has also provided a great meeting place for miserable tightwads.

[Huxleys Babkins]

The debt recovery advice and the various comparison tools on his site took me and my partner from ~£40k of debt and on the brink of declaring bankruptcy to £0 debt and owning a house within the space of six years.

There are countless consumer advocates who've sold their audiences out for a few shekels when they make a name for themselves, but Lewis has always been straight as a die and ferociously protective of his name and what it stands for.

He's a good egg.

[H-O-W-L]

The debt recovery advice and the various comparison tools on his site took me and my partner from ~£40k of debt and on the brink of declaring bankruptcy to £0 debt and owning a house within the space of six years.

There are countless consumer advocates who've sold their audiences out for a few shekels when they make a name for themselves, but Lewis has always been straight as a die and ferociously protective of his name and what it stands for.

He's a good egg.

Good to hear my cynicism was unfounded. Also very glad to hear you and yours are doing better after a situation like that.

[weekender]

He's alright. 

His forum is where the truth about debt happens, and I respect him for keeping it open. 

He's probably made a few bob along the way, but he's made it legally, and he's helped others whilst doing so.

I vote for Good Egg.

[shiftwork2]

misers.com


I've been using that for years but there are some testimonials of social usefulness above so that was the last time, alright cheers

[Zetetic]

He setup https://www.moneyandmentalhealth.org/. Don't know if he paid for it.

Edit: Looks like he put £500k in, in 2018, at least, which constituted the vast majority of its income.

[Alberon]

His website helped me and Mrs Alberon rejig our tax to save money.

Yeah, he's made money out of it (and why not) but he's done it seemingly being honest and not scalping users of his website.

[H-O-W-L]

All is forgiven. Thanks, Martin!

[Bazooka]

Martin Lawrence whispered a secret into my ear in Asda once, he said softly "this is called a buy one get one free deal,so you only need to pay for one of those cheeseburgers in a tin."

Lovely lad.

[BlodwynPig]

"If you phone this number you'll get a lovely buxom lady telling you sex things"

Bankrupt within hours.

Bad Egg

[Pseudopath]

Interesting Martin Lewis Fact of the Day: He tried his hand at stand-up whilst studying at LSE and one of his mates on his course used to write gags for him.

Who was that mate I hear you ask?

Gary Delaney.

Fascinating.

[Bennett Brauer]

Martin Lawrence whispered a secret into my ear in Asda once, he said softly "this is called a buy one get one free deal,so you only need to pay for one of those cheeseburgers in a tin."

And Will Smith said "Fuck, man, I thought we were done with this consumer shit."

[bgmnts]

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/overdraft-warning-martin-lewis-new-17562612.amp

From the man himself. No idea what any of this means beyond banks are utter cunts but I suppose I better tighten the belt in february and get rid of my arranged overdraft.

[Harry Badger]

Interesting Martin Lewis Fact of the Day: He tried his hand at stand-up whilst studying at LSE and one of his mates on his course used to write gags for him.

Who was that mate I hear you ask?

Gary Delaney.

Fascinating.

I thought he was a Cardiff alumnus. They certainly like to mention him.

[touchingcloth]

Money Saving Expert is great, and I'm to my shame less forward about suggesting it on here when people start threads about issues with money, shitty landlords or the legal system than I should be.

[Pseudopath]

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/overdraft-warning-martin-lewis-new-17562612.amp

From the man himself. No idea what any of this means beyond banks are utter cunts but I suppose I better tighten the belt in february and get rid of my arranged overdraft.

As part of the same rules, banks will also have the power to suspend credit cards for people who've only been making minimum payments for the past 18 months: https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/thousands-set-credit-cards-suspended-21216749

What a bunch of cunts.

[Bence Fekete]

Disclaimer: YES moneysavingexpert.com is a valuable resource/community and it has helped me in various ways so I'm hypocritical, but...

Every time I see Lewis on TV he pisses me off. So fucking sure of himself about everything but his biases leak through. He thinks rising tuition fees is a good thing because nobody has to pay it back until they earn X amount. This is a (stealthy) presupposition that you WILL get a high paying job after higher education (SEE- you will HAVE to get a high paying job if you ever want you or your kids to experience higher education and not remain £20k in debt an entire lifetime).

You heard the same crap from the austeriy coalition. 

Martin clearly doesn't care about education for education's sake. For that he's a cunt. For every time he's shouting down a Labour MP on Question Time for daring to propose that better access to higher education benefits us all he's a cunt.

Anyone that obsessed with money is a cunt. 

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I'm inclined to agree with the above. A man who revolves around rules rigidly but has little to say on how to improve the rules, twinned with a miserly mindset that any amount of time invested is worth any amount of money saved, which I disagree with.

Also pre-crash he was recommending people put their cash in the most crooked investment banks.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The above inspired these desolation posts

Martin Lewis has to indignantly shit in his bag-for-life after a unplanned diarrhoea attack and spends the next 5 years unsuccessfully suing Tesco for breaching the sale of goods act

Martin Lewis holds up a queue in Debenhams while they try to redeem some vouchers from a competition on the back of a cereal box in 2003. Martin assures everyone that "I could wait here all day".

While brainstorming advice for making relationship savings Martin Lewis comes up with "save on blowies by getting a woman to do them voluntarily via a negotiated reciprocal arrangement"

Martin Lewis wakes up smothered in sweated on travellers cheques. The moisture from his clammy night terror has invalidated many of them. He opens up a great roar into the spectral ether.

Later on he Googles his own name to see if there is any way out of sustaining a permanent financial loss.

Because a supermarket trolley won't give Martin Lewis his "favourite" pound coin back, he walks home with it claiming "I have clearly now legally purchased it". He brags about it on Instagram but very soon the police are round. He vows not to forget this and five years later he pins some cheesewire along a thoroughfare.

Cinema staff bust Martin Lewis for having a bomber jacket filled to the brim with cheaper food he purchased not half an hour ago with some cereal packet vouchers.

"This is legal!", He protests. "What law am I breaking?"

"Sir, you either eat them outside or bin them here"

He eats them outside. He attempts to access a 20% refund for having missed the first 10% of the film. He is unsuccessful but hopeful of winning a payout on appeal which includes recompense for his own time following the matter up.

Martin Lewis spends Boxing Day trying to work out if you can access financial relief if your parakeet dies in the first few days of its purchase. It is perfectly healthy.

Martin Lewis' top tip for a premium hand car wash that doesn't cost the Earth is "Kosovans, every time "

Martin Lewis stakes out the area manager of Heron with night vision goggles he got given "for being Martin Lewis".

It's Jurassic Park, he tells himself over and over again. It's just like Jurassic Park.

Martin Lewis gleefully informs his prating assembly of drool-slathered savings droids that "it may be limited to five bags of icing sugar per customer, but what's to stop your partner going in after you? Ten bags right there. Your sister? Fifteen bags. Your brother? Twenty bags. That's fifteen up on the deal already. Your golf caddy? Twenty five bags. Your dad? Thirty. And so on. And the best thing? If stored properly icing sugar lasts indefinitely, which is posh for forever".

Martin Lewis notices the customs official taking a second glance at his emergency travel document (long story).

Lewis smirks. "Yes, that's right. I am he."

It is Montenegro. To Darko, he is just a preening orange turd

Martin Lewis lingers at the close of Reading Festival, "because (and he says this out loud) we all love a free tent don't we savers? ".

No-one else is close by or listening to him.

During a power cut Lewis tells his family "we are legally entitled to power" and his family shout in unison to shut the fuck up.

He skulks away to find new outrages in the Swindon gloom.

After refusing to accept return of a half eaten Mars Ice Cream (minor defect on wrapper) Martin Lewis informs the store manager of BestOne in Pudsey that, "I will break you."

Martin Lewis finds that Energy Drink doesn't give his deceased parents any energy. There is a wrong there, he finds. There is a wrong.

After an exhaustive 8 month hunt in Llandudno, Martin Lewis finally executes, cooks and then eats the seagull that stole the flake off his ice cream in April 2018.

It's disgusting and his energy is only sustained by cruel guffaws as he mocks the various pieces of seagull matter that are making difficult transit through his body.

He tweets the sweat, dribble and pus oozing from his crazed visage with the strapline "The consumer ALWAYS wins."

That, he remarks, is Justice.

[Paul Calf]

His website helped me and Mrs Alberon rejig our tax to save money.

Yeah, he's made money out of it (and why not) but he's done it seemingly being honest and not scalping users of his website.

Not quite such a sweet deal for the NHS/Police former/state education though eh readers?!?!

I'm having a bit of a lend of you obviously. I mean, I do similar things myself occasionally but I'm not under any impression that 'saving tax' is a valid way to frame it: tax returns are not a value proposition. If you 'save' tax, it just means that you don't pay it.

[Jockice]

I don't have any set opinion on the man. i don't mind him at all. But the forum is a different matter. I've used it twice, the first time to get a parking fine overturned. No problems there. But the second time I made an enquiry about my electricity bill during which I mentioned  - not in my first post - that I was disabled. This was relevant because I can't get into the cellar to read the meter. In the next few minutes I was accused of being a benefits scrounger, 'playing the disability card,' exaggerating my conditions to cheat the system , and most bizarrely, of having no friends, seemingly because I'd gone onto a website with 'expert' in the title and asked people on there rather than pester acquaintances who probably knew just as little as I do about the vagaries of energy bills.

A couple of people were pretty helpful but the others were utter cunts. I told them they were pathetic and should fuck off and I haven't been back since.

[imitationleather]

Fixing up dat badman edit glitch ting.

[Cloud]

Very helpful chap and MSE is a great resource.  I can see why he'd get a bit irritating on TV, but a good egg.

Saved loads of money through his site over the years, along with hotukdeals

But yes the forum is full of stereotypical Daily Mail reading cunts.  I admitted to living with parents once when asking something.... that was fun....

[Jockice]

But yes the forum is full of stereotypical Daily Mail reading cunts.  I admitted to living with parents once when asking something.... that was fun....

Is that because you have no friends? You can be mine if you want.

[Cloud]

Is that because you have no friends? You can be mine if you want.

Haha I do but wouldn't want to live with them!  But the more the merrier!

[H-O-W-L]

I admitted to living with parents once when asking something.... that was fun....

Don't get why that's a stigma over here. I honestly believe it's entirely because of capitalist lobbying and I don't say that facetiously or snarkily, I truly mean it. Buelligan and other continental members probably have more insight but it's my understanding that in other parts of Europe (Italy and Sweden are two I've heard namedropped) it's very common to stay with your parents until their death, then inherit their house, or perhaps move afterward. A sort of reversal of care.

[Zetetic]

Sweden doesn't have a high proportion of multigenerational (3+ generations) households, and compared to much of Europe relatively few young adults live their parents, according to the EU-SILC database.

Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia?