Martin Lewis: what the money-saving expert did next
-
Loading... - J. Oliveira
- 15 Jul 2020
- 754 Views
- 0 Like
- 0 Comment
Martin Lewis is, he freely admits, an incorrigible workaholic, what with his popular moneysavingexpert.com website, his TV shows, and hisconsumer advice columns. Recently, at the end of another long day, the 43-year-old Mancunian was returning home by train after a 16-hour stint filming, when one of his fans spotted him buying a bottle of water in a shop at the station.
“He walked up to me,” Lewis recalls, “and said, 'you’re not much of a money saving expert buying that, are you? You could have brought one from home’.”
The accusation has clearly wounded this self-styled consumers’ champion. He takes an old-fashioned pride, he says, in being the sort of celebrity that people approach in the street not for pictures or an autograph, but to ask advice on a financial dilemma. “That’s the covenant of doing what I do with the people who have put me in the position I am in today.”
Martin Lewis says his hero is science nerd Dr Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bang Theory
Yet if splashing out an unnecessary £1 on a bottle of water caused one follower to waiver, then the news that Lewis is standing down as editor-in-chief of moneysavingexpert.com is going bring many more up short. For that is Lewis’ plan, as he reveals today exclusively to The Telegraph.
I suffer from stress. I have had times when I have found things difficult to deal with. It has been very pressured
Martin Lewis
A consumer journalist when he set up the site in 2003 for £80, Lewis sold it in 2012 to moneysupermarket.com for a reported £35 million in cash, a potential £27 million in future payments, plus a “earn-out” share option. He has, however, remained firmly at helm ever since, retaining - in his own words - “dictatorial control” and policing the site’s ethical code that means it puts consumers first and profit second. However, on September 22, the date when those “earn-out” share options can be cashed in, Lewis is moving into the part-time role of executive chairman.
“It’s three years since we did the deal,” he explains, in his modest glass cubicle in a bright, modern central London office block. “So my contract is up. I could have walked away, equally if they wanted me to go, I would have gone. Instead I don’t want to go, and they don’t want me to go, but it is still time for me to step back somewhat.”
But will the vast sums of money now heading into his bank account put a distance between him and site users aiming to save a few pounds here on their insurance or energy bills?
“I never think about the money,” he replies. I raise a cynical eyebrow. “People sometimes don’t believe me,” he protests, “but I never did all this for money. Yes, I could spend the rest of my life on a beach, but that has never been the motivating factor for me.”
He has, he insists, no plans to go on a spending binge. “I still drive a Smart car but I’m about to change it after 12 years. I’m not buying a new one because I don’t believe in buying new cars. I want nearly-new with dealer warranty.”
There is an unabashed geekishness to Lewis. His hero, he says, is Dr Sheldon Cooper, the oddest of the four science nerds in the hit TV series Big Bang Theory. “I want to be Sheldon when I grow up,” he insists, only half-joking. “I really do. He even campaigns like me for banning Christmas presents”.
There is also a straightforward sincerity there that has made Lewis such a trusted adviser to many. But, while he is keen to stress that he won’t be abandoning the site completely 'I’m the daddy right now, but I’m moving to being the uncle’ - I am curious to know how a millionaire several times over can really be a credible consumer champion?
“You wouldn’t say, 'I’m not going to go to that cancer doctor because they haven’t had cancer’. There are two ways to be a money expert. You can be the person who has been through it all yourself, or you can be a whizz kid. I was always the whizz kid. I think I am like people in the way I think. I still won’t buy a bottle of Diet Coke for £2.50 when I know I can get it for £1.50 somewhere else. Of course, I can afford a thousand of them, but I won’t do it because I am into value.”
Lewis and his wife, Lara, "try to make sure their daughter Sapphire gets everything she needs but not everything she wants"
His childhood was spent in a Jewish family in rural Cheshire – where his dad was headteacher of a small special needs’ school – but Lewis now lives in “north-ish” London with his wife of six-years, TV presenter and technology reporter, Lara Lewington. In 2012, they had a daughter, Sapphire.
Often the children of parents who start with nothing and then make a fortune sometimes describe inherited wealth as a burden or a disincentive. Recently Lenny Henry suggested he wouldn’t be leaving his multi-million pound fortune to his daughter fearing a large inheritance would spoil her. Likewise other celebrities including Sting and Nigella Lawson, have previously said that passing down a fortune would stop their offspring learning the value of hard work. Is this, then, something he would agree with?
“That’s a moral question that my wife and I struggle with,” Lewis says. “We both want our daughter to grow up with ambition and drive, and worry that the financial ease she will have in life might get in the way of that. So my motto is that she will get absolutely everything she needs, but not absolutely everything she wants. We live by that now. When we go to other people’s houses, their children always have more toys that Sapphire. We are so scared of spoiling her that maybe we don’t spoil her enough.”
Their favourite stay-at-home activity, he confides, is a game of Scrabble –Lewis’ other plans to fill the time he is freeing up are characteristically modest. He mentions a bit more golf. As a keen dancer, might be persuaded to do Strictly? “No,” he says, “I don’t think Mrs Money Saving Expert would allow that to happen. It’s never good for a relationship.”
Where he is making plans is with his charitable giving. At the time of the 2012 deal, he put £10 million into The Martin Lewis Charitable Fund and plans now to extend that philanthropy. One focus has been on financial education, especially in schools, but where his passion comes bubbling over is when he talks about aiming to sink “a substantial seven figure sum” into founding a policy institute to look at the link between debt and mental health.
“There is a coincidence between the two,” he explains. “Many people who have depression or bipolar go on spending sprees. And even if you don’t spend, many suffer from anxiety or inability to leave the house, can’t deal with their bills and therefore ignore financial things. On the other hand, people who have severe debt problems can end up getting depressed. Debt can be the catalyst for a mental health problem. The numbers show that 49 per cent of people who have had a mental health problem have crisis debts, whereas it is 9 per cent of everyone else.”
Debt, of course, is his subject, but why mental health? “Lots of reasons,” he replies. “I suffer from stress. I won't go into it in too much detail. I certainly have had times in my life when I have found things difficult to deal with. It has been very pressured. And I have always been glad at those times that I don’t have to worry about money when I don’t want to get out of bed in the morning.”
It is a typically honest answer. Most people in the public eye fight shy of admitting to any sort of mental health issues but, as Lewis points out, they affect one in four of us. There should be, he says, “no more stigma than if you have a broken leg”.
And his plans for the foundation echo his earlier claim that what drives him has never been accumulating a huge bank balance. For Martin Lewis, there has always been that social justice element to what he does – whether it is championing those who can benefit from his financial expertise or, now, helping those with mental illness to avoid going bust. Whatever the change in his personal fortune, it seems, Martin Lewis is determined not to let it change him.
