Saving money for the common Man (moneysavingexpert.com)

Member Name: wxcat

Product:	moneysavingexpert.com
Date:	07/10/09 (70 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Martin, moneysaving, moneyearning, forms, advice, budjeting,forums

Disadvantages: Information overload

MoneySavingExpert.com is a site run by Martin Lewis and his colleagues, that helps consumers improve their finances, save money, live better, claim back unfair charges, and get consumer revenge. The website is so huge now it has resources on almost everything money and finance based, so finding things is good but it can be hard sorting out what you don't want. Whenever you search in google for something related to money saving, you're very often presented with results from MoneySavingExpert and its forums. The forums on MSE are probably some of the busiest on the internet, with 15 million posts and half a million members. Martin sends out his weekly e-mail to millions of individuals with his latest tips and deals.

Starting with the site, the front page is plastered with articles on deals and money saving, I won't go through all the articles and let you discover them yourselves, they include savings, mortgages, cards and loans, and what went out in his latest weekly e-mail.

The site has built a series of tools to help you out. The first is MegaShopBot, it lets you search for books, cd's, dvd's, games, perfumes, and other round the major shopping comparison sites. It uses the excellent find-cd.co.uk for cd's and the same sites for the other areas of shopping.

The budget planner is an excellent tool which has been recently updated, allowing you to enter much more information to make planning as comprehensive as possible for everyone. This answers loads of questions for you if you need a budget and helps you decide where you can make savings, as it helps show you essentials and luxuries!
Next is the Cashback Sites Maximiser, developed a couple of years ago so it's a bit out of date now, it's a great tool still to work out if a retailer does give cashback anywhere saving you having to search round every site. They still have Freefivers and WePromiseTo in the Maximiser, two sites not worth visiting these days. I do still have this in my favourites and have recommended before.

The Rewards Checker lets you check how much your rewards from all the popular schemes are worth. You can check you're nectar, Tesco, Airmiles, Boots and many more. You can also check how much you will earn in rewards from popular credit cards that have loyalty points or cashback rewards.

The Travel Money Maximiser has three tools built into it. It finds the best deals to get your holiday money, where you can pick the currency, amount you want to spend or amount of the currency you want. The next tool tells you the best buyback rates for your money. And then the always useful tool of a currency converter between a huge number of currencies so you can see if you're getting ripped off!

The last is the MSE Flightchecker which lets you search Air Berlin, BMI Baby, Easyjet, Flybe, Flymonarch, Norwegian Air, Ryanair, Thomson Airways, and Wizzair flights. It's a very useful tool for finding cheap flights in and around UK and Europe. There are guides on there to help you understand the extra fees that might be involved in any journey as well. It lets you choose any airport, gives you a few days leeway, and lets you choose your maximum price you want to pay.

Going on the forum which is where you find the hardcore money savers, the forum is split into the following sub categories, Notices, Pure Money, Work & Benefits, Home & Play, For Who & Where you are, Bargain Buys Sassy Shopping & Fantastic Freebies, Moneysaving & The Site, and the Moneysavers Arms.

The forums you would catch me most likely to be in are the Referrers Board, which is a forum discussing cashback sites and money making enterprises that have referrals for when you join up. Unlike other forums that only discuss ones they can make money out of, on MSE all cashback sites are discussed whether they have referral schemes or not. The larger sites have representatives that post on the board and can help you out with problems and give advice. There is a good selection of cashback, search and earn, surveys sites posted on there. I also visit the "Up Your Income" board alot, this is a wealth of resources on second jobs, jobs from home, online jobs, and ways of earning extra money. I've found survey sites on here, explored potential new avenues of extra income and even applied for a second online job from Lionbridge.

I also made great use of the Houses, Mortgage and Buying Selling and Renting boards last year when I purchased my first home. A great wealth of people and information are there posting good mortgage deals and advice when you need it. There are good hints and tips for what you should look for in houses and give you an idea of what you should be paying for properties. There is now a forum to discuss House prices and the recession.

I also check out the "Quick Grabbit While You Can", "Food Shopping and Groceries", "Shop but don't Drop", and "Freebies" boards every so often to see what is about cheap and for any good deals. But at least over the last 12 months, I have been using Hot UK Deals much more instead, as the deals are better and it is all better laid out there. Still you can find some interesting deals, bargains, and freebies.

Overall I've found the Money Saving Expert is a great resource, I don't use the site that much at all. I do use the forums daily and have posted a great deal on there over the last 2 years, and have found some great sites, schemes, bargains, and freebies. I also receive Martins weekly e-mail which is always a good read and thank you Martin Lewis for building such a great website!

Summary: The best money saving resource on the web