The MSE (Money Saving Expert) Charity is a charity set up by Martin Lewis to accept donations from the public and via proceeds from the MSE website. Profits from MoneySavingExpert are kept behind closed doors as a result of the change to the MSE ‘unlimited’ company status. However, according to Wikipedia:
A small proportion of this income is donated to charity; of this, two thirds is donated to the MSE Charity and the rest is donated to five other nominated charities by members
Source: Wiki
MoneySavingExpert and Martin Lewis have always kept quiet about the financial aspects of the company however, the charity accounts are available.The charity accounts can be found here whilst there are a few interesting facts:
A Family Run Charity Business
The accounts show Martin Lewis paid Mr S Lewis, the father of Mr S Lewis 30,000 during the eyar as payment for duties as operational manager. Apparently, Martin’s uncle is also employed as the accountant.
Rumours
We get many, many tips about Martin Lewis and MoneySavingExpert on this site. Should we post them? Do you want to see some facts posted? Let us know in the comments or get in touch if you’ve got a scoop.
The Insurance IndustryAn Entrepreneur's Perspective
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Lewis makes no secret that his accountant is his uncle. From Tax Tony’s website:
“Tony’s clients have ranged from some of the largest listed companies in the UK with international operations to small private businesses and professional practices. Currently, our client base includes for example:
* The UK?s busiest personal finance website”
I am surprised the charity has not spent more of its funds since the demand through the credit cruch must have been there.
Sending out four cheques a year must require a fair amount of work.
So the basic sum for the year is £30,000 in and £26,000 out = £4,000 to charity.
And that’s from an MSE income of what, say maybe £20m to £30m a year?
In that theoretical example, that would be 0.01% of revenue – ‘small proportion’ sounds about right.
For god’s sake!
Written to the top right of this post: ‘Our sponsors and friends: Lovemoney.com and Cash Questions’. Both of these sites are in competition with MoneySavingExpert – particularly Lovemoney – so the claim that Insiders View is any more independent or unbiased than MSE itself is frankly laughable.
And don’t get me started on Lovemoney – a more blatantly profit-seeking and editorially dubious site than MSE any day of the week.
Back to the point: paying the administrator of a charity £30k a year is absolutely reasonable. I genuinely don’t see the problem. And what the hell do these numbers prove? That a load of money is waiting to be spent on good causes. Oh my god, that Martin Lewis, what a bastard for not splurging the cash on the first project that came along – however crappy!
What’s more, the way you people go after Lewis personally is gut-churningly embarrassing. He might not be to everyone’s taste as a broadcast journalist, and his opinions and tips may not be cast iron in every single case – but never have I seen such a clear (and pitiful) case of sour grapes. The way some posters on this blog behave anyone would think the man were an axe murderer, when in fact he seems like a pretty decent human being who – in ways that can’t possibly appeal to everyone – wants to do his bit for people who are less financially literate than himself.
The ‘Is Martin Lewis Gay’ article is a particular low point. The person who produced that post should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves… Not least because they apparently don’t know how to use question marks. It’s a piece of ‘journalism’ befitting a 12-year-old playground bully.
If the people who hung out on this blog posting spurious and offensive rubbish about people they’ve never met put an equal amount of energy into doing something constructive with their own lives, perhaps they’d have less reason to feel jealous of Lewis and his empire.
@ Not-a-bad-guy
Thats what lewis does,he makes decisions about people who are on his site and he knows nothing about them.Why do users of his site get banned for telling facts?
Whoever the author is of this site, would you mind being honest in your write ups. You pretend and make it sound as if there’s something devious about the charity when there’s none. YOu base this third grade write up on assumptions and speculations. Please don’t insult other people’s intelligence.
I follow MSE and it is a lifesaver for many and world’s best community forum – that is how Martin has created it, facilitates it. The charity he has set up is purely out of his desire for welfare of people – it is a reflection of what his site stands for. He is a learned man, a journalist and also a TV personality. He could have dumped the site and all the research he does for the benefit of the users and instead taken up to be a full time TV personality and economist journalist and minted millions like other celebrities. But no, he chose a space where he could relate with ordinary folks and help them in their daily lives with regards to economic crisis they face and also to save money, to be our advocate regarding consumers pressing issues.
And what do you do? Invalidate a lovely man’s work in every possible way you can. I can understand if you wish to be totally critical of his journalistic views on savings or investments. But no, you’ve touched on something precious – a charitale work. That’s scraping the barrel out of desperation – shame on you. I hope your site is filtered like swear words are. That’s all it is worth.
@Alice in Wonderland
Hello Martin *waves
@Alice In Wonderland – if you believe Martin does what he does for the benefit of other people, you are nothing but deluded. And before you defend his diversion of revenue into a “charity” (in legal status and definitely not by action) you should look at the tax saving which this provides MSE. By paying a “salary” to a family member, this is put down as a cost against the charity and money paid into the “charity” by MSE is not taxed. Whilst no or very little funds are released to a single charitable organisation (by action), this will look suspicious. If this MSE charity makes a donation of any significant quantity to a recognised and registered charity, you may return and continue your argument. Until this, the MSE “charity” will appear to the public as nothing but a legal entity designed to avoid corporation tax being paid by MSE on a percentage of their profits (which are humungous by the way).
@ Not-a-bad-guy – same goes for you. And on the sponsorship of this site …we would welcome sponsorship from MSE. But based on our inside knowledge and unbiased views, you can imagine why MSE would not want to be associated with this blog. There is no bias in our selection of sponsors – I would think that would be fairly obvious.
@jim
Wrong.
I am Alice in Wonderland.
You must be dull to assume Martin will offer airtime to moronic rants on this site. No one needs to flatter themselves thinking so.
As much as I love to be Martin or associated with him or be a celebrity like him, unfortunately I’m not. I’m a little spec on his site, who benefits a lot from his articles and weekly emails.
Why don’t you subscribe to them and start saving as well? Enter your email address and start saving Now. http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/site/money-tips-email-faqs And Don’t forget to pass it on to friends, family and colleagues.
@Ernest. I’ve read law at the University and understand charitable status and it’s entitlements quite well. Guess what, I’d have had no respect for Martin’s site had he not set up a charity and actually demonstrated a fine balance and sense of business acumen and charitable mindset. That is about being dynamic and true and honest to oneself. And he tells us everything on the site – it is all transparent and for everyone to see, judge and even challenge him which he recieves with respect. I’m also more interested in what the charity has to offer and little interested in it’s intricacies. Your disparging comments and insinuations actually says you’re not actually interested in the charity, instead in evangelising some ill-feelings and envy you harbor.
@Alice in Wonderland
Hi Alice(cough)
re:your first post
If anyone would have wrote that post on moneysavingexpert,say in the the feedback forum,but in reverse of what you have written,i.e. critisising martin as opposed to this blog in here,the post would have been removed by now and you would have been banned.Not on this site though as this site allows free speach,unlike MSE
@Alice in Wonderland
So tell me why did a user get banned yesterday from mse just because they posted a link to this
http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/ScannedAccounts/Ends20%5C0001121320_ac_20090331_e_c.pdf
If Martin Lewis was open they why did’nt he post this info?,after all its open for anyone to look at
rupert you really believe all those tens and thousands of registered users agree with Martin? It is serial abusers and use of offensive language who get banned and most of the time following several other posters’ reports. Also it is Martin’s own site – he has an agenda which is to keep disruptions to a minimal level and focus on what the site is meant for – which is to save money and help one another should they wish to. Disagreement for the sake of argument is never a good idea and I somehow don’t think Martin has the time or inclination for it.
I intend to leave it at this. Not because I cannot back up my opinion but because this is just about my remit would permit me – that’s all I know of the site. I wandered in just to say for any article that’s written to have journalistic integrity, there should be substance and not hot air.
PS: If you visit MSE, you’d know where to get Lozenges & Cough sweets at cheap price.
@ Quasar
You’d know who to contact and enquire about that. It isn’t some Alice in Wonderland on another blog, instead on the MSE site itself through contacting the abuse team.
HTH.
I clicked the Ads by Google above which says ‘ money saving’ and the top two advertisements it took me to were to ……. moneysavingexpert.
Why the site advertises I do not know. Martin critcises advertising.
And why the site pushes members’ posts onto open platforms like Twitter and Facebook I do not know. If you type moneysavingexpert into Twitter search the same few anonymous accounts are posting bunches of posts from MSE to Twitter every day. Who is LB4006 or 1bill4all?
http://twitter.com/#search?q=moneysavingexpert
It just risks more abuse on the forum, especially on threads about benefits.
And why the site does deals with other sites like Bargain Spy to republish all the work authored by forum members who post things to share with other forum members, and NOT THE INTERNET, I do not know.
Not sure why those charity accounts would be deleted. Not necessarily done by Lewis – the thing is that he has a lot of low-paid staff who might not necessarily behave entirely professionally.
A while back there was a thread about a dodgy ebay trader, lots of people reporting that they were selling counterfeits, links to other forums with reports of the same.
One day this thread disappeared, presumably following a complaint from the fraudster. Not unusual, but attempts to question this, scrupulously detailing the fraud were ruthlessly suppressed – forum posts were deleted, users were banned, emails to martin himself were ignored (quite possibly deleted by his minions, since the ‘email Martin’ address is actually filtered by his staff). Basically he doesn’t give a shit about consumer protection, only about brand Martin Lewis.
So the bottom line is:
£114k in for charitable purposes
£10k interest earned
£38k ear-marked as a tax-free transfer from Lewis jr to Lewis sr (only £31k paid out)
Only £53k spent on charitable objects
Clearly Lewis has ear-marked the funds to try and deflect criticism over the fact that a charity pays £30k to its administrator that spends barely more than that (£53k) on charitable projects, but it still doesn’t look good.
They’ve got £300k in the bank! When and how do they plan to spend it? What are they waiting for? Why don’t they promote the fact that you can get on a ‘‘You and your money: personal finance in context’ OU course paid for by them in their weekly email? Just what is the administrator doing in return for his full-tine salary?
Hi,
Below is an email I sent to Martin Lewis website today.
Martin allowed a thread about our company to run for weeks while he tried to see the company brought to its knees, when its supporters replied to the comments made about the company and tried to offer explanations to a confused public, the site threw everyone that supported us off, barred our IP and then stripped the thread of our defence and then continued to let his lynch mob lie deceive and slander without recourse as thousands watched.
This website is a loose cannon and needs closing down now!!!
Sir,
You were sent an email by my company yesterday telling you that you had until this morning to remove the thread about us which was one sided slanderous and which had admissions of criminal activity.
You have failed to remove the thread and now having read the whole thread again with all of LRS originally initiated posts having been deleted it makes little sense and the attacks on us are still defamatory, unfounded and damaging and have no place on your site, there are still several quotations from our posts included in others posters’ posts and these – taken out of context – show a wholly distorted view of what LRS has said on this thread.
You have until 12pm today to remove this thread in its entirety or the whole copy file of the original 16 pages will be forwarded to our solicitors and the police to start civil and criminal proceeding against your company and its member posters that you are protecting.
Paul Routledge
Landlord Referencing Services
The site has now changed some of the last really derogatory comments but still will not remove the thread so now we will need to carry out our threats and sue them and report them to the police.
We have gone onto face book and searched martin Lewis and there are a couple of groups on their which a proving that this is not the first time his shoddy web site has done this to people.
The link to the forum is
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=2630339&page=13