Martin Lewis: 15 techniques to make technological innovation pay out
Martin Lewis, founder of Moneysavingexpert.com, on technology that can make and save money 
Technology has dramatically cut costs, for shrewd consumers
Technology has permanently changed the face of consumer finance. Mobile phones can now instantly mine data libraries that it would once have taken a football stadium of slide-rule geeks to analyse; strangers can band together for bulk-buy discounts, and shared information online can pervert corporate pricing models to consumers’ advantage.
Technology has lowered barriers to entry and the viral nature of the internet means anyone has the chance of connecting with swathes of people. I’m one of them: I started my website for £100 back in 2003, and it will be used by around 14 million people in the UK this month.
Twenty years ago we were mostly forced to rely on banks or advisers to give us broad-brush information. The web’s changed that, but even with armchair revolutions such as the reclaiming of PPI (payment protection insurance) and bank charges, the internet is still in its infancy with regard to consumer empowerment.
If you want your child to be a 21st century high flyer, encourage them to be a data analyst, not a banker. As technology explodes with enormous fields of data, ever more experts will be needed to crunch it.
So with the New Year’s financial fervour upon many of you, here’s my pick of today’s free tools, tips and rules, as well as a bit of crystal ball-gazing. A few of the tools are mine. After all, I’ve been lucky enough that if I thought something needed building, I could build it – so it’s no surprise I like them. I’d love your suggestions, too.
1 Book flights 59 days in advance and go on a Tuesday.
Data-crunching on the flight comparison site momondo.co.uk reveals that, on average, booking 59 days in advance will land you the cheapest scheduled flights. Tuesday is the best day to fly, and Gatwick to JFK is 12 per cent cheaper than London City to Newark. Its nerdy Flight Insights tool lets you interrogate specific data for 150 popular routes.
2 Change to the permanently cheapest energy bills.
Switching energy tariff can cut many people’s bills by £200+ a year. Yet gains tend to be short-lived as fixed deals end or prices are hiked, and the whole dance needs to restart. For years, whether on TV or in person, whenever I tried to enthuse people into switching, I’ve been met with “can’t you just do it for me”. So I built something that gets as close as I can to doing just that. Last February, cheapenergyclub.co.uk launched, and more than 900,000 people have joined up so far.
First it does a comparison to check you’re on the right deal (and helps you switch, giving you a cashback cut of what the site earns for doing so). Yet the nub is, it then keeps your tariff details. So each month, without you doing anything, a background comparison is made for you, alerting you once you should switch again.
In my view it’s a foreshadow of Consumer Web 2.0. The next jump is the site’s move from just giving information to doing it for you.
3 Crowd-source home heating fuel.
More than two million people use home heating fuel, and with an unregulated market, prices are soaring, hitting many in rural areas hard.
While there are comparison sites, the best results usually come from grouping together with others nearby in a similar position to bulk-buy and cut costs. A nifty piece of crowdsourcing by Citizens Advice can help you find oil clubs near you: citizensadvice.org.uk/oilclubs
4 ‘Robo’ shop to boosts your rights.
Buy goods online and you have a seven-day, no-fault refund right, even if you just change your mind. In store, you’re only due a refund on faulty goods, so buy the wrong size or colour and you’ve no rights (though some stores’ returns policies allow it). Robo-shopping stands for Researching Offline, Buying Online. Imagine buying a new sofa: look at it and pick it in store, and buy it from the web. That way, if it arrives and it doesn’t fit through the door, you can send it back.
Of course, this threatens our high streets – so there’s a balance to be struck. A half-way house is to buy from the same store’s website as you viewed the goods.
5 Crack credit-card credit scoring systems.
The current best-buy tables for balance transfers, cheap spending overseas, cashback cards and more reveal deals far better than we’ve ever seen before. Yet there’s a caveat: card companies are more tightly cherry-picking top credit scorers.
Usually the only way to uncover whether you’ll be accepted is to apply. Regardless of the answer, that blots your credit file. For years I’ve lobbied in print and Parliament that this is anti-shopping around, yet nowt’s been done. So last year my team and I came up with a technology solution. The Eligibility Checker ( ) maps your details against card companies’ credit scoring systems to show your odds of acceptance. It does this using a ‘‘soft search’’ facility, which you can see on your file, but lenders can’t, so there’s no impact on your credit-worthiness.
6 Create your own “protected” package holiday.
Book a flight plus separate hotel or car hire within 24 hours from the same travel website (or high street travel agent) and you now get full Atol protection in exactly the same way as with package holidays.
You can therefore create your own bespoke package on sites such as expedia.co.uk , ebookers.com , travelocity.co.uk and lastminute.com safe in the knowledge that if your holiday company goes bust, or there’s a problem, you’ll receive alternative travel or a refund.
7 Get paid to give your view.
“Everywhere we travel online we’re data-mined. As others make cash from your views, you may want to cash in yourself. If you’re lucky enough to get selected, reveal your views on the Labour Party, your sex life, the latest moisturisers and so on at swagbucks.com ,globaltestmarket.com or crowdology.co.uk and make some money to pad your checking account.”
8 Check if you’re due a tax rebate.
Every employee has a tax code, but the system is mangled, millions have overpaid and are due rebates. While there’s no way to unravel the complexity fully, taxcodechecker.com at least helps you see if you’re on the right track. The biggest reported success so far is a £9,000 rebate.
9 Call Freephone numbers free of charge on mobiles.
Call a supposed “Freephone” 0800 or 0500 number from a mobile and it can cost a whopping £4 every 10 minutes, and rarely forms part of inclusive minutes allocations. In 2015, these rules will change, but for now there’s an easy technology workaround.
Both the 0800wizard app and the 0800buster.co.uk site offer free services that route your 0800 call via a normal 01 or 02 landline number. Those with free minutes thus call for free; others just pay local call rates. The app does it automatically; the web gives you a number to dial in advance of the Freephone number.
10 Shop at outlets online.
The web has revolutionised discounts, deals and voucher shopping, allowing stores to offer discreet bargains to the price sensitive without cannibalising existing customer bases.
Outlet stores were an offline form of this, selling last year’s clothes at massive reductions in out of town retail parks (though some stock is ‘‘made for outlets’’). Now Asos, M&S, French Connection and more than 40 others are launching online versions. For an expansive list and to search by percentage discount, try mse.me/outlets
11 Rent out your driveway.
Both parkatmyhouse.com and parklet.co.uk exploit demand for valuable parking spaces near football grounds, tube and train stations or airports. A lucky few can make £200 a month – and Eric Pickles, Communities Secretary, has recently seen off councils who tried to block this.
12 Make free worldwide calls from mobiles.
Skype gets all the hype, but don’t neglect viber.com , the app of choice for many smart smartphone callers. Provided you’re connected to the Wi-Fi, this app lets you use your contact file to call the person you want to talk to worldwide. If they’re on Viber too, it’s free; otherwise rates are still low – eg UK to Australia is 0.1p/min.
13 Use a Premium Bonds probability calculator .
With Premium Bonds your money’s safe, but your interest is determined by a lottery. The mean average return is 1.3pc, roughly the same as best-buy savings accounts, but it’s tax-free.
Yet this isn’t a representative figure, as to pay for all those who win £1 million or £100,000, many must win nothing. The best measure is the median average, or the amount the person half-way along would win if you lined up everyone with the same amount of Premium Bonds in order of their winnings.
I wanted to give a definitive answer to this, but calculating it is a nightmare. I tried; no chance. One of my team with a top maths degree tried. He got nowhere.
We asked a financial mathematics professor; she knew what was needed – multinomial probability – but requested a specialist to calculate it.
Eventually, we found a post-doctoral cosmology statistician to write the algorithm, and they built a Premium Bond probability calculator (see ) to show the odds of winning each month – it takes four hours to crunch the data each month, as the prize distribution changes.
For example, someone with £1,000 of bonds and with average luck is likely to win, over a year… nothing (as only 37pc win something).
14 Find the cheapest petrol station in seconds.
Quite simply petrolprices.com shows the cheapest petrol station near you at any given time, using data sourced from fuel-card users.
15 Analyse your mobile bills.
Rather than putting in the details yourself, billmonitor.co.uk logs in to your contract mobile bill, then analyses it to find you the cheapest tariff. This is also on the cusp of Consumer Web 2.0.
More progress is likely to be made with the MiData proposals, designed so that you will own your own usage data – rather than the bank, mobile network, supermarket or energy company.
Therefore, hopefully soon, with one click you’ll be able to transport this (likely via regulated comparison sites or intermediaries) to find a highly bespoke, perfectly matched deal in seconds – and deleting much of the guesswork.
Martin Lewis is the creator of You can join the 8 million people in the UK who get his weekly tips emailed at