Many users of the site will know that Martin was previously appointed OBE in June 2014, following over a decade of tireless work developing MoneySavingExpert.com from a website built for £80 to one of the most-trusted brands in the UK. He’s helped millions of people save or reclaim billions of pounds. To list everything he’s done to help people get financial justice would make this a very long article (though you can read Martin’s bio for more).
Yet today I want to tell you a little more about what he’s done over the last couple of years to help people understand and access the help available to them during the pandemic – as this really does go to the heart of what we see from Martin every day.
It’s been amazing to work alongside him during the last couple of years. He was right there with the rest of us in the early months of the pandemic, bothering regulators, advisers, press officers and civil servants at all hours to get a heads up on seismic Government support announcements, and then to clarify very minute, but very important, details in them.
Then, every week, he’d explain in plain English how these new regulations or support schemes could help people, both in MSE’s weekly email, guides and blogs, and also on his TV show – no mean feat given their complexity.
So many relied on MSE for help during that period, and as the public face of the site and with a personal finance TV show, Martin must have felt that pressure weighing infinitely more heavily than we did.
Yet I know he – like the rest of us – was always heartened when MoneySavers would get in touch to say thank you. We heard from thousands of people who’d used our information to get vitally-needed support, and it was hearing how much we were making a difference in people’s hour of need that really drove us all on.
I could go on enumerating Martin’s many achievements. Yet I’ll leave it there as, in fact, no one can say what being appointed a CBE means to Martin better than the man himself…
