Mini pod: Is now the time to ban unnecessary Christmas presents? With 100 days to go, Martin’s top tips to ease costs & stress

Martin Lewis (0:00)

Right across the year, there are many banks that will pay you to switch to them. This is a perfect time to grab the free bank switching cash. Sometimes the best gift may be releasing someone from the obligation of having to buy for you. Would I suggest people agree a no unnecessary present pack?

Hello and ho, ho, ho. I'm Martin Lewis and this is the cunningly named The Martin Lewis Podcast. I do wonder what that's gonna be about. And this is our big topic episode where each week we lead on one main subject to help you save. Now, normally it comes from my BBC Radio 5 live show with Adrian Chiles. But not today. Oh no. This is a pod only pre-Christmas preparation special. A host of things that if you do them now, should save you cost and more importantly stress on the big day.

In this podcast, a free £240 in time for Christmas just by switching bank. Then there are a host of toy sales on right now, the early ones, but often the best time to buy in time for Christmas. Then the big one, is this the time for you to ban unnecessary Christmas presents? Let's decommmercialize Christmas and bring it back to what it's meant to be. We'll move on then to how to play Basket Bluff. No, it's not a game for Christmas Day. It's a way you can manipulate online stores to get them to give you a discount voucher. I also want to talk you through why you should beware of gift cards and vouchers. And there's lots, lots more. Play the theme tune.

Whoa, there. This is about early preparation, not early celebration. Nobody needs jingle bells in September. Play the normal theme tune.

Hello, and welcome to this week's podcast. And it's pod only this time, but I'm joined by podcast producer, Matt. Hello, Matt.

Matt (2:05)

Hello.

Martin Lewis (2:05)

Now, Matt is fresh from the Question Time podcast. How was your commute from Question Time podcast over to the Big Issues podcast?

Matt (2:11)

Long and arduous.

Martin Lewis (2:13)

Yes. I mean, sat in the same studio, we're recording one after the other. So it should all be fine. And we're going to be talking Christmas today. Are you a big Christmas doer?

Because you don't have kids, so it's always slightly different people who don't have kids. Where are you in there? Is it big time of the year for you, or is it just a day?

Matt (2:30)

Christmas Day itself, yes. I don't like the run up to Christmas. I don't like winter. It's too cold. It's too gray. It gets dark too quickly. But Christmas is a nice bit of like celebration, seeing family. So I like Christmas Day and I like Boxing Day.

Martin Lewis (2:43)

Yeah, so I mean, glad we got you here, because I should always say at this point, I'm a Hanukkah man, not a Christmas man. I don't really do Christmas.

But we do Hanukkah, and a lot of the rules are very similar for that. And it comes at a similar time of the year, though Hanukkah is on the lunar calendar, so it moves each year. It's normally sometime between mid December and sort of mid January, and often can be around the Christmas time. And it's a similar jolly winter festival. So look, the aim today, as I've already mentioned, this is about early preparation, not early celebration. So for those who do celebrate Christmas and other festivals, it is always a significant financial event, and that means it needs planning and preparation rather than the last-minute grab-and-dash which only tends to lead to sort of extra expenditure and extra stress. So what I want to do today, I've got a list of Christmas preparation tips I want to go through, some practical, some a little bit more philosophical and perhaps controversial, and we'll get to those when we get to them. I'll probably title the pod on that because then more people will probably listen when they listen to the controversial bits, but lots of practicals too. And to do this nice and smoothly as it's pod only, I've given you a list. Do you have the list?

Matt (3:51)

I can see the list.

Martin Lewis (3:52)

Because you're here, Matt.

Matt (3:53)

I'm here.

Martin Lewis (3:53)

And I don't want you to get all over excited about this role that you've got today. Bullet points are very important. Without a bullet point, you wouldn't have a story. Without a bullet point, nothing would come forward. So you're going to give me a subject, and then I'm going to riff on that subject like we were some time of financial jazz programme.