With inflation rising to 9.0% and the average UK household in £64,107 worth of debt, it’s little wonder that Britons are turning to online advice to try and cut costs and get more out of their income and savings.
Luckily, there are a number of personal finance blogs that have the sole aim of giving detailed information on where readers can get the best deals for their weekly food shop, how to avoid debt and ways to make a good investment decision.
In this article, we’ll look at some of the top UK personal finance blogs that aim to help and educate readers on how they can save money, budget and potentially earn through their own business ventures.
Below are nine of the top blogs that offer free advice to thousands of users every month.
MoneySavingExpert
Perhaps the UK’s most well-known finance blog is MoneySavingExpert, which has over 16 million users every month. The website was set up for just £100 in 2003 by Martin Lewis, who still serves as editor-in-chief. He sold the website to MoneySupermarket in 2012 for £87 million, although MoneySavingExpert still operates as an independent entity.
The site is completely free and doesn’t charge subscription fees, nor does it allow advertising. This means that all companies, products and recommendations are purely based on journalistic advice and opinions and are in no way endorsed through payment from third parties.
MoneySavingExpert aims to help readers save money by advising them about money-saving tips and deals in areas such as travel, shopping and mortgages. The website also offers advice on financial disputes and how customers can raise complaints with companies and claim compensation. It also features a number of calculators that can help readers work out which credit cards and loans they may be eligible for, as well as comparison lists for bank accounts, insurance and student accounts.
The Financial Wilderness
The basis of The Financial Wilderness is to help cover the basic principles of ‘financial optimisation’. The blog covers the following areas:
- Necessities
- Luxuries
- Wastage
- Core income
- Investment income
- Other income
Articles focus on prioritising and covering necessities such as food, electric and gas bills. The Financial Wilderness doesn’t lecture its readers on cutting back on luxuries but advises on how to maximise their value and reduce waste on services and products that aren’t beneficial.
The website also gives readers advice on how to budget based on their income, as well as how to find good investment opportunities for long-term gain. This excludes get-rich-quick schemes and instead looks at starting and honing a well-managed portfolio.
Mrs Mummypenny
Lynn Beattie started a blog about money-saving tips during maternity leave with her third child in 2013. Mrs Mummypenny became her full-time job in 2015, after previously working in commercial and finance roles. The blog focuses on how to save for pensions and investments, as well as everyday ways to save money on energy bills and family trips out.
The Mrs Mummypenny blog features a podcast that releases a new episode on a weekly basis. Beattie interviews money-saving and financial experts on areas such as debt and savings, as well as mental wellbeing and body image. Articles also cover topics such as budgeting and advice on borrowing.
There is affiliated content on the website, but many of the blog posts are based on Beattie’s personal experience and opinions. This includes popular features such as how she saved £7,500 in six months and how to survive the wage drop when receiving maternity leave pay.
MoneyNuggets
With the tagline ‘financial empowerment for women’, it’s not surprising that MoneyNuggets has become a well-respected source amongst women who want to improve their personal financial situation. The blog focuses on money management advice, such as budgeting and financial planning to help advise users on how they can build emergency funds and save money.
The blog also features a step-by-step guide to debt management that focuses on topics such as the different types of loans, and how to manage repayments. Some articles also give insights into retirement and pensions and how readers can improve theirs. Other topic areas look into how individuals can save money on luxury items such as holidays and beauty products, as well as how to budget for everyday living costs such as heating and electricity.
Aside from advising on how to save money, MoneyNuggets also features articles on ways that users can earn money. This includes dealing with finances as a self-employed individual, investment advice and ways that women can earn extra cash through small business ideas.
Another section on the blog solely focuses on credit and debt and details ways that readers can improve their credit scores and ways that they can apply for a mortgage and other types of loans. This topic area also advises on how to avoid getting into debt and ways that individuals can recover after they have declared bankruptcy.
Money to the Masses
Damien Fahy created Money to the Masses in 2010 as a way to give people free advice on their finances. The blog now receives around two million visitors every year and has a mailing list of over 30,000 people. It has been featured by media outlets such as The Guardian, ITV and The Times.
The blog covers topics such as mortgages, savings and investments. The savings tab includes subsections that tell users how to make quick savings and ways that parents can improve their savings. This section also includes calculators that can help readers work out how to build their investment portfolio and how much they can expect to save for their retirement based on their income.
A special feature on the Money to the Masses blog is the free Money MOT quiz. Users can answer a few simple questions about the types of savings they have, their pension schemes and budgeting (which only require generalised information rather than personal details). At the end of the quiz, the user will receive a generated score and an explanation of areas that score well, as well as advice on areas that may need improving.
Mum’s Savvy Savings
Yet another blog that is run by a financially-minded mum, Mum’s Savvy Savings aims to give families and individuals free advice on how to manage their income and make the most of their money on luxury and everyday expenses. Some articles and recommendations do feature affiliated links, but many of the features are based on the personal experience of Emma B, who runs the blog.
Mum’s Savvy Savings blog advises readers on how to avoid debt and ways to build a better credit score. It also covers ways that users can save money on everyday bills or luxury spending for purchases such as holidays and mobile phones. One of the sections of the blog features articles that give domestic saving tips on how to cut costs on household bills.
Additional sections also cover ways that individuals can earn extra money through side hustles, money blocks that could be preventing them from saving properly and where to make cuts on spending.
Finance Girl
Julie Cheung updates her followers on her financial journey and advice through her blog, Finance Girl. Although Cheung isn’t a professional financial expert, she creates feature articles on ways that she has personally found can save money, in areas such as shopping and lifestyle, as well as how to make the most of investments, retirement funds and travelling. The blog also features articles on how to budget based on different circumstances and income, in addition to the benefits that users may be eligible for and how to improve their credit scores.
The blog includes an extensive section on student personal finance, including ways to earn some extra money whilst studying and how to budget whilst still enjoying the fun things that university life has to offer. Finance Girl also includes discussion pieces, where two opinions are presented and the advantages and disadvantages of each are compared and evaluated. This helps readers to create a well-informed and extensive view of the topic, without feeling as if they are being spoon-fed a specific opinion.
Finance Girl covers personal finance advice from everyday budgeting through to retirement funds and pensions. It includes reviews on the many ways that employees can start planning for their retirement early and how to construct a retirement plan that covers state and workplace pensions, along with other income from investments.
Cheung advises readers on how they can save money on specific products and services, from tyres and security to weddings and home renovation. This enables individuals to tailor their budgets to their specific goals by giving advice on how to avoid unnecessary spending and offers to look out for.
Make Money Without A Job
As featured on the BBC, Daily Mail and Closer, the Make Money Without A Job blog helps advise readers on ways that they can earn extra money, save money on products and services and budget without cutting out too many luxuries. The main purpose of the blog is to give advice on side hustles and how readers can make the most of their earnings through their own businesses and various schemes such as mystery shopping and paid market research.
The blog also features extensive guides on topics such as online loans so that readers have a better idea of what to look out for and what to avoid. There are also features on tax information that self-employed individuals need to be aware of and how sole traders can budget when earning an irregular income.
Make Money Without A Job has a section that is regularly updated with UK deals and offers so that users can find the latest ways to save money and bag themselves a bargain. Readers can also read articles on areas that they may want to consider investing, as well as how to generate a passive income.
The UK personal finance blog features some affiliate links but is also based on expert advice and so gives a mixture of recommendations for external tools and services. There are feature articles on how readers can generally improve their financial positions by saving money and gaining financial freedom from debts and loans.
Skint Dad
Skint Dad is the brainchild of married couple Ricky and Naomi Willis, who wanted to help their peers who were also struggling with the increasing cost of living. Since the blog was created in 2013, it has gone on to be named Financial Blog of the Year at the Headline Money Awards and regularly receives over 300,000 readers each month.
The UK money blog hopes to improve financial education for people from different backgrounds so that they can take control of their own finances and reach their financial goals. It strives to inspire individuals to evolve their money management and provide them with access to a range of resources that can help save them more money and gain financial independence.
Skint Dad features a personal finance content section on saving money through frugal tips, the latest supermarket offers and how to cut down on the cost of energy bills. It also advises the best budgeting apps that readers can download onto their smart devices and advice on how to sell certain items (such as jewellery and vehicles).
One of the main goals of the Skint Dad blog is to keep the information and money advice jargon-free so that it is accessible to the whole UK personal finance community. The articles are also kept light-hearted and engaging so that the blog appears approachable and helpful to individuals who are unsure about financial topics.