Money making expert: Cash guru Martin Lewis flogs MoneySavingExpert website he set up in bedroom for £87million

Money making expert: Cash guru Martin Lewis flogs MoneySavingExpert website he set up in bedroom for £87million

Consumer champion Martin Lewis is set to make an £87million fortune by selling his hit money advice website.

The journalist and TV personality is quids in after agreeing a deal with online heavyweight MoneySupermarket.

Mr Lewis, who set-up MoneySavingExpert.com in his bedroom nine years ago, will get £60million up front in cash and shares and a further £27million if the business hits certain targets over the next three years.

He will stay as editor-in-chief for at least the next three years â€" and announced he would be donating £10million from the sale to charity, including £1million to Citizens Advice.

It was a double celebration for the 40-year-old after he let slip that he and wife Lara Lewington, 33, a Channel 5 weather presenter, are expecting a baby in November.

He said: “MoneySupermarket are good at the technology. I hope it’ll enable us to engage with a lot more people.”

His only spending plan was to buy a three-wheel ed motorbike “if Mrs MoneySavingExpert lets me”.

He added: “Some might think this is about shutting me up but I can assure you I’ll be ranting and raving even more.”

Mr Lewis said he chose MoneySupemarket because it was not owned by a financial firm that sells products.

He went on: “After that, the door is open for me to carry on, and I hope to do so, though perhaps with fewer hours than now, so I can spend more time on my media work and other projects I’m passionate about.

"These include getting financial education on the curriculum.”

MoneySupermarket chief Peter Plumb said: “MoneySavingExpert is rightly trusted by its users as a unique source of independent information and views in today’s complex financial world.

"We are committed to maintaining its trusted, independent reputation.”

Mr Lewis, who owns 100% of MoneySavingExpert, said his decision to give £1million to Citizens Advice was in response to its “ terrible funding cuts”.

The rest of the £10 million donation will go to a Charities Aid Foundation trust.

He was born in Manchester and grew up in Cheshire before studying at the London School of Economics.

He worked briefly in financial public relations while dabbling in stand-up comedy to “relieve the tedium”.

After training to be a journalist, he went on to become business editor of Radio 4’s Today programme.

He left the BBC in 1999, worked for a now defunct digital TV channel called Simply Money and then became a newspaper columnist.

A former colleague is quoted as calling him a “bit of a geek”.

He now lives in North West London with Lara, who he married in 2009.

Martin Lewis

• STARTED by Martin Lewis in 2003 when he was working as a columnist on a newspaper.

• CALLS itself the UK’s “biggest money site”, with 13 million monthly users and seven million regular recipients of his tips email.

• GENERATED £15.7million in revenues in 2011 and makes its money from linking, via “switching” web-sites like MoneySupermarket, to the websites of financial providers. Insists income doesn’t influence its best buy advice.

• SITE is run by a staff of 42.