Finance expert Dan Hatfield on getting clever with cash, his rise to fame and working alongside the new presenting team on This Morning
WORDS: SUE LEE PHOTOS: REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
FUND RAISER
Dan Hatfield is a man on a mission. As the resident money-making expert on This Morning his practical, no-nonsense advice has made him a favourite among viewers, especially in what, for many, are financially uncertain times.
But Dan, who has just released a new book, Money Maker – a distillation of a quarter of a century of knowledge about how to save and make cash – is focused on taking his small-screen expertise, and using it to tackle a bigger picture.
“I want to help people transform themselves from financially surviving to financially thriving. I want to make a difference,” explains Dan.
“I constantly get emails from people asking for my advice – and I think we’re going to have another rough 12 to 18 months ahead of us as a country. I can’t sit by and not do something.”
He admits, however, that the issue of debt is “complicated”. “People are worried. Worried about paying mortgages, about the constant shock around how much everything is, worried about making food choices based on their income.
“But there are ways we can tackle the situation. The first is to save money and the second is to make it. I think people are at the end of their tether saving-wise so we have to take it upon ourselves to grab the bull by the horns, look at the world around us and get those extra pounds in.”
A third-generation pawnbroker, 41-year-old Dan is a big advocate of people becoming their own “bubble entrepreneur”. “We can all get overwhelmed by the macro, by the big sense of how to earn money but we need to look at the world around us first.
“Look at the things you own, the skills you have, the hobbies you enjoy, the potential side hustles you can identify – and monetise them. It’s thinking small to earn big.”
A native of Sheffield, Dan, who shares homes in London and the Peak District with his TV executive producer husband, Joff Powell, reckons that as a nation we have around £3,000 worth of items in our houses that could be converted into cash.
And while clothes, tech and furniture might be obvious products to sell to earn extra pennies there are less obvious ones too – such as toilet roll innards. “There’s a demand for them by people who use them in craft. You can sell them on eBay.”
Dan is also
