Yes it is used very widely. In the UK, Martin Lewis also adopted the term which took it mainstream. In fact it had become so widespread by 2006 that it was in the Collins Dictionary and appeared in the title of a Collins book which I bought a copy of
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Collins-Smirt- ... 01K9ANF6G/Stoozing was named after Stooz and I wrote the first Stoozing FAQ online (before Martin Lewis jumped on the bandwagon) which was on the Credit Card Board on TMF. Stooz asked if he could put my FAQ online on the domain stoozing.com and that is how we first got together to build the website. I wrote most of the guides and Stooz did the technical stuff. I taught myself Javascript to write the calculators there, which is probably the main thing left there.
We also had a bit about the history of the term on the site, but looks like Stooz has removed it. I don't have a full copy of it but did find the following on my hard drive.
DavidB007 referred to “doing a ‘Stooz’” on 8/1/2004. The first post referring to Stoozing was by Blarm on 1/2/2004
. Both were on TMF's Credit Card board.
As an aside, I think Martin Lewis wanted the term to be his. When this didn't happen he tried to get it called something else. He had a poll on his website where he suggested other terms for it and asked people to vote for them. However, the majority wanted to stick with "stoozing" because it just seemed to work as a term.
Clariman