Making Extra Money

It's been quite a while again since my last post, i am going to try and change that. To update you, i decided against travelling to the airport to meet DD. She didn't want me to in the end as she was travelling part of the way with some friends. But here's the thing. The £55 i saved not going to the airport, i spent on this:



For those of you who don't know it is an audio typists foot pedal. I have been getting regular transcription work lately and this will help speed me up considerably. With transcription, time is money, so it definitely was a good investment. On my days off from work i have been accepting jobs when i can, not as many as i would like, but every little helps. I would like to do it full-time eventually. Who knows, if i get laid off in December, my wish may come true.

I have also made $5 this month for doing nothing at all, just by using swagbucks (see link at side) for browsing the web. I have been using it about a month or so now, every little helps!

I received a shock this month when i got one of my credit card bills. This card i have not used for about a year and carried a balance last month of about £1,700, but as it was not my priority debt i have been paying the minimum payment on this card and prioritising my other card. I have been paying £25 per month off this card, approx £15 of which was actually going towards my debt, the rest obviously is interest. This month my minimum payment was £40.15 and the estimated interest to be charged next month was £35.15. So, somehow for some reason, i am paying a huge amount extra. I admit to having an ostrich mentality when it comes to credit cards, lets face it, that's why i am in this mess in the first place. I have no idea about APR etc. Now i remember a while back getting a letter from my credit card company about new charges being applied, and if i did not want this to happen, then i should apply for my account to be suspended, which i did. My understanding of this was that i would continue to pay the same amount of interest as i do currently but could not make any new purchases using the card. Obviously this is not the case. Or can credit card companies just put their rates up whenever they like? Can someone enlighten me?

Anyway, i could not stomach this so have took money out of our savings ISA, which is meant to be a pension pot, so it really pained me to do it, to pay this credit card off. So my overall debt is the same, but i will pay a lot less interest! Should have done this before really. This leaves me with just one credit card to pay off, so should get my snowball rolling now anyway!

End Of Month Report - July

There will be no extra payments made towards my debt this month that's for sure, so i may as well do my end of month report now and actually it doesn't look as bad as i thought, considering, what with all of the outgoings related to DD's birthday. Although i still feel that i am somewhat on a treadmill, working hard and getting nowhere fast. Next month will be better, i can feel it.

Money paid against debt this month: a measly £159.06. Actual debt reduction: £57.37. Not as bad actually as last month. I am trying to resist the urge to book a train ticket to go and meet my DD from the airport on Wednesday. If i do it will cost me £55, but i will feel better. I will wait and see, if i do, i will have to guarantee to pay at least that much extra against my debt next month.

Roll on September!

I am currently wishing my life away it seems. I am at that time of the month when i just can't wait for payday. It has been a very expensive month and i have done the unthinkable and used my credit card - again! Buying train tickets to see my daughter off at the airport. It is her first trip away and the airport is three boring hours away so i didn't want her to travel alone. I know, i know...... I also took the £160 savings out of my bank account that was for christmas/birthdays to give to my daughter to spend while she is on holiday. I am not normally this generous, but she is only 18 once and i want her to have a memorable trip!

I have £30 left in my purse until payday (13 days away!). Let's see if i can live on £2.30 a day. I expect at least half of it will end up as "sponsor" money.

I am also currently £29.32 overdrawn at the bank, however i am expecting payment for a transcription job i completed for £22.80 so that will almost clear it. I am finding it hard to find the time to do more transcription jobs just now, but i am hoping that this will be a new (irregular) source of income for me when i have some spare time.

I am absolutely determined that next month i will be on a mission and will knuckle down and really pay off some money (at least what i spent this month).

Please, please don't let me lose my boring job, even though i hate it! I have found out that they will be recruiting for my job in December. There will be one position available where previously there were two. The person i will be 'competing' against won employee of the year award year before last and has been there a lot longer than me, so i am not too hopeful!

Despite all of this, i am surprisingly positive at the moment, mad isn't it?

End of Month Report

It hasn't been a good start let's face it. I feel like i should wait until just before pay day to be writing this, but as i can't make any further snowball payments to my priority debt, i am impatient for the month to end.

Looking at my debt reduction spreadsheet, i see that my priority debt (credit card 1) has actually seen an increase of £39.86 rather than a decrease in balance this month. This is due to my impulsive spending again! Firstly i impulsively spent money upgrading my computer. Okay, i thought i was going to get some work out of this which would make the outlay worthwhile, turns out i was wrong about that probably, although it's maybe too early to tell. Second, i bought a train ticket to go with my daughter to the airport when she goes on holiday. I SHOULD have paid with my debit card and tightened the reins this month, but i didn't.

What have i learned this month? Well, what i am going to do differently is this: Next month i am going to pay minimum off everthing except credit card 1 when bills come in. For credit card 1 i am going to pay double the minimum and then snowflake as much as i can for the rest of the month making a second payment off this card the day before payday! Secondly, i am NOT going to put anything else onto my credit card unless it is a DIRE emergency. Full stop.

Total paid against debts this month: £326.03, actual debt reduction: £91.19. Oh dear me....

Earn Extra Money Mystery Shopping

My budget this month seems to have just gone - literally! Things started okay but went downhill rapidly it seems. Don't get me wrong, i haven't overspent wildly or anything, it just doesn't look as though i will have as much left as i planned to snowball at the end of the month.


On the positive side, i have been looking into ways of earning more money, just little bits here and there. I haven't heard anything about the transcription work i was hoping to get into. I think i will need to put some serious time aside and put some real effort in if i want that to come to anything....


Here is where i have found some little snowflakes:

• Ebay (i know - boring! but every little helps and someone somewhere wants your junk)


• GPT sites. I haven't spent a lot of time looking into these yet but i have found one site which seems quite good - "topcashback.co.uk". You can get cashback on what you buy, but also if you click on the 'recurring earners' link you can get 2-5p cashback just for searching a website or £1.05 for completing a survey. Worth a look into.


• On the same theme as above, i have recently changed my internet homepage to swagbucks.com. Here you can earn 'swagbucks' randomly while searching the internet as you would usually do anyway instead of going through google or your internet browser search engine, you just search through swagbucks. You can also earn swagbucks by referrals (here's my referral link: http://swagbucks.com/refer/PayingItAllBack) You can redeem the swagbucks for prizes/gifts, money off vouchers at Amazon, or even for cash through paypal.
• Finally: Mystery Shopping! The advantages are: you are almost guaranteed to be accepted as a mystery shopper, all you will need to do is answer a few questions, and it is all done over the internet; you decide which assignments you want to complete if any; can get paid to go to the pub (really, i just got paid £5 + £3.20 expenses for visiting a pub). It is relatively easy work as long as you have a reasonably good memory and good attention to detail and know your way around a computer. Disadvantages are: Pay isn't great! If you are interested in becoming a mystery shopper, visiting hotels/pubs/restaurants/shops or just making phone calls from home, here is a website i recommend! http://www.retaileyes.co.uk/uk/home/register-become-a-mystery-shopper.php Or, this one if you are in the US, http://www.retaileyes.com/us/home/retaileyes_termsofuse.php. There is also another company i have done some work for in the past in the UK, this one: http://www.cybershoppers.nop.co.uk/ They seem to offer more mystery shopping work for banks etc rather than for pubs and restaurants though and their website is not as user friendly. If anyone decides to sign up, let me know how you get on! By the way, if you are interested in letting me refer you so that i can earn money, please feel free to leave a comment with your name and e-mail address!

Getting Nowhere Fast

Just when i thought i was doing ok... several things happen to throw me off my stride ... Firstly, let me say that i forgot how much i hate ebay! I haven't used the site in ages to sell anything and forgot that their fees aren't deducted immediately on sale of item, as they are with Amazon, but you get a bill once a month instead. The fees that were deducted from my item that sold for £130 (£4.62) must have been only the paypal fees as i received a bill yesterday for £16.66 from Ebay! I didn't account for this in my budget, so there goes any profit i make this month on any other items i sell. I currently have two items selling which should fetch at least £10.00 before fees, and hopefully i can sell more items this month so this amount should be covered, but it is just so frustrating.

Another thing....(all moans today). My daughter asked ages ago if she could have a short break away to see some friends who live abroad for her 18th birthday present. Most of the money for this has already been put aside by DH and myself in advance, apart from some spending money which she has been saving up. I will probably have to help her out with a bit extra also next month. However, i decided that i would also really like to accompany her to the airport as this is the first time she has travelled abroad alone and, due to some dodgy flight times from our local airport, she is travelling to one three hours away by train. This has cost me £55 in train fare! Not budgeted for! I initially paid for this ticket by credit card, thinking that i would pay this off out of next month's budget, then changed my mind, decided to alter this month's budget and pay £55 off my credit card immediately. Which leads me to the third thing ....

My credit card company would not let me make another payment as i had 'used up the number of payments i can make in any one cycle'. I have read bloggers coming up against this before but this is the first time i have experienced it, as it is the first time i have tried snowflaking! How annoying! So i am only going to be able to snowflake twice a month.

So any left over money this month will be going to pay off this £55 first. I really had high hopes at the beginning of the month, but i guess that's life!

On a positive note (sorry for the whining), at the end of the day, my credit card balance will still be less next month than it was this month, i am determined about that, so it's going in the right direction, if slowly!

Snowball Day

It's been a funny old week. Remember that large e-bay sale i mentioned earlier in the week? The good news is that after expenses i made £114.94 profit on my item. The bad news is that i had an unexpected expense that ate up £111.42 of it. Here's the thing .... for ages now i have been thinking about trying to get some transcription work in my spare time at home. I have gone so far as to enquire at a couple of companies online but not seriously pursued it. Anyway, to cut a long story short, this week i received an opportunity to do a 'trial' with a company (unpaid) as, although i am a competent and fairly fast typist, i have no previous transcription experience as such. I decided therefore to upgrade my computer in preparation, which although not essential at present will definitely pay for itself if i do get some transcription work in future. I made this decision while i had the money there to pay for it, rather than have to put it on a credit card at some time in the future. I am going to have to seriously pursue this transcription work now though, to get that money back! Time will tell if it was a wise investment.....

This week's budget: £55.03

This week's spending: £34.00
(as below)

Remainder =£21.03

Snowball = £21.03 + £3.52 profit from electrical item after upgrading computer = £24.55

I seriously doutbt now that i am going to make my £200 target this month, but you never know! I currently have two items on sale at ebay which should make at least £10 and i plan on putting a few more items up for sale over the weekend. Next week's snowball should be bigger than this week's i hope.

Spending:

Pizza Night £14.00
Sponsor (ie sundry expenses) £15.00
Lottery fund at work £5.00