Bathroom Storage - Cool 

Wednesday 2nd July, 2008 - £8,850.98 in debt…

Things I learnt in June:

1.  Temping agencies must be treated with caution until you actually start the job.

2.  Fortunately, unlike my previous agency, Office Angels gives me sick pay, bank holiday pay, petrol allowance and the baffling “subsistence”, which I think must be sandwich money or compensation for my house sliding down a cliff.

3.  Filling out forms on Consumer Pulse is a fine and noble pastime but, as it turns out, they only pay you for 20 items per month! Fair enough – I was running out of imagination anyway.

4.  Budgeting is fun and fascinating, but only if you do it properly and be reasonable with yourself.

5.  I don’t really need a bathroom storage unit.

6.  Ice cream bad; mystery shopping good. My favourite mystery shopping company so far is GfK.

7.  The Barclays personal reserve may be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

8.  If I keep an eye on petrol prices and drive like an OAP looking for a parking space, I might save some money.

9.  Texperts and AQA could offer the answer to everything, including my prayers.

10.  If all else fails, I can always talk to lonely old men about bottoms.

 Housework? Cool. 

Tuesday 10th June, 2008 - £8,920.19 in debt…

First things first: I’m not temping this week. After an extended goose chase on Friday afternoon, I was eventually informed that the company in question didn’t need me any more. I had to phone my agency four times to learn this.

I’ve worked for agencies before, so I can’t say I was surprised, but the money would have come in handy. I could direct them towards this blog as an emotional blackmail ploy but, for that to work, they would have to have beating hearts in their chests rather than the bundles of offal and grit that clearly reside there. Not that I’m bitter.

Obviously this means that budgeting will be even more important in the coming weeks. So how’s it going?

Thanks for asking. It’s going like this:

Budget for June 6th to 12th = £20

Spent = £9.07

Remaining = £10.93

(By the way, if you want to budget without going the Spendaholics ‘cold turkey’ route, there’s a good budget calculator on the FSA website. It will tell you how much cash you’ve got at your disposal.)

Anyway, my method isn’t going too badly it seems. That £9 was spent at the pub on Saturday evening - a friend of mine suggested a pub far cheaper than our local, and I leapt on the idea like it was a lemon-filled Krispy Kreme. I also wangled a lift (and a drink or two, I think - can’t quite remember).

I’ve managed not to spend anything else at all, but that’s down to dumb luck really. Just before I instigated my budget regime, my boyfriend and I had stocked up our cupboards at Tesco and the petrol gauge in my car was looking pretty healthy.

If I’m still on this budget next time I’m out of food, petrol or hair dye, I might have to go on some sort of rampage. But, essentials aside, I’m enjoying a new-found appreciation for the cheaper things in life - sunny afternoons, housework and Doctor Who.

There are a couple of things I really need to buy at the moment - Juno on DVD, and a bathroom storage unit - but I’m biding my time until my Consumer Pulse vouchers come through. I hope any visitors to my house don’t expect to be impressed by a neatly-organised cosmetics collection before settling down to watch a distinctive and quirky comedy drama. They will be sorely disappointed.

 Now Now Grumpypants… 

Friday 6th June, 2008 - £8,920.19 in debt…

As I said in my monthly update extravaganza, I’ve discovered Consumer Pulse and it’s turning out to be a nice little pocket-money-spinner.

If you’re after money-making tips, please beware: You can only sign up if you get an invitation in the post. You might say this is rubbish and elitist (is it? …Probably not), but it makes me feel like a VIP so I don’t care what you think.

The site is run by TNS, which is apparently the UK’s leading market information group. “What’s a market information group?” I hear you ask. Well, apparently it’s something that provides “market measurement, analysis, insight and advice to national and multi-national companies”. Right-oh.

Anyway, I don’t really care who runs Consumer Pulse. It gives me money to spend on shiny things.

The set-up is this:

(1)   You register

(2)   You answer a few questions about your household

(3)   You get some points

(4)   Whenever you buy stuff, you answer questions about your purchases

(5)   You get more points

(6)   And what do points mean? Prizes! Yes, you then browse through the vouchers available (for high street shops like Waterstone’s and Next, holidays, restraurant meals, days out, etc), send off for one, and spend it. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Luckily, you can build up points really quickly. Register 20 purchases and you get £10 in vouchers. You also get the equivalent of £5 when you sign up, and more when you update your details. Every step is simple and clearly laid-out, and registering a purchase takes about 30 seconds.

This, along with the fact that I’m not getting paid for two weeks, has encouraged me to budget. If I can restrict myself to buying treats using vouchers from Consumer Pulse, surely I can seriously reduce my outgoings…?

In the style of Spendaholics, I’m giving myself £20 a week for the next two weeks. This is just for day-to-day things – my direct debits will still leave my bank account, but I’ll withdraw £20 today and next Friday, and that will be all my disposable cash.

If I find something I want to buy myself as a treat, I’ll try to cover it with a voucher. If that’s not possible, I won’t buy it.

This is going to be HORRIBLE.

 At the first month junction 

Tuesday 3rd June, 2008 - £8,920.19 in debt…

So, I’m a month into my two-year pledge to pay off all my debts. So how’s it going? Well, I’ve had a few victories, a few disappointments, and the jury is still out on a few things. The jury being me.

Unbridled triumph!

 (1) My biggest success has been filling out my tax return and paying the resulting £421 rebate straight onto my Barclaycard. This has saved me about £63 a year in interest.

(2) Second only to that was paying off my NatWest card by selling a few things on eBay. This has got me back into the habit of Ebaying things I don’t need, and I’ve made a total of £142.78, with more on the way.

(3) I’ve changed my current account to a Barclays First Additions account (which is only available to existing Barclays customers). This means I’m paying a monthly fee of £6.50, but the preferable overdraft interest rate will save me money in the long run: About £18 a month, if my calculations are correct.

(4) My Capital One card is now charging interest after the introductory offer, so I’ve chopped it up. Even though there’s a picture of a pig on it.

(5) And, through doing Martin Lewis’s budget planner, I’ve discovered how much I spend every month. It’s a lot more than I earn. This could be seen as a failure, but at least I know what I’m doing wrong and I can change my ways.

Failure! Doom! Disaster!

(1) Online surveys. After spending about a billion years (give or take) on the sign-up processes for these things, I’ve made no money from them because I don’t meet the criteria for answering any surveys. I might have to start lying.

(2) Trying to change the interest rates on my credit cards didn’t work at all.

(3) I quit my part-time job. Although this has been very good for me, mentally speaking, it means I’m £181 more skint every week. The four recruitment agencies I’ve spoken to so far have produced no jobs.

Not Quite Sure Yet…

(1)  I’ve written to my bank to reclaim the charges I’ve paid over the last six years, but this will take up to two years to sort out, so I’m not putting any of my eggs in that basket.

(2) I really must get around to switching my energy, broadband and home phone suppliers, but I always seem to find more interesting things to do, like creating Facebook profiles for my cats.

(3)  Mystery shopping for www.retaileyes.co.uk has the potential to be a good little pocket-money-spinner, and an excellent way to get someone else to pay for my shopping. It’s gone well so far, but I haven’t received any actual cash for it yet, so I’m still erring on the side of caution.

(4) The same goes for www.consumerpulse.co.uk – a site where you answer a few questions about the things you’ve bought during the week, building up points, which you then exchange for vouchers. So far, so massive-waste-of-time (is what I thought at first), but I’ve got a good tenner’s worth of points in a fortnight. I haven’t yet received my first voucher, and the site doesn’t give me any smallprint, so I’m crossing my fingers as it seems too good to be true. Again, watch this space…