Celebrate good times, come on!
Saturday 26th July, 2008 - £8,428.07 in debt…
Oh yeah! I’m amazing! Look at what I’ve just done - look at the debt counter! LOOK AT IT!
Yes, I’ve been working very hard - like some kind of idiot - for the past 18 days, and finally I’m seeing some money arrive in my bank account. That’s £350 straight onto the Barclaycard, and hopefully more to come next week.
I even got £118.50 from GfK for mystery shopping - a whole £3.50 more than I expected! And they say it’s not a proper job!
Who is this masked shopper?
Thursday 19th June, 2008 - £8,920.19 in debt…
Are you a mystery shopper? Are you fed up of the shopping company you work for? Or are you absolutely crazy about them? Have you tried becoming a mystery shopper without success, having been turned down or frustrated by the application process? Whatever your experience with mystery shopping companies, I want to hear from you.
After learning (from www.moneysavingexpert.com) that mystery shopping is something that people do when they’re trying to pay off their debts, I signed up with a single company to test the waters. This was about three weeks ago and I’ve had three assignments. So far, I haven’t been ‘discovered’, I haven’t been asked to mysteriously shop at an abattoir or brothel, and I haven’t gone mad with power and had anyone fired.
The way it works is:
(1) You sign up on a mystery shopping website.
(2) The site offers you various shopping assignments in your area.
(3) You accept an assignment, carry it out, and then report back.
It can be time- and petrol-consuming, but the trick is not to accept anything too far out of your way.
Most of the jobs seem to pay about £5 to £10, and you’ll be reimbursed for anything you have to spend as part of the assignment (up to a certain budget). It’s not a proper job, and you couldn’t possibly use it to pay the bills, but it’s a bit of extra pocket money and you can end up with some good free stuff.
I’ve started signing up with more companies, after getting advice from this mystery shopping blog. Although I haven’t yet been given any assignments from anyone but Retail Eyes, my complete list of employers is:
Retail Eyes
Quality Eye (these people also recruit for focus groups)
JKS
TNS
GFK
Optimum Contact
Bare International (yes, this is a mystery shopping company. You won’t be required to shop in the nude).
Before long, I’ll be compiling a guide to all these sites and sticking it on this blog. That’s where I need your help.
If you’ve got anything to tell me about your mystery shopping experiences, please email me at OliviaBuck@live.com or post a comment. Are there any sites I’ve missed? Or any I should avoid like the plague? Over to you…
Ice Cream - Budget Buster
Wednesday 11th June, 2008 - £8,920.19 in debt…
Budget for June 6th to 12th = £20
Spent = £21.53
Remaining = -£1.53
Oops. My first week of so-called “budgeting” and I’ve failed. I’ve disappointed you, I’ve disappointed my bank balance but, most of all, I’ve disappointed myself. For the remainder of this afternoon, I’ll be sitting in a corner and thinking about what I’ve done.
It all started innocently enough - it was hot and I needed ice cream. It wasn’t a luxury purchase - I might have died without it.
Then my £10 voucher arrived so I had to pop into town to buy my Juno DVD. Unfortunately it was £3.97 over budget and parking was £1.10. On the plus side, while I was there I did some mystery shopping and earned myself a tenner.
Soon after, I got a call from Office Angels asking if I could register with them. You know the drill - do a couple of typing tests, balance a beach ball on my nose, donate some bone marrow. The usual. So that was another £2 to Plymouth City Council, which I imagine they’ll spend on decontaminating the car park.
So there you have it: Over budget by £1.53 and I can’t spend anything until Friday.
I’ve cancelled tonight’s planned cinema trip and invited a friend round to watch my new DVD instead. I should be earning brownie points for doing this sort of thing, but apparently I just have to be happy that I’m not spending anything. Whoopee.
