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Tuesday 27th May, 2008 - £9,341.19 in debt…

HOORAY!!! My first big stroke of luck since starting this pathetic journey towards becoming a normal, debt-free citizen: a flipping-well tax rebate. Thank you, God.

This is my third year of having to fill out a tax return, and I can’t say it’s ever been a pleasurable experience. In fact, my idea of hell is having to fill out endless tax returns in a roomful of pigeons, while Basshunter plays on a continual loop inside my brain.

Fortunately, I’m being given a rebate of £421 without even having to get flapped at by manic birds. I suspect this is to do with having a temping job and paying basic rate tax for a while. Whatever the reason, I’m happy. Once the money comes through, I’ll be transferring every single penny onto the Barclaycard.

However, if that money is to be put to good use and not just swallowed up by life generally, I’m going to have to get another job.

My visits to temping agencies last week were, well, uninspiring. Two of them asked me to look at their websites for available jobs (so what is this office here for, exactly?). Three others asked me to fill out some tax return-style paperwork and perform a series of demeaning tests, but still didn’t produce a part-time job at the end of it. This week, I might have to start asking for full-time work.

Yes, full-time. I’m only baulking at this because I still do freelance work on the side, which will occasionally take up another 35 hours of my week. Taking on a full-time temping job will give me the lovely, comforting security blanket of a weekly paycheque, but at the price of my evenings and weekends. Ah well – it’s not like I do anything with them anyway.

Although… I could have a bloody good weekend with that £421, couldn’t I?

In other news:

My debt has gone down by £20.36 as I’ve just received my Capital One credit card bill. The interest-free period on that card has just run out, so I’ve removed it from my wallet and stashed it upstairs, never to be spent again. Ha.

Still no luck with the online surveys – I keep getting emails saying “guaranteed £2.50 for completing this survey! Whoop whoop!”, but then being told that I don’t meet the criteria. It’s like being told I can enter Eurovision, writing and rehearsing an amazing song, and then finding out that I’m representing the UK.

 Survey says: ‘No Can Do’ 

Wednesday 21st May, 2008 - £9,361.55 in debt…

According to the Kubler-Ross model of bereavement, we all go through five stages when we lose a loved one: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. How about when we lose a job?

I wouldn’t call my job a “loved one” by any stretch of the imagination, so the stages are vastly different. For me, the anger stage came first, but that’s probably because of the way I left - in a storm of shrieking and gunfire. Then came depression and worry – the words I’d exchanged with my boss were playing on my mind and I was concerned about the impact on my finances.

Yesterday, I concentrated on the ‘supreme joy’ stage. I would never have to see my boss’s stupid moustache ever again! Never have to await his 9.05 phone call to check that I’d seen all his messages! Never again sit in silence while he bellows down the phone to his disadvantaged Philippino wife! YESSSS!!

Ahem. Anyway, today has seen the stages of acceptance and, finally, organised resilience.

The bare fact is that, after tax, I used to get about £195 per week for doing that job. So, to stop myself from going under, I need to keep making – or saving - that amount of money while I’m out of work.

I reckon I’m saving £10 a week on petrol by not going to the office, and £4 a week on overpriced sandwiches (once you take off the price of the lunches I eat at home). So that’s £181 per week still to find.

Today, I signed up for every online market research, survey and review site I could lay my hands on (all the ones that pay, anyway). It took a long, long time: those sign-up procedures are way more complicated than they need to be.

So far, I have earned precisely nothing. No pounds and no pence. I’ve done four surveys (well, things that were long enough to be surveys but were apparently pre-surveys) and been told that I don’t meet some mysterious criteria.

So, because I’m a 28-year-old female with no wedding ring, no children and no mortgage, apparently I’m un-surveyable – has anyone else had this problem? Have I just been unlucky so far? Are there particular sites that I’d have more success with? Or should I concentrate on playing the long game with the review sites?

In other news:

Money-saving tip of the day: Get a notice board. This has come in really handy for me so far. In fact, I have two: One next to the front door for the money-off vouchers that come in the post (you know – the ones that you’d normally throw in the bin), and one upstairs for my credit card bills and statements. This way, I know where I am with my debt and I can pick up a voucher or two on my way out the door to the shops. And the boards themselves cost about £2 each from Tesco – every little helps, as they say.