Starting again, 1% at a time. 100 ways to make £8...

[specialkaye]

Originally Posted by unoriginal_uk

I also just managed to count my £2 terracotta pot using a knife and a pair of tweezers (!)

Hahaha that definitely made me giggle - how long did that take you?

Im at work later for 4 hours this aft/eve. Bit of additional hours .

Need to make myself some dinner from leftovers so i don't go raiding the vending. I WILL have Decembers NSD no 5 today

[unoriginal_uk]

Yes it was a very painful process! It took about an hour. Like an idiot I was sat there thinking 'I'm sure this didn't take this long last time' - because last time I only had £100 in there! Definitely having a blonde day today!

I would definitely recommend having surgery as a great (albeit slightly extreme) way of saving money - I've barely spent a penny in 6 weeks apart from Christmas presents and money given to the other half to do essential food shopping!

Before that, though, I just found cutting down on silly little things made so much difference - I gave up smoking 9 weeks ago after 10 years (having upcoming surgery spurred me on to do this) which made the biggest difference as I used to spend £150 a month on cigarettes!!! I now put this into a separate pot and this is my monthly treat pot - having my hair done, lunch with the girls, etc. If I use all the money, I don't get anymore treats - simple as!

I also take my own lunch to work now, don't buy Starbucks coffee anymore and I record EVERYTHING on a monthly spend spreadsheet (itemised by date, amount and item/expenditure) which I now update religiously everytime I buy something - this tends to make me think long and hard everytime I am about to spend money - and most of the time I don't end up buying that certain thing because it means I have to 'Answer to the spreadsheet.....'

[trulymadlydeeply_indebt!]

Originally Posted by unoriginal_uk

Thanks LMUD for this thread... It has given me the kick I need to start earning some extra dosh to save!! And it's also reminded me to not give myself such a hard time about my debt....I've done really well the last year especially, and I also gave up smoking two months ago and have cut down my non-essential expenses majorly (I am surprised Starbucks didn't go out of business at this point!) so I should give myself a pat on the back.....and more to the point you all should by the looks of your amazing %'s

Congratulations on giving up smoking unoriginal_uk - I gave up Aug 2011 and took the kids abroad this year, and then flew back into the UK, dropped them off with the Grandparents, changed suitcases and flew out to Venice with OH 12 hours later for a long weekend - there is no way we could have afforded that whilst we were both smoking.

Also, I'm really impressed with your debt busting so far - you signature will soon say Debt Free! Not long now!!!

Originally Posted by MrOrchard

Hi MrOrchard - I'm still waiting for my Musicmagpie money and some expenses, so another 0.5% to come there as well!

I received my email from Musicmagpie yesterday to say they've received my 98 CD's and they are being tested - I doubt I'll get the full whack of what they quoted - some CD's have spent years rolling around the floor of the car!

[QUOTE=specialkaye;57748207]
Find out if I get the job tomorrow. Might be awkward as ill find out at work - while working with one of the others who went for the job :/.

How did you get on specialkaye?

iwannabeasaver - Great news on the PPI - I really must knuckle down to this one.

Only news for me is another virtual wine passed to Next Account and I was offered a mystery shop yesterday for £15 and as I had to go into town anyway to collect a prescription, I decided to do it. So when that comes in, I'll send it to Next too.

Well done everybody.

TMD xx

[happytails]

£10 off my friend next tues for a DVD we bought, watched and prob won't watch again! Cost us £14 originally so not too bad.

Got £45 coming tomorrow off a friend for something I sold.

Also stayed in budget for today's sling meet (£25 budget) spent £24.90

Sarah x

[specialkaye]

I GOT THE JOB!!!!!

wasnt expecting to hear back so soon and it was a little awkward but not too bad. Start on the 17th. First ever full time job. Exciting times.

And tbh ill be glad to finish my little cleaning job. the cycling 3 miles each way up hills is killing me. and i dont feel any fitter either .

[unoriginal_uk]

Congrats SpecialKaye that's brilliant!! So pleased for you!

Quick completely unrelated question directed at everyone - does Cash4Discs still exist? I just googled them from Little Miss's initial list and cannot find them anywhere - when i type the web address www.cash4discs.co.uk into google they don't seemt to be there?

Just wondering if CEX and Music Magpie are now my only two options for selling CDs/DVDs (Apart from bootsales and ebay which I am going to leave for the ones that CEX/MM won't give me much for)

[Elmly]

Please sign me up! My 1st target is 4k by April and I already have about 1.8k so 45% through.

[stitching witch]

Originally Posted by unoriginal_uk

Just wondering if CEX and Music Magpie are now my only two options for selling CDs/DVDs (Apart from bootsales and ebay which I am going to leave for the ones that CEX/MM won't give me much for)

I recently sold a lot of ours through zapper. Not the best money but really easy to deal with and they send a courier to collect too.

stitchy x

[unoriginal_uk]

Thanks stitchy that's helpful I think Zapper was the site I looked up a lot of mine on last night and if memory serves me correctly they wouldn't take most of mine But I will double check when I get home later, I am at work at the moment. I think I might end up having to take them all to boot sale again, I did one last Summer and actually sold a fair few, but I literally have hundreds left. I need to get rid of them before I change my mind and decide to keep them all!!

I have another question which might be ridiculously stupid so forgive me but I need all the help I can get at the moment!

I was wondering where you all buy your jiffy bags/bubble wrap/anything you use to send your ebay sold items off with? I have been looking around and the jiffy bags etc seem so expensive I am wondering how on earth I'll make any profit at all on 99p items!!

Any advice on where to buy that sort of stuff from would be most appreciated

Thanks x

[liz-paul]

I buy my brown wrapping paper in the post office & jsut use old bubble wrap. But recently I bought a load post bags (grey tough plastic bag/envelopes) from ebay. Ebay has a big selection on P+P products.

[unoriginal_uk]

Thanks for that I just went to poundland in my lunchbreak (figured whatever I couldn't find in there I could have a look on ebay for) and it was pretty productive!

I spent £10 and for that I got:

3 packs of bubble wrap
2 packs of medium jiffy bags
6 packs (at 3 for 2) of mixed size jiffy bags (4 bags per pack - so got 24 bags for £4)
1 pack of large cardboard sided A4 envelopes

Pretty good! I then went to The Works on the way back to the office and found packing tape. What I would really want to find which I have not so far, is a packing tape dispenser - one of those quite large things that you insert the tape into and you can just swipe across envelopes easily. Any ideas on where to find that?!

Anyway I digress! To sum up I think I have everything I now need to send my ebay items off! In fact I wish now that I had brought more jiffys!

Listed more last night so now I have 48 items for sale on ebay!!! Will update next week with profits towards my next %s!!

[fedupandskint]

Free listing weekend again starting tomorrow for 100 items. Also please make sure you put on the last dates for posting before Christmas - there is a notice at the bottom of the page on my ebay about this

I'll be relisting what didn't sell last time, the 2 items that were never paid for and see how that goes and set a deadline for posting and payments

[happytails]

unoriginal uk i got my tape dispenser from home bargains at £2 i think it was

got my £45 today so going to transfer it to the cc

going to try and focus on fb selling up until xmas as ebay is so slow atm!

Sarah x

[unoriginal_uk]

WOW - Had a really amazing money saving two days!!

Found out I won £100 worth of books which I am sending to Fatbrain for money back, then found out I won a competition I found on here for a years free Pizza!

Then today the boyfriend and I went to Bluewater for Xmas shopping and we volunteered at an O2 stand to do a present stacking competition - I won a brand new Ipod and iPhone docking radio/clock speaker station thing worth £50ish!

Had a lucky couple of days! Also lots of my ebay items are on track to sell which is great - and I am about to list a couple of bigger items right now due to the free listing - thanks fedupandskint for highlighting this or I wouldn't have known!

[fedupandskint]

20 items relisted - fingers crossed they sell and some more funds to go towards the cc's!

[nannaC]

I was wondering where you all buy your jiffy bags/bubble wrap/anything you use to send your ebay sold items off with? I have been looking around and the jiffy bags etc seem so expensive I am wondering how on earth I'll make any profit at all on 99p items!!

Any advice on where to buy that sort of stuff from would be most appreciated

Thanks

Hi you could ask at your local supermarket, as they use it in the veg and fruit boxes. Some are really helpful and let you take it as they have pay for it to be taken away

[unoriginal_uk]

Thanks nannaC what a good idea! I will definitely ask next time I am in Tesco! I did a similar thing at work and scrounged around for our empty paper boxes and am using one of these to send some books off in

Good luck fedupandskint hope they do sell, I had a few more bids on my items this morning - currently 22 out of my 44 listed items are due to sell so this is great!

[Decluttering]

Originally Posted by unoriginal_uk

WOW - Had a really amazing money saving two days!!

Found out I won £100 worth of books which I am sending to Fatbrain for money back, then found out I won a competition I found on here for a years free Pizza!

Then today the boyfriend and I went to Bluewater for Xmas shopping and we volunteered at an O2 stand to do a present stacking competition - I won a brand new Ipod and iPhone docking radio/clock speaker station thing worth £50ish!

Had a lucky couple of days! Also lots of my ebay items are on track to sell which is great - and I am about to list a couple of bigger items right now due to the free listing - thanks fedupandskint for highlighting this or I wouldn't have known!

Whoa, what an incredibly lucky couple of days! Congratulations

[specialkaye]

Ten days until a pad paid and i can pay off my student overdraft for good. (it is a free overdraft until next sept so going to keep the card for emergencies until then)

Got 20% to go which is £460 that is currently coming out of my wage but i hope to get this down to 15%.

Got another 1% coming from my last weeks cleaning and 1% from a voucher my mum has bought off me. 3% to find in 10 days.

Hmmm will have to rack my brain for this :/

[unoriginal_uk]

Decluttering I know! I should have played the lottery at the weekend with all my good luck!

Just off to the post office to post my first few successfully sold ebay items I am going to wait until my paypal account says £50, then withdraw it and report back another 1% gained

Specialkaye see if you've got any little items lying around that you could Ebay and list them for 3 day listings - so many people seem to be buying my little 99p items at the moment for xmas presents I guess - so it's a great little money making exercise!