My diary - over 50k of debt to clear!!

14/05/17 and 15/05/17

Not much done on Sunday due to setup problems with my new iphone - indeed Sunday and Monday are best filed under the heading 'trials and tribulations'.

Despite not managing to get my iphone properly set up over the course of the two days I have managed to complete some surveys and do two mystery shops. I have done two more on Monday but they require me to use a scanner. Unfortunately my scanner is apparently not compatible with windows 10, which is what's installed on my new laptop and so I can't scan the necessary documents in until I get to work on Tuesday. They were two pretty demanding mystery shops as well and I had to speak to the co-ordinator a few times through the course of the day so I'm pretty sure they're fed up of hearing from me now! It's all a learning curve though.

I've put an add on freebay to see if anyone has a windows 10 compatible scanner/printer that they want rid of but not holding out much hope. You never know though! I'd rather not keep using the one in work as it'll get questioned eventually.

On Sunday night I registered for loads of focus group companies - now going through the emails they've sent me to look at the opportunities on offer. Hoping to find some online or telephone based ones as I don't think there's a huge amount of focus groups going on here in North Wales!

No mystery shops scheduled for Tuesday, going to focus on the full time job, completing some more surveys and hopefully getting my iphone to work. Then I'm hoping I'll be able to hit the app tasks with vengeance!

Probably going to look at scheduling my weeks a bit better going forward as well so that I manage to spend enough time looking for money earning opportunities, doing the full time job, performing any money earning tasks and having some time to relax. After today I certainly feel like I need it!

Wishing you all a good evening :-)

17/05/17

I could call today's diary 'the mystery shop burn'! This isn't because I was rumbled as a mystery shopper but because on one of the tasks I was doing today I actually got a slight burn from a food item that seemed to have what I can only describe as molten lava on it! I kept to the mystery shopper code and didn't complain in store about this, it still hurts now though!

I'm starting to see some more mystery shopper opportunities come up near me so I've applied for a couple, I'm loving the auto-accepts on them as well - does make me wonder what the point of having an application process is though if simply registering interest is enough???

My new iPhone was officially pronounced dead today - turns out that it has some issues not contained in the original ebay listing - negative feedback will be left to this affect. The good thing is though that my mother, I think due to frustration at not being able to contact me for a week has bought me an Iphone 5s - it's due to arrive on Friday so it looks like I will have an even better phone soon. This one comes with a 12 month warranty and is confirmed as being unlocked. I shall put the other phone on ebay and use whatever I raise to treat mother to something nice as a thank you.

The only responses to my advert looking for a windows 10 printer for free on freebay have been from people trying to sell me one...not sure if this is entirely within the spirit of freebay! I have seen one on ebay for a tenner in the local area which looks like it would be up to the job - but I am a bit burned (again!) by my ebay experience with the iphone so not sure whether to use the £30 cashback I've just had from quidco to buy a cheap printer instead.

In more positive news my lodger has just paid me some rent. So I have £400 ready to go into the bank account tomorrow - my hope is that I'll be able to put all of this into the America fund but I'm hedging my bets until the end of the month when I'll be announcing the grand total saved so far right here!

Surveys have been quiet today although I have had some submissions approved on prolific so I'm only £7 short of a £20 withdrawal now. Qmee is also helping throw in some additional pennies, it's particularly keen on recommending phone cases to me at the moment for my now dead phone!

Just had a look at the tasks that I'd set myself for this week and so far I've only done two of them which were to read Katy Kickers excellent blog (can we rename it to that Katy? Calling it Excellent sounds good...haha!) and of course completing this diary. I have done an additional item though which is register for uTest - hoping to work through it a bit more over the weekend and get my head around it as there's a lot more to take in.

I'm also due to have my lionbridge exam next week but things have quiet on that front so I think I'll get in touch with them if I've heard nothing from them tomorrow.

There were other things I was going to type about but my mind's gone blank - a sure sign that I need to stop thinking about money and start thinking about relaxing...

Hope you're all having a good evening