Blinking in the brightness of the lightbulb moment

Cat2011

Oooh. Got my first mystery shop! Not til next Tuesday - but will earn me a tenner

Cat2011

Upadated sig after payday - Yay - under the 8k mark :j !

Have the parents visiting this weekend, so will hopefully not spend too much money. Will try and get some more eBay sales up. Amazon is going slowly, but have sales every now and then. Still waiting for funds from recycling a mobile and payout from surveys.

Still feel like I'm not earning enough. Have my last race in September, then can cut back the training. So can hopefully apply for a second job around then to bring in a few more pennies. Would be good timing to get some Christmas work .

Edit - decided to keep track of the balance each month, as sig keeps changing I'm never sure how much I've actually paid off. I should probably have a spreadsheet for this...
Anyway - After August payday. Balance = -£7438.81

Cat2011

Parents have now left! Was lovely to see them. We had a nice saunter round a local tourist spot, and went out for dinner last night. My food was good, but my parents food was pretty rubbish, and then they gave as an incorrect bill, so had to complain about that too. Not the best meal out! They helped me to take apart an old wardrobe - I nearly died putting it together by myself when I moved, so didn't dare take it apart by myself! I thought about selling it on, but it was seriously tatty and I'd have felt bad giving it to someone else, so it got broken up and taken to the tip. At least now I have more room in the hallway . (The wardrobe had been replaced by a much better one in one of the bedrooms, so had been sat in the hallway for the last 6 months!)

I lent my bike rack to my housemate, meaning I had to attach the new straps that I bought for it several months ago, so glad that job is done now! Still need to get parts to fix my other bike rack tho . Parents are kindly giving me a set of panniers for my bike for my birthday, so I can cycle to work/gym more easily.

Have posted another Amazon parcel, up to £20 now, which will be paid out on Tuesday :T

Got the money for recycling my phone with no fuss. £12.70 from that :T. Still waiting for the survey payout, think that's coming in about a week.

Have relisted everything not sold on eBay, and will search the house for more things to refill my "eBay box".

To do list this bank holiday weekend/week, both life-things and money-making-things:

• Visit car boot sale, volunteering with St Johns
• Mow lawn
• Put out bins
• Empty at least 1 box in the box room (called that due to the number of boxes in there.... rather than the size ) - hopefully find some things to eBay
• Take Advanced Driving Test :eek:
• Dispose of Christmas Tree (yes. really...)

• List at least 10 things on eBay
• Work out how much interest I've been paid on my bank accounts (for my tax return)
• Three mystery shops

Have finally checked the last few months statements for my fuel spend for my car. Last 4 months were £166, £146, £106, £108. Think the last 2 months are lower due to not having done a huge journey, rather than using less fuel due to driving better/filling up at cheaper places etc. . Think my estimate of £150/mth is about right tho.

Nearly filled my Santander account (it pays 5% up to 2.5k), once it reaches 2.5k, will transfer any excess savings into my ISA. Will hopefully have just about filled my ISA by April 2012 .

THREE mystery shops have now been booked in - after saying it was a non-starter! :rotfl:
Quite scared - hopefully it'll all go ok, and they'll keep coming in, as earning about £10 a time

clippy_girl

hi cat, have you checked out the mystery shopping thread on here? there are lots of companies you can sign up to on the first page (the more the better!)

Cat2011

Thanks for the info clippy, hadn't actually checked it out - will do tho. As the more you're signed up to the more you get and all that . Looked at your sig and we're pretty similar (once I've added the £1200 for the sofa that I'm paying for in a few weeks :S ) . Fancy a race?! :P

Have FINALLY got round to cutting the limbs off our (real) Christmas Tree.... It's been sat in the shed for the last 8 months - with all needles still attached! Think they must have used super glue. Trimmed all the branches off and into my green box ready for collection and took the trunk to the local recycling centre. They took the wood, but couldn't leave the binbag of paper I also took down as the skip was full! Grr! So polluted the environment instead by driving all the way down there and back. .

Swear I'm going to be having nightmares tonight about a limbless Xmas tree attacking me after being so brutal to it....

ZTD

Cat2011 wrote: »

Have FINALLY got round to cutting the limbs off our (real) Christmas Tree.... It's been sat in the shed for the last 8 months - with all needles still attached! Think they must have used super glue.

That's fantastic - what variety was that?

Cat2011 wrote: »

Trimmed all the branches off and into my green box ready for collection and took the trunk to the local recycling centre. They took the wood, but couldn't leave the binbag of paper I also took down as the skip was full!

And nobody had any matches?

Cat2011

Cat2011 wrote: »

• [STRIKE]Visit car boot sale, volunteering with St Johns[/STRIKE] DONE. Only had 2 casualties, and a kid that wanted a go in the ambulance. Spent a lot of time wandering round, and got told how to prep the ambulance for duties. All interesting stuff
• Mow lawn
• [STRIKE]Put out bins[/STRIKE] DONE. Tho think they'll actually be collected tomorrow due to the BH
• [STRIKE]Empty at least 1 box in the box room (called that due to the number of boxes in there.... rather than the size ) - hopefully find some things to eBay[/STRIKE] DONE. Emptied a box that I'd packed 10 yrs ago. Found the cork from the champagne bottle opened on my 18th . eBayed the things I didn't want.
• Take Advanced Driving Test :eek:
• [STRIKE]Dispose of Christmas Tree (yes. really...)[/STRIKE] DONE. Finally!

• [STRIKE]List at least 10 things on eBay[/STRIKE]. Listed 19 (!) and relisted 24
• Work out how much interest I've been paid on my bank accounts (for my tax return)
• Three mystery shops

Checked out matched betting again now that the football season is back, but don't have enough money in the bank account to get a kitty together, so will wait til some money clears and then have another look.

Checked out the Mystery Shopper thread and saw a load more places to sign up to. Managed to sign up to ONE tonight! Takes so long to apply, and do all the quizzes etc. Will work on getting signed up to others. Tho the one I applied for had lots of jobs, and I've picked 2, so will hopefully get those...

Really busy this week with work, driving test, mystery shops.... hoping I've not taken on too much

Cat2011

ZTD wrote: »

That's fantastic - what variety was that?



And nobody had any matches?

Not sure which variety - it was from Homebase, and said it wouldn't drop its needles. After having to empty the hoover 11 times clearing up the needles last year (it was a particularly rubbish hoover) I vowed to get a better tree! Love the smell of them, so couldn't bear to fake it.

Lol - I would have had a bonfire if I was at my parents home, but my back garden is really small, so I would probably have set fire to the house :eek:

Cat2011

Woohoo! My friend has finally paid up for the trip to Austria. That's another £308 for the kitty .

Had my last observation session for my advanced driving today. Things went ok, I'm not too good at the running commentary tho. Test tomorrow morning... :S

Cat2011

Yay! Passed my advanced driving test . And got Silver. Really pleased . It went quite well except for a couple of whoopsies... but he said I was very good the majority of time. Asked me a few theory questions at the end which was quite scary. Will have to do it all again in 3 years :S

Finally got the £9.80 for surveys through. Will add that to the sig.

Have now signed up to 18 mystery shop sites! Half of them probably won't ever give me anything, but some are starting to pay off. Have 6 mystery shops booked in the next couple of weeks, with a few more awaiting approval. Nice to be earning some extra money.

Friday tomorrow!