Blinking in the brightness of the lightbulb moment

ZTD

Cat2011 wrote: »

Will have to do it all again in 3 years :S

So you have to renew every three years?

Cat2011 wrote: »

Friday tomorrow!

It is indeedy!

Cat2011

ZTD wrote: »

So you have to renew every three years?

Yep. I did it through RoSPA, where you have to renew every 3, but you can also do it through IAM, where you get a certificate for life.

ZTD

Cat2011 wrote: »

Yep. I did it through RoSPA, where you have to renew every 3, but you can also do it through IAM, where you get a certificate for life.

I don't think I could be 'arrised to do it every three years.

Besides to me, advanced driving is when you make it around the corner with 3 wheels in the air, rather than the usual 2...

Cat2011

Lol, that's true - I'd like to do that kind of advanced driving too . I've been rally driving before which was great fun. Shame I'm not allowed to do that on my commute

Finally got round to trying out some more matched betting. Put down the first bet, then had a horrid thought that I'd forgotten to submit the code required to get the free bet.... but turns out all is well. Then placed the free bet, and my lay wasn't matched. had a minor heart attack, adjusted the odds and managed to get it matched. Didn't cost me much more. I've made quite a few little mistakes, but have been trying very hard to make sure I'm doing everything properly so I'll have no big mistakes! There's a reason Martin has so many warnings on matched betting!

Free ebay this weekend! Going to try and put some more things on. Am aware I have a to-do list knocking about higher up the board, so will try and save time for those things too. Have a bike ride with a friend tomorrow morning, then 2 mystery shops to do. Then wrapping and posting Sat eve. Off on St John duties on Sunday morning, helping with a sea swim. Then will hopefully mow the lawn on Sun afternoon.... breathe and relax Sunday evening??

Been thinking about withdrawing from the race I have in 2 weeks. Training for it hasn't gone well. I hate not finishing things I've started, but I really can't see any pros for racing, and plenty of reasons to not race. Will have to think about it....

Have 14 mystery shops booked for the next 8 days :eek:. 2 are phone calls, so shouldn't be too hard. Have also decided to visit a nearish town on one day and knock out every mystery shop there is in the town!

Quite positive about the money coming in at the moment. Tho would be nice if Amazon got going again

Cat2011

Have checked back on my to-do list. Have failed to mow the lawn and add up the interest on my bank accounts. But have done my driving test and the 3 mystery shops. Awaiting feedback on the shops...

Have 12 shops to do this week! Going to be another busy week. Off to St Johns training Monday night, surveys, house tidying and matched betting on other nights. Also got to fit in Dr Who somehow?! Only just found out it's back on!

I was having a great weekend, then it went a bit wrong. Had a nice cycle with a friend of mine. He's actually the boyfriend of my ex-boyfriends friend. Have done some socialising with him in a group, but not on our own. We had a really good chat over pub lunch after the cycle, it was nice to get to know him a bit better. (purely platonic - no boyfriend-stealing going on!!). Popped off for 2 mystery shops which went ok. Then earnt some money on the laptop in the evening.

Off with St Johns Saturday morning for duties. Always interesting to people watch. Got home at 3pm and just had time to wrap eBay parcels and dash to the post office. Then got on with some more matched betting. I've been building up a stash of money on betfair, and had some bets come through as well, so had £600 on there. Then this evening the site got hacked! Not happy. Looks like it's just a diversion to the hackers webpage, rather than any issue with my account, but rather upsetting all the same. I really don't know what hackers get out of this sort of thing. They were saying "millions of dollars" on their twitter page. Short of some extensive stock market games, I don't see where the money comes from. They just did it for fun, and ruin people like me who are desperately trying to pay off their debt. Grr! :mad: . Hopefully it'll be sorted by tomorrow, and the bets I had on will still go through.

Have got £50 from paypal coming through for eBay sales , but that's all the bank payments so far this week :S . Will lower the amount in the betfair account as soon as it's back up!

Cat2011

My parents brought down my Boots mail when they visited. Finally got round to opening the vouchers and have £33 in points . Also got a load of points vouchers so will try and pop down and use those on some toiletries.

Cat2011

Well, it's been a while since I updated! I haven't had the best week spending-wise. I've got into the habit of buying snacks at teabreaks. I've also been doing stack loads of mystery shopping, partly in my lunch break. So that means I buy a sandwich in town instead of heating up my usual frozen pre-prepared meal. I also went into London at the weekend to see some friends, so spent a bit on that.

Must try harder...

I've used all my Boots vouchers up, and now have enough shampoo and conditioner to last me at least a year!

Mystery shopping has been going well, so at least I've been earning money to cover my spending on lunches.

I've decided to take out the 22mth Barclaycard for a bit of stoozing. Despite all my credit card debt I was given about double the credit limit my other cards let me have?! Which is good for me - but seems crazy. Will add that to my debt once its all gone through.

The sofas arrived on Friday! . Had to make the final payment of £935 . Now that payment has gone out - that'll be my last big spend. If I can kick the habit of buying top-up shops and snacks, I might start making some serious progress. My spending habits are VASTLY improved from when I first had my lightbulb moment.... but I still have more improvements to make...

ZTD

You can always improve.

And always do worse.

Be happy in what you're doing and how far you've come and see more progress as a bonus. Burn out is always something to be mindful of.

But remember the more you update on here, the straighter and narrower you'll become...

Cat2011

ooh. I'd love to be narrower .

Thanks for the words of wisdom . I'll try and stick with the diary, as it really does help.

Cat2011

My last race of the year is finally done and dusted! Yay It went quite well, pleased with my result. Now just have a few fun run races over the winter, and I can crack on with some weights and other stuff to help with my "health goals".

Back to money saving... Barclaycard sorted out my new CC very quickly, it's now all set up, and the balance transfer has been done, so it has been added to my sig. My debt total has taken a pounding by those sofas.... payday Friday.... I'm hoping the balance owed will still be lower than last month, despite the spending on the sofas.... we'll see..

Going to be keeping a spending diary this week I think to help me get my spending back under control. I've done shed loads of MS, but not had any money come through yet. Hopefully that'll happen in the next few weeks.

I'm currently doing a part-time Masters, and my next module started today. That means I'm going to have to spend a lot of my time working on that, so will have less time to focus on money-saving . Hopefully it won't grind to a holt tho.

I've been doing a bit of matched betting, and tried my hand at arbs as well, but I need more time, and a lot more money to get a decent income from it. At the moment my money is better off tucked up in a safe savings account earning interest. So I'm going to extract my money from the bookies and exchanges and get back to the matched betting etc. after the debt is paid off. I have at least £500 tied up, so will be nice to add that to the savings total.