Aspirations of Frugality and Fun on the Road to Mortgage Freedom

DedicatedDFW

Hi all,

sadly no kip for me as i had to pop out to help someone out. came back and showered to wake myself up a bit - didn't work but i did use up 3 small bottles (freebies) and also made sure i used cream and toner and moisturiser and a hair product as well. The 3 freebies were used up entirely :T Other items will take some time but might have the nice side effect of soft skin and hair :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Need to work on assignment and sofa but have lost focus. Am going to relax for an hour and then start typing up to motivate myself. Will also work through the paperwork pile 1 at a time :cool:

PositiveBalance

DedicatedDFW wrote: »

Hey PB

It seems you, me & jwil are all keen on the MB - maybe we need to give ourselves a timeframe to read up on it - and i think this is the most important bit making sure we really understand it and then take the plunge yes i remember hypno she did well both at that and of course the shares

Well, given her profession, if she didn't do well at them, I would have worried! :rotfl: Aw, I really miss her. She's ace. I know she is happy in Debt Free Land now, but I miss her posts on here. :lovethoug

DedicatedDFW wrote: »

I am definitely interested in the shares if you find any info PB i will have a read too - just not when i;m mid assignment stress - i think the decluttering is my means of coping with that :rotfl:

TBH the deculttering is sufficiently stressful on its own for me. Perhaps you don't have as much as I have to get rid of, so it seems less evil. As it is, it's kind of full-on here at the minute. I did really well at the weekend and I have identified things to be decluttered at the minute - things I wouldn't have thought I would be happy to part with, either - but I am, so off they go on their 'holiday to the shop'. (Shh, don't tell them, else they will grab onto the door frame on the way out the front door! :eek:) Today has been slower, partially cos a large amount seems to have been done at once, and secondly because I've got to The Interminable Boxes of Books and this is where it gets *really* hard to get rid of things! :eek: :eek: :eek: I need to be more ruthless, but this is where I find myself thinking 'I don't want to get rid of that in case I want to learn Russian in the future...well, I'll just learn the alphabet for now as it means I can read signs in Cyrillic.' :eek: :eek: :eek: *Danger alert* *Alarm sounds*

It's tough getting rid of my leafy friends! :rotfl:

DedicatedDFW wrote: »

I will let you know on elance too - it will be jotted down in my notebook to look at this weekend if there's time

Thanks, hon: that's very much appreciated!

Good luck with powering through your paperwork declutter! :T

peaceandfreedom

Well, I must say I've thoroughly enjoyed reading all the posts on this thread today, it's been both informative and highly entertaining.

DDFW, I can understand your ambivalence about being clutter-free and therefore losing ebay-potential. But as you've discovered, there are other ways to drum up some cash. I too am interested in the the concept of MB so might join you in discovering how that all works. Though I am a million miles from being clutter-free myself, it's just that when it comes to ebay I get a severe attack of CBA.

However, I am under strict orders from Jwil to put at least one item on ebay, so I'm off to find a camera.

DedicatedDFW

Hi all

PB - i have been actively decluttering for years now so i probably do have less stuff to go through as its been culled about 10 times already - it is hard to do - i meant to ask if you had a stratgy For me i take a piece a paper and write down the room at the top. Then i write down a number followed by an area - so 1, two shelves 2, desk: - top of desk, under desk drawer 1, drawer 2, drawer 3... and so on. I do that at work or on the train etc. i don't refer to the paper again but it seems to focus my mind on working through it all step by step :T

*le sigh* for books - i have done my book shelf again today and parted with 2 books i thought i'd always want to keep. It is hard though. I did exactly that with some personal development books today 'what if i want to complete that in the summer' but they made it to the carboot pile instead :cool: You are doing really well though PB x

P&f - let us know how you get on with bay of e

Chocforever

I have done MBing in the past. Like a lot of MSE things, it's great at first as there are sign up offers and then it gets rather harder and time consuming to make money so I stopped bothering. It is worth doing, though, to get those sign up offers. Most of the websites have new player offers and then if you via TCB, there is an additional commission.

Here are a few points to bear in mind.

You would need some money to get started with which you could tie up for a while. I would say at least £150.

There is a guide to MBing on the first post of that board. It is well worth a read.

You need to have some confidence in your abilities to calculate the odds correctly because you will need to put some bets on for about £100 (the reason this number looks high will become apparent if you decide to take this up). I am sure you are more than capable but if you are unsure, I think it would be hard to actually place the bet.

Because of the sums involved, you need to have time to work out what you are supposed to be doing and to place the bets when you aren't in a mad rush. I would leave this until after the OU course.

KC - I'm wondering what you were betting on if there was a sufficient market to place a bet 3 days in advance. My preference was betting on football and the market never usually got going until Saturday lunchtime unless it was a really big fixture.

Alchemilla

Just popping in to say Hi.
You are super dynamic as usual.

Karmacat

Chocforever wrote: »

You would need some money to get started with which you could tie up for a while. I would say at least £150.

I didn't start with that - I started with £60, I think. Its a while ago tho

There is a guide to MBing on the first post of that board. It is well worth a read.

Its absolutely crucial. You really, really shouldn't rely on somebody with only a little more experience than you, or at the same level as you, there's too many wrinkles - if you want to do MB, you have to join the MB community on that board, honestly.

You need to have some confidence in your abilities to calculate the odds correctly because you will need to put some bets on for about £100 (the reason this number looks high will become apparent if you decide to take this up). I am sure you are more than capable but if you are unsure, I think it would be hard to actually place the bet.

Definitely agree. I wonder if the little software doojimmy that was written is still available? I couldn't have done it without that (written by an MB board member to tell you how much to put on to get the maximum profit).

KC - I'm wondering what you were betting on if there was a sufficient market to place a bet 3 days in advance. My preference was betting on football and the market never usually got going until Saturday lunchtime unless it was a really big fixture.

I did football too, English Premier League, and Spanish and German top divisions. I couldn't always do it 3 days in advance, that was my ideal, especially at first - but the principle of doing it and then going back to it is one I always followed, even if it was only 4 hours later.

Chocforever

KC - you are right; you don't need to start with as much as £150, but the more the better because this allows profit to be maximised on the free bets. I used to bet on the German and Portuguese leagues occasionally. I didn't even recognise some of the cities the teams came from!

I suppose I had the view that I might as well do a few offers at once and bet on the same market etc to save time. That does, of course, tie up more money.

I don't wish to make MBing sound very complicated; it isn't. But there is a significant time investment at the beginning to make sure you get the principle and I have read where people have spent that time but then didn't go into MBing because they didn't feel comfortable with gambling in case something went wrong (and you are having to gamble with some of your own money as well as the free offers). That's fair enough, but it's worth knowing enough to think that through before starting on the MBing guide.

Karmacat

Gotcha, I see where you're coming from with the £150 - I did them one at a time to make sure that if I *did* make a mistake, I didn't make it twice :rotfl:

And yes, like Martin says, its *low* risk, not *no* risk - though once you've made your initial money back, it becomes no risk.

The other thing I did, was what's recommended over there, to use a separate account - it lets you keep account of how much you've made, in a funny sort of way, and it stops you cluttering up your day to day account - because, as Chocforever will also know, there's a *lot* of incomings and outgoings.

jwil

:eek: I think my brain just fried with all the MB talk.

I am going to have to take it slowly if I dip in.