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

LordNolo

Hi all

My first attempt at doing a diary of this nature so any and all feedback welcome

Thanks to the support of the money shed and MSE I have now started my journey into the world of saving and earning money over and above my normal income!

A bit about me first - I'm 32, work full time, live in North Wales (which I love!), have more debt than you can shake a very big stick at and am single with no kids.

My main objectives for being on here are as follows:

1. Save money for a trip to America in August (I aim to put aside £2000 in May, June, July and August to do this!).
2. After I have had my trip to America I aim to start putting money into an emergency fund with a target of £3000 in mind.
3. Hit the magical figure of earning £1000 a month each month on top of my wages, after tax, without doing any matched betting!
3. Once I have put my emergency fund in place I then aim to save enough to pay off my hire purchase agreement (currently about £13,500 and my biggest monthly expenditure after the mortgage). By the time I've completed objectives 1 and 2 the monthly payments I am making on my HP will have chipped away a bit at the outstanding balance so I'm hoping that by overpaying each month I'll get the balance to zero in no time.
4. Move on to tackle other debts (I'm just about to enter a Debt Management Plan for these).
5. Once all debts are cleared I then plan on making over payments on my mortgage with the aim of being mortgage free by 50 (current mortgage deal runs until I'm 62).

So some ambitious targets there but I find that if I have set goals in mind it gives me something positive to work towards.

Thanks for reading and I hope you all enjoy the journey that we're about to go on together.

:-)

LordNolo

So obviously I can't do any of the above without taking action. Over the last few days I've been gradually marshalling my resources and have done the following after some excellent advice from the money shed (by the way you'll learn I love a good list!!)

1. Signed up for the following survey sites:
- Global test market
- Prolific Academic (can't recommend this one enough!)
- IPSOS-i-say
- Mysurvey
- Opinion Outpost
- Mintvine
- Panelbase
- Yougov
- Populus live
- Pinecone
- E4S
- Surveyyeah
- Valued opinions
- a couple of others but can't remember which ones!
2. Signed up for some pay as you click sites (not such a fan of these though, lots of work for little reward I feel)
- inbox pounds
- swagbucks
3. Downloaded Qmee
4. Taken in a lodger (£400 a month so a good way towards my £1000 a month target).
5. Become a mystery shopper for the following:
GFK
mysteryshoopers.co.uk
ESA retail
tern.co.uk
reactsurveys.co.uk
Market force
6. Applied to my local council to be a poll clerk during the general election (they've added me to their database so fingers crossed).
7. Applied for jobs with Appen Butler Hill (not heard back from them in the 3 weeks since applying though), applied for a job with Lionbridge and have been pencilled in to take an exam with them after the 22nd of May. I've also applied to be a social research interviewer which I am waiting to hear back on.
8. Downloaded bemyeye, streetbees and streetspotr.
9. Following reading Jon's excellent earning money from home toolkit and some research on hotukdeals I have won an auction for an Iphone 5c 8gb on ebay for the princely sum of £31 (fingers crossed it comes through and works ok!) so that I can start using field agent and to replace my smartphone which only charges up when it wants to! I have also ordered a new laptop as the screen on this one only works when it wants to (my technology has a mind of it's own!). Ordered this through the amazon warehouse and got an extra 20% off thanks to hotukdeals pointing out the details of the offer so my new laptop has cost me £168.23. Not bad for something with an HD screen, windows 10, 8gb of RAM and a 1 TB hard drive (they still have some reply here if you want the details).

Things I am considering doing next:

1. Applying to Leapforce (although not sure I can do this if I've got an application with lionbridge going through - any advice?)
2. Starting a blog/videoblog (I enjoy writing and have a lot to say!)
3. Completing my applications to emarket research and greatcontent.co.uk.
4. Reading through KatyKickers excellent blog to get more tips!
5. I have been sucessful in napplying to be a facilitator for idea connection. I want to understand a bit more about what this means in practice.
6. Daily updates on my diary

Thanks all for reading and here's to our continued success and happiness!

LordNolo

One point I missed off the above is that I'm also considering selling things at carboot sales. Has anyone any experience they could share with me of buying and selling at carboots?

Earnings diary 08/05/17:

1. Withdrew £11.50 from Bemyeye - goes straight into mother's paypal account as I'm paying £100 a month to her for some money she loaned me a couple of years back. This is actually coming off next month's total as I've already paid this month so it's nice to get a head start!
2. Had an £8 mystery shop on Bemyeye approved - can't withdraw this yet but it will go to Mother at some point soon!

That was it for earnings - the rest of the day was focused on doing the day job and signing up for as many mystery shopping sites as I could!

LordNolo

Earning diary 09/05/17.

Did a few tasks today.

3 tasks via streetspotr - these were all about taking pictures of the tariff boards and menu boards in McDonalds and Burger King. Unfortunately neither of the two burger kings near me had a tariff board on display, so I've fed this back to streetspotr - I hope I still get paid as it was £4.50 for all 3 of the tasks and I purchased a drink at £0.99 from burger king so want some money to cover that!!

Also did a mystery shopping task for GFK - £3.00 hopefully for this one.

This evening I have to help my lodger find a Dr and a Dentist and have dinner - so i will probably just do a couple of surveys this afternoon if I get the chance.

Wishing you all well

moneyfacts

Hi.
£50k is a considerable amount of money, have you considered not going on holiday this year and selling your car to buy a cheaper one?

Clearly it's your journey, however presumably your debts have come from over spending and to truly tackle it, you should be living within your means

LordNolo

Hi.

Thanks for reading :-)

Unfortunately the car is worth less than the level of outstanding debt on it at the minute. So not an option. Holiday is already paid for, the 2000 is to make sure air have sufficient spending money when over there (hoping to spend less than half that but air want a safety net just in Case!) My spending has been out of control this year so have now had my light bulb moment and realised I have to stop spending money like I have been. The next few years will all be about reducing expenditure!

Cheers Nolo

LordNolo

10/05/17

So my tasks on streetspotr got rejected :-( Photos too blurry apparently. However, my bargain priced Iphone has arrived in the post today so will retry my streetspotr activities with that tomorrow.

Did some mystery shopping today - £26 in all. Hopefully all of the submissions will get approved and I'll start building towards my America target! Once I've started receving payments into my bank account I will start reporting progress against my ambutious £2000 target. Hopefully I should have some good progress to report by the end of the month. Managed to do a couple of surveys today as well but haven't had as much time as I'd like to do these due to having to focus on the full time job and also going for a run this evening. I'm also working on improving my physical fitness alongisde my financial fitness so hopefully in 12 months time I'll be like a new person!

I signed up for a few more mystery shopping sites last night and plan to register with a few more this evening. I'm also going to spend a bit of time playing games on the xbox as I think it's important to have a bit of me time that's not about fitness or money

I hope you all have lovely evenings

LordNolo

11/05/17

Haven't done anything in terms of money earning today really - focus today has been on my full time job and making sure that I've done everything I need to do for that as my boss comes back from holiday next week. This should free up some time for me over the weekend to do a couple more mystery shops, some more surveys and to enjoy the local music festival that's going on in the town.

The good thing about today was that it was a non-spending day - so hasn't cost me anything! I was also able to pay some money into my new bank account and that went through ok so all seems to be up and running. One slightly frustrating element of today was that my sim card doesn't fit in my new iphone - so a quick phone call to o2 means that a new sim card is in the post for me. Hopefully it should arrive soon and I can get cracking on fieldagent and task360.

Had a few acceptances in the inbox today from mystery shopper companies that I've signed up with so will spend this evening looking through what opportunities they have in my area - I aim to spend a bit time planning out next week as well so that I can try and take advantage of at least one mystery shopping opportunity a day. As I'm a project manager in my day job I'm hoping that I should be pretty good at planning!

Also thanks to the money shed I've now been able to sign up to roamler - so am going to spend some time playing with that this evening and see how I get on.

May not have time to do a diary tomorrow or Saturday but will certainly be back for Sunday.

All the best :-)

enthusiasticsaver

When is your DFD? I hope you are doing your DMP through stepchange and not one of those companies which charge.

Can you pinpoint what you are been overspending on?

Using £2k to go on holiday and paying £200 for a new laptop and iPhone makes me wonder if you really have had your LBM but I sense you will justify it by saying the holiday is already paid for and the new toys were discounted and will be useful for surveys etc.

Taking in a lodger is a good move.

LordNolo

Hi

Thanks for replying. The 2k is a target, I'm not saying that's what I will spend just want to see if it is achievable:-) I find having an ambitious target to aim for keeps me motivated.

I traded in my old phone and got £54 for it. So after purchasing the iphone I still have £13 left over which is good :-) The repair cost for my old laptop that I was quoted was £110 so decided that rather than pay that and risk something else going wrong it was better to invest in something that has a warranty on it. It'll be essential as well if I am successful in my job application with lionbridge (fingers Crossed!)

I am indeed with stepchange, a couple of the figures on the dmp are incorrect though so just waiting for confirmation that they've updated it so I can see what my debt free date is :-)

Thanks for reading.

LordNolo

12/05/17

Spent the day balancing work and running around the town doing mystery shops! Managed to complete £35 worth of mystery shops so hopefully a bit more towards my America fund. Did a couple of surveys just to build up my points balances. Hopefully I will be approaching cashout on a couple of sites soon. Also logged into quidco and saw I have £30 of cashback outstanding so I'll be claiming that!

Got a baby shower on the Saturday so don't think there's much to do (I'm very modern in that I get invited to these traditionally women only events!).

Also due to get some money from my lodger over the weekend when he returns from his trip to Liverpool. It's much needed!

All the best.