Decorating

I cannot believe that I have been looking around my house thinking that some of it needs decorating. We decorated the whole house this time last year and some rooms need doing again - I guess that it what happens when you have young children. i am pleased with how much better it is looking but it is annoying how shabby it can look and so very quickly afterwards. I think we will need to get the builders finished first and that is a big challenge. Then I will need to see how much money I have left. I will not be buying anything extravagant or even anything cheap really, no Hinkley lights or anything like that but I will need paint and brushed if I want to brighten the place up. Perhaps finding the energy to paint might be harder than finding the money!

Wow - I won!

I like supporting the boys school and ended up buying a lot of raffle tickets for the Easter draw. I was really hoping that I would win the top prize because it was worth about what I spent on tickets and after donating, gifts and cakes and chocolate to the Easter sale I thought I deserved a prize! I was thrilled to find out that not only had I won the top prize, but also a second prize and my Mother-in-law won a prize. I was so pleased, not only that I had won but that my giving to the school had been so worthwhile and I got something back from it.

Easy Way to Earn

If you love doing surveys then YouGov is a great way of earning money. They will email you when they have a survey available which normally is a couple a month. You get paid about 50p - £1 per survey but they do not take long, they are fun and the results are often published in the press which is nice. Once you have earned £50 you can claim a cheque payment and although it does take a long time, it is great to get a lump sum like this every so often.

Saving Money

I have been trying to think of a few way to save money as next month we are likely to be a bit short. I will be earning less because the children are on holiday from school, we are investing in some shares and my husband has not been on call so will not get an extra. I think we have trimmed all of our outgoings quite well over the years by getting cheap mortgage, home insurance, car insurance, utilities and things like that. It tends to be food that costs so much and I shop in Waitrose because it is close by so that works out dear. I may try to use up some of the stock cupboard, although there is not much in there and I am trying to eat less so that might help!

Environmental Opportunities for Businesses

Many Businesses would like to be more environmentally friendly but do not know how. It can be seen as something that would be expensive and time consuming and admittedly some environmentally changing things are. However, http://www.nviro.com/ is a company which can help companies with this problem. They have come up with methods of turning waste to energy meaning that you can use waste products form your business as a source of renewable energy. This is something which can not only avoid landfill but also make better fuel often known as clean coal. Renewable energy incomes in many forms and this is a great one, so why not contact the company and enquire about their opportunity fuels.

Spend, Spend, Spend

I seem to be spending a lot of money out at the moment. It is mainly on the children's school. they have brought home raffle tickets and I have joined the school 50:50 club. Hopefully I might get something back from my 'investment' but at least the money is going towards a good cause. My husband was going to buy some shares in the company he works for We bought some last year and so far they have tripled in value so I hope it will be a worthwhile investment. It is a good deal as if the value goes below what you pay then you get your money back after 3 years so you cannot lose really.

Bathroom Blues!

My bathroom work is still going on. I have no idea how much it will cost after all of these delays. I keep putting all my savings aside just in case, I now have the original £7500 quoted plus £3500 contingency and am not tucking any money away just in case we need it. Hopefully it will be completed soon and I can pay for the job and see how much I have left to invest.

Exercise savings

I have incresed my exercise recently and am really pleased with teh results. My body has not changed significantly apart from looking more toned and I feel more energised. My friend has been training and is aware of her muscles making her look too masculine and is using the super pump 250. She wants to just looked toned like me and so I have suggested she stops paying out money for the gym and just buys an exercise bike and does a nit in the evenings like I do and walks more - it tones me up without making me look like a man and it saves me money too.

Saving money on medication

My father was telling me that he has found a website where he can get cheap hemorrhoidal creams. Luckily this is not something that I need to buy but he was saying that it was well worth looking around because you can save money on all sorts of things by buying on line. I am not too keen on buying medication over the Internet but he assured me that he had given the site a proper look over and was very confident that it was a good one and that the products were genuine and good quality. I am glad he was careful and pleased that he has found a way to save money.

Cheap Diets

Sometimes I do wonder whether diet aid products are worth while. If you change to a healthy diet and exercise more you should be able to lose weight. If you pay extra money for a diet aid of some sort then you may find that you have less money left over to pay for the healthy foods and gym membership. It is worth having a think about the changes you want to make and how much they will cost you before you start and then you will be able to calculate where the best places are to spend your money.

Cheap Acne Products

I am looking for some good quality acne cream at the moment. I still get spots even though I am in my later thirties and so I need something which does not dry my skin out too much but will help my spots too. It is very hard to find a product which is not aimed at teenagers and also not too expensive. I may have to search on line as the high street shops do not seem to have anything.

Health Costs

I am worried about my sister as she is taking no prenatal vitamins. I know that she does not have that much money to play with but I woudl have thought that the health of her unborn child would have been enough to have made her take them. I do hope that everything will be okay, especially as she is getting older and that obviously carries risks too.

Money!

We now have almost £40,000 invested in premium bonds. This is the money we have saved up towards paying back out £100,000 mortgage. I am confident that we are half way there now because we have some money tied up in a bond and some invested in shares as well as some in our savings account and so I am sure we could find £50,000 if we tried hard. It is exciting to be at this half way mark and I am hoping that we will be able to start getting much closer to paying it off soon.

Holidays

My husband is turning 40 this year and really wanted an Orlando vacation. He wanted to treat the boys to some fun and have a really memorable time. I have talked him out of it though, for several reasons. Firstly, I think the children are too young to remember the trip so I am not convinced it is worth doing until they are a bit older. Also the alternative holiday I have planned is a third of the price and I think will be much more relaxing for me and just as much fun for the children.

Survival

Sometimes I think that the only businesses making serious money are those that are selling necessary services and goods and companies like the motorcycle accident lawyer and that sort of company. I think with people being short of money, they are using companies like this to supplement their income and well done to them for setting up and being able to be successful in an environment which is tricky for most people.

Silly Spending

I cannot say strongly enough that in this tough financial time we should really be watching our spending. I was hearing about someone last night who has just bought a new business and has been pouring money in to it and I am really worried. They have not only refurbished the work shop and office, bought new office furniture and computers and hired some staff but are also upgrading machinery and have no customers yet. They have even turned down some business. It is fun running a business but you need to remember that the novelty will soon wear off if you are not making money out of it.

Expenses

I have a friend who runs a business and they have just bought a epson receipt printer. It makes me feel lucky that my business no longer costs me very much money at all. By being a freelance writer there are no overheads, apart from the computer which I would want anyway and so it is worry free. When you have lots of stock sitting around, you have to not only worry about cash flow but also storage and this is no longer a problem for me.

Book sales

I was amazed last week and actually sold one of the Amazon books I have up for sale. It would be great if I could sell all of that stock I have sitting around. I probably have a few hundred pounds worth. I would love to be selling books again really but there still seems to be no profit in it, which is such a shame as I liked it so much. I will still keep checking though and maybe one day I will be able to go back to it again.

February Earnings

Pay to Blog - £16.50
PayU2Blog - £16.50
Writing - £142.00
Article Writing - £142.00
Other - £69.16
Link Sales - £3.44
Quidco - £5.11
Google Adsense - £60.61

Making a grand total of £227.66

Quidco Comes up Trumps Again!

My husband just got a payout from Quidco. He joined up and changed his car insurance to a new company, going through Quidco. He got £65 cashback (of which Quidco took their £5 one off membership fee) and he has had the rest paid in to the bank account. Fantastic!