Money Making Ideas

Online surveys and market research

There are plenty of companies willing to pay you for your views and feedback about brands or for telling them about your shopping habits, or even your personal and social habits! MoneySavingExpert.com has a great round up of some of the best: Surveys.

Sell LEGO by weight

Sites such as musicMagpie buy old LEGO by weight, so no need to worry about complete sets. You can sell anything from 500g up to 10Kg. Just put your LEGO bricks into a plastic bag and seal/tie it. Then weigh and round up to the nearest 500g (0.5Kg) and select the weight from the dropdown. You’ll get an instant quote and you can send it for free. Then sit back and receive a same day payment.

Recycle old clothes

High Street favourite H&M has offered an in-store garment recycling service since 2013. They accept clothes by any brand, in any condition at all of their stores. All donations are used somehow and won’t end up in landfill. Simply fill up a standard carrier bag with your unwanted clothing and you’ll get a £5 voucher in return to spend at the store. Win, win.

M&S has an initiative in place with Oxfam. Donate any item of M&S-labelled clothing or soft-furnishings to the charity store and you’ll receive a £5 voucher for Marks & Spencer, which you can use at any participating store when you spend £35 or more. More details here.

Get a current account that pays interest

I really like the Santander 1-2-3 account. It’s a current account, but pays 2% on balances up to £20,000. It also gives you cash back on many household bills and up to 15% cash back when you use the Santander debit card at a range of major retailers. There’s a £4 monthly account fee, but this is more than offset by the cash back you get. In order to qualify, you have to pay at least £500 into your account a month and have two active Direct Debits.

Selling unwanted items 

Facebook is a great platform for selling things you no longer need. There are loads of local selling groups so you can connect easily with people in your area. You’ll also find many selling pages for specific items/categories such as Mini Boden & Joules Children’s Clothes UK  Additionally, there are sites such as Mazuma for selling old mobile phones or tablets and great general selling sites such as Preloved and Gumtree.

Offline, there are plenty of options too. Nearly New Sales or Mum2Mum Markets are great and there are also old school car boot sales.

Money Saving Ideas

Just as important as money making, is money saving! Here are a few ideas…

Refer a friend

You can get money off for yourself and a discount for whoever you’ve referred with lots of businesses/brands such as banks, clothing stores, utility providers and supermarkets. Use ‘Francesca De Franco’ for clothes brand hush to get you £20 off your first order.

The Penny Challenge

A really simple idea… Starting with just 1p, you save money every day for 365 days, going up in increments of a penny each day. So on day one of the challenge you put 1p away, and then on day two 2p, 3p on day three and so on. If you do this for a year you’ll have £667.95 – Skint Dad’s chart helps you keep track – https://skintdad.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Skint-Dad-1p-Saving-Challenge-2022.pdf

Teaching Your Children About the Value of Money

Rotate online supermarket shops 

Sadly, loyalty doesn’t pay. If you have a number of online supermarket accounts chop and change which one you use. Ocado in particular is very good at sending discount voucher codes to lure you back if you haven’t shopped with them in a while.

Saving money on petrol and diesel

Before you next fill up the car, take a quick look on PetrolPrices.com. The site tells you where you can get fuel cheapest in your local area. Prices fluctuate all the time so it’s worth looking regularly. You can make very big savings.

Discounted tickets for Merlin attractions – Alton Towers, Chessington World of Adventures, Legoland…

Kellogg’s cereal boxes regularly have vouchers giving one free adult entry with another full-paying adult or child for Merlin attractions. We recently redeemed two at Legoland so my husband and I got in for free. However, the three childrens’ tickets were still £180. I’ve since discovered there are better bargains to be had on eBay. Just do a search on the site and you’ll get an array of ticket sellers (many tickets are for specific days).

Kids Pass – a digital membership platform – offers discounts at cinemas, attractions and restaurants across the UK (and even on UK and European holidays). You can try it out for £1 here.

Online discount vouchers

Before you click ‘pay’ and make that online purchase, always look for online discount coupons for the site in question. Daily Mail, Voucher codes and Voucher Cloud are some of the best. However, it’s worthwhile Googling the name of the retailer followed by ‘voucher code’ or ‘discount code’ and seeing what comes up. You might get a few duff ones/expired ones, but it’s worth persevering. I’ve found codes for everything from chocolates to a garden shed! I’ve signed up to a number of voucher sites so get alerted when a new one becomes available for brands I’m interested in.

Prepay

I’m always remembering birthdays at the last minute so Funky Pigeon is a frequent port of call for me as it is so fast and efficient. What I particularly like is you can load up credit and get bonus credit added. If you prepay £5 you get £1.25 added to your account balance for free; £10 and you get £2.50 and with £20 you get £5.

Switching utility providers

If you’re not on a fixed-term contact, regularly check whether there are better deals out there. USwitch is brilliant for this. Obviously, this also applies when you’re coming towards the end of your fixed contract. Make sure that you’re not going to be automatically rolled over onto a less-attractive deal with your existing provider and shop around.

I’m with Octopus who will gift you £50 credit (and me) if you sign up using this link.

Cheaper meals out

Save money on a meal by booking a table through an e-commerce site such as Groupon or Bookatable. There are some great deals out there.

Car and home insurance

When my renewal quote is sent for car and home insurance I always hit GoCompare immediately as the renewal price is always higher than the previous year (without any claims).

I’ve discovered there’s no point in going to your existing provider first to get a better quote; you have to call them armed with a list of alternative providers that can offer the same cover cheaper. Almost always they’ll then price match or even undercut. If they don’t then just swap, it’s very straight forward.

Saving money on your will

If you’ve not made a will, try and schedule it in the month of November with a solicitor that’s taking part in Will Aid. It will save you A LOT of money. Here’s what you need to know. 

Discounts for multiples

If you have twins, triplets or more then a membership to Twins Trust offers a whole host of benefits including great discounts at a wide range of high street retailers. Lots of independents offer special discounts too; usually because they have a multiples connection! Independent Usborne book seller Fiona also offers a twins and multiples discount. 

National Trust membership  

Entry fees for a family of five at a local attraction can easily cost in excess of £50 and something such as Legoland is a whopping £60 per person! On the other hand, National Trust membership for one adult and up to 10 children costs £78 a year and for two adults and up to 10 children is £126 a year (under 5s are free). This can be paid in monthly instalments and gives access to over 500 NT venues and includes free parking. Also check out National Trust Holidays.

Would love to hear about your money making and money saving ideas. Please comment below.

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Pocket Money Habits

She was asking as they currently give £1 a week but were informed by their daughter that ALL her friends got more.

There were a variety of responses including:

• My two get £2 per week which they can spend on anything they like. If they don’t do their jobs and keep their rooms tidy, it goes down…..

• Only in return for little jobs like clearing the dinner table, plumping the sofa cushions (!) and making sure he wipes away the toothpaste from the sink bowl.

• My daughter has £3 a week (when we remember!). She has 3 money boxes, £1 each: One for spending, one for sharing and one for saving. But if I’m buying a magazine or something for her brother and she wants one, I’ll substitute the spending £1 for that. She saved £42 of her spending one to buy a suitcase from Smiggle!

• Emily earns money for good behaviour; she normally gets between £2-£3 a week.

• They only get money if they do extra jobs ie hoover car/stairs. Hence they don’t get money every week!

goHenry

Then someone mentioned goHenry cards. They said they found them good as they give an idea of what the going rate is for certain age groups.

I immediately looked into it.

We’ve just received Sofia’s card and she could not be more excited. We haven’t learnt the full ins and outs yet, but it’s for children aged 6-18, and essentially you have parental control of a pre-paid card and app. I fund my own linked account and then can automatically transfer a set amount of weekly pocket money on the proviso that chores are done. I can also do one-off transfers and take money out of her account. Sofia can use the card at cashpoints to withdraw money and can use it as a debit card in shops. I can set a maximum spend per month and there are loads of features such as charting spending versus saving.

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Personal Savings Allowance

From April 6th 2016, basic rate taxpayers (those with taxable income of between £17,000 and £43,000 a year) will be able to earn up to £1,000 in savings income tax free. Savings income means interest from banks and building society accounts, credit unions and National Savings and Investments. This is called the Personal Savings Allowance (PSA). Those earning between £43,001 and £150,000 will still have a Personal Savings Allowance of £500 per year.

ISAs and Savings Accounts

ISAs (Individual Savings Accounts) are tax-efficient savings vehicles. The allowance for the 2015/2016 tax year is £15,240 and this total can be invested in a cash ISA, Investment ISA or a combo of the two. This means you can invest up to this amount without paying a penny of tax on your interest. Great right? Well kind of. The best rate on an easy access cash ISA at the moment is 1.45%. That’s pretty rubbish.

I have a cash ISA but was so disappointed by the plummeting interest rate that I looked for something else. I found the Santander 1-2-3 account to be brilliant. It’s not actually a savings account, it’s a current account (so money is not locked in), but it pays 3% on balances over £3000 (just the sort of sum you might have earmarked for an ISA). There’s a £5 monthly account fee, but this can be offset by the cash back that the account gives you on many household bills. I really love it and it’s doing a lot more than my ISA. However, I, like other basic rate tax payers, am currently paying 20p in every pound on any interest I make.

Children and Saving

I’m trying to get my children into the saving habit. We’re currently doing the 365-day penny challenge, which you can read all about on my blog for Habyts.

Further information can be found at GOV.UK

Savings accounts for children

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