I Earned £1 in Ten Seconds!

Haha, that title sounds like a dodgy ad! :)

We've just got back from Tesco. It's one of the big ones with chained trolleys that you have to inset £1 to use. (Good way of getting around these if you've forgotten your £1 is to use the trolleys with the baby seats, which don't have the chain! Although then it makes you look like you've left a baby somewhere...)

Anyway, I was taking my trolley back to the park, when I noticed a lone trolley sitting in the trolley park. Someone had used both of the "starter" chains to start two lines of small trolleys, and this big trolley wouldn't fit. Did that mean... Yes! IT STILL HAS £1 IN IT! :D

I shoved my little trolley into the others and collected my £1 (it's actually a fake one from Morrisons that I "borrowed" from my Dad a couple of years ago!). Then I ran with the big trolley, past the car where The Boyfriend was waiting, waiving excitedly. In ten seconds, I had the trolley parked and had earned my £1!

FREE money is the BEST! :D

I wish I could get that rate of return all the time. £360 per hour! Not bad!

What NOT to Buy for University

I'm writing this whilst “packing” for our big move to Bristol and post-graduate studies. (This has involved several hours of surfing the net and very little putting stuff in boxes!) We're moving on Thursday so by the time you read this I'll be up to my eyeballs in cardboard. Wish us luck!

Going to University for the first time can be very expensive. People keep reminding you of things you will need, like duvet covers and shampoo. Most are things you've probably never bought before and the cost of buying the furnishings of a complete new life might be quickly mounting up!

Good news: you don't need to buy most of this stuff!

People go crazy buying hundreds of pounds worth of kitchen stuff equipment they'll never actually use and all the latest gadgets! Don't do it!

Here's a handy list of stuff you probably WON'T need to shell out for:

• Pens and stationery – You will get A LOT of free pens during the first weeks of Uni. Hundreds of companies line the walls of the Freshers Fayre, eager to give you pens as a way for you to remember them. (Barclays bank also give out free pens in their branches – jus' sayin'!) You can easily hoard enough pens/erasers/calendars etc. to last the year. Get anything else you need from a cheap supermarket when you get there. Don't buy fancy stuff - it'll just get slung into your bag anyway!
  
  
• Kitchen stuff – If you are in self-catered accommodation, wait until you get there before buying pots and pans! I found that EVERYONE turns up with 3 saucepans, a frying pan and enough cutlery to sink a ship. There's usually not even enough storage for it all! Check to see what you all have, then share the use of the equipment. Offer to cook them a meal for use of their saucepan! I would say to bring your own tupperware though, because people seem to be incapable of washing it properly.
  
  
• Laptop – Most people arrive at Uni with a shiny new laptop. If you don't have one, don't spend £400 of your student loan before you even arrive! (DON'T get a tablet - it's just asking to be nicked/dropped/beer spilled over). All universities have multiple computer labs dotted around campus, or you could pick up a second hand one very cheaply on eBay or even fairly often on Freecycle. You'll probably only need an old-ish one for using the internet, typing essays and the odd spreadsheet. (If you are studying any intensive-graphics course, for example The Boyfriend's architecture course, you will probably need a more up-to-date computer).
  
  
• Clothes – Don't be tempted to rush out on a spending spree with your new 10% student discount! People generally turn up to lectures wearing comfy clothes like hoodies and even jogging bottoms. I've seen a LOT of people wear pyjamas to lectures, so don't feel you need to be the trendiest kid on campus!
  
  
• Textbooks! - Your parents will kill me for saying this, but DON'T buy new textbooks! They cost anywhere from £30 - £100 EACH! Yes, that's what your student loan is for, but it's also for eating and rent and it barely covers that! You have several free or cheap options:
  1. Use the library (you're paying tuition fees for it)! There are often many copies of the most important textbooks available for loan on a rolling basis (as long as someone doesn't reserve the book, you can keep renewing your loan indefinitely).
  
  
  2. At the start of the year there are often LOTS of second/final year students selling off their first year textbooks very cheaply. Look on student noticeboards, on the intranet, even posters in the toilets! You can offer them less than they are asking too, because they'll be glad to get some money back. 
  
  
  3. Other cheap options are eBay/Amazon! 
  
  

If you do buy them, follow my tips for selling old textbooks when you are done with them.

 

Everyone knows your first few weeks at Uni are the most expensive (going out most nights, going for lunch to get to know your new flatmates, etc. etc.), but be careful with your student loan. I knew a few people in the first year who ran out of money by the end of Octover and had to scrounge food from their flatmates, living on pasta and bread until the next loan instalment in JANUARY!

All in all, have a great time! Make a budget, try to stick to it and DON'T GET A CREDIT CARD! :)

Any other advice for things new students may or may not need? I might be able to use the advice myself! :D

How to Claim Your Uniform Tax Rebate

Do you wear a uniform to work and earn enough to pay income tax? You're probably entitled to a tax refund! :)

If you have to wear a specific uniform to work and wash and repair it yourself, you are entitled to reclaim tax relief for uniform maintenance. This is taken from the income tax you have paid, and HMRC requires that:

• It's a recognisable uniform
• Your employer requires you to wear it
• You have to pay for laundering it yourself (so either wash it at home or pay to wash it at the laundrette)
• There are no facilities provided for you to wash it for free at work
• You have to have paid income tax in the year in which you are claiming for

How much am I entitled to?

The basic tax relief is £60 a year, although some jobs are higher if agreed by their union. If you are reclaiming tax already paid, this means you will probably get a rebate of 20% of £60 (if you pay the 20% basic rate tax), which is £12. Some professions can also claim for tool maintenance if used for their job. 

You can reclaim uniform tax relief from up to four years ago, so if you've never claimed before you have a few quid coming your way! It might not be £100s but it's worth the cost of a stamp!

Please note: you must have paid at least the amount of income tax you are trying to claim back in order to be eligible!

How can I claim my uniform tax rebate?

It's very easy to reclaim your uniform tax allowance and no, you don't have to sit on hold for an hour to do it. All you have to do is write to HMRC (HM Revenue & Customs, Pay As You Earn, PO Box 1970, Liverpool, L75 1WX) stating the following:

• Your name, National Insurance number and address.
• Your occupation(s) and your employer's name and address for the past four years (if applicable)
• What your uniform consists of and why you cannot wear it outside of work (for example, it has a company logo)
• Inform them that there are no laundry services or payment for laundry costs provided by your employer (of course, if you DO have laundry costs reimbursed then you are not eligible for this tax relief).

Template Letter

Here's the letter I sent to reclaim my tax, with places for you to enter your own details:

Your address

Date

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to request a possible work uniform tax rebate. I wore a uniform during the following jobs:

Date - Date : Job title at Employer, employer's address

Date - Date : Job title at Employer, employer's address

Date - Date : Job title at Employer, employer's address

(include all jobs you wore uniforms for within the last four tax years, as well as your current job with a uniform if you have one)

No laundry service or compensation was provided for the cleaning of these uniforms by any employer.

The uniforms were specific to each job and could not be worn outside of work:

• Description of uniform for job one: (eg. black shirt with company logo, black work trousers)
• Description of uniform for job two
• Description of uniform for job three
  Etc. etc.

Many thanks for your time.

Yours Faithfully,

Name

NI number

Date of birth

A Happy Ending

I was sent a cheque for £54 to cover the costs of laundering my uniform in the past! 

 

Give it a try! You have nothing to lose (but the price of a stamp) and you could get a nice bit of cash back for the past few years!

Have you tried this? How did it go?

What Would You Do With a £1000 Windfall?

Say you won £1000 in a contest. What would you do with the money? It's not an absolutely huge life-changing sum, but it's a still a nice windfall of extra money to fall into your bank account.

So what would you do with the unassigned money?

I had to make this decision recently. I knew I was in for a tax refund because I'd been on the wrong tax code for six months of the past year! I was very pleasantly surprised to see that I was due a refund of just over £1000!

Now, the thing about my tax refund is that it isn't “free money”, although it is VERY easy to think of it as an excuse to spend! It's money that I had to give up valuable hours of my life to attain. Then again, even if I won £1000 it would be hard to forget that it is worth nearly 165 hours of my life (at minimum wage). Ouch, that is painful to write! I think my time should be worth a lot more than that! 

Here's what I did with my hard-earned yet unassigned money:

• Bristol fund - £410. I completed my Moving-to-Bristol fund. This was the main thing I was saving for, so it was important to me to sort it out long before I might need it at the end of the summer!
• Travel fund - £60. I save a little money every month for future travel and I thought it would be great to use some tax refund for something that I will really enjoy. I love seeing the rest of the world! :)
• Gift fund - £50. May and June are particularly expensive months for birthdays in my world, so it was good to re-build my depleted gift fund!
• Family meal - £30. My family rarely go out to eat because it can be quite expensive. I treated us all to breakfast on my sister's birthday with a little of the cash.
• Emergency fund - £200. After meeting my main savings goal (Bristol fund) I have started bulking up my emergency fund because you never know when you'll need some cash.
• Concert ticket - £24. If I am going to spend money, I would rather buy an experience than an object. When I heard one of my favourite bands was coming to Cornwall and putting on a concert on a local beach, I had to go!
• Bike repairs - £26. I had a blow-out the other day. I don't know what I ran over but the puncture ripped straight through the tyre and into the inner tube, leaving a big tear in both of them. I bought a new tyre and upgraded my inner-tube to a puncture-proof variety. So far so good!
• Current account buffer - £200. I tend to transfer any “spare” money into my ISA, so occasionally my current account goes into my interest-free overdraft. This doesn't cost me anything so isn't really a problem, but since I got out of debt I really don't like seeing the number go below £0. I put a £200 buffer in this account and think of it as £0, so now I should never actually go into the red.

What would you do with a windfall? Save it all or blow it on a holiday or the latest iGadget? :) Did you get a tax refund? Click here to find out if you are entitled to a refund and how to get it!

P.S. That 58 minutes on hold to HMRC was the best-paid hour I've ever spent!

Would You Sell The Olympic Torch?

I'm sure a lot of people have watched, or are planning to watch, the proud Olympic torch bearers running through the towns and villages of the UK, carrying the Olympic flame to the London 2012 games. It is certainly a moment to be remembered forever if you were one of the lucky 8000 who were a part of the relay.

Yet, as I am writing this, several of the Olympic torches used to transport the flame through its initial travels are for sale on eBay. You might think selling such a unique souvenir would be a little unsentimental. Possibly. But you might reconsider your judgement when you learn that with >21 hours left, one lucky soul has already got the bidding up to £130,100.

Here's the link

Have a look, maybe even watch it to see how much the bidding ends on. Just be sure not to accidentally place a bid!!

What do you think? There are several other torches for sale already on eBay, all for tens of thousands of pounds. Would you sell one, if you had it, or keep it forever as a souvenir for your grandchildren?

Gotta tell you, I'd sell it.

My First Ebay Sale

I have been decluttering a lot lately and rather than just giving away items of value, I decided to see what I could get for them on Ebay. I am probably in the huge minority, but I have to admit that until this week I have never bought or sold anything on Ebay. I know, how very 20^th century!

I have always been wary of Ebay. Everyone seems to use it with ease, but until recently I just wasn't motivated enough to learn what was involved and how to do it. I found the guide to Ebay selling on Money Saving Expert useful for a complete novice like myself.

If there is anyone out there (apart from me!) who has never used Ebay, basically all you need to sell something is a vague idea of how much your item is worth (check out completed listings on Ebay to see what has sold before and at what price!), a small amount of money upfront to list an item for more than 99p (although there are often free-listing weekends to encourage people to sell), and a digital camera to take photos of your item. You also have to register with Paypal to send and receive payments.

I decided to list some things that were not hugely valuable as a tester. A couple of coffee table books, some perfume I didn't like, that kind of thing.

The first thing I noticed was that you get a lot of “watchers”. These are people who are keeping an eye on the lot, but are not currently bidding. A quick Google search confirmed my assumption that they are usually either other sellers researching how much items are selling for or people who may decide to bid at the last minute (but often don't).

For an extra 6p you can add a “Buy It Now” option, to set a price for people to just buy the item for outright without bidding and waiting until the auction ends. I did this with one of my lots and it sold within three days. I based the price on what other people had sold the item for.

I'm quite excited to see how the rest of the lots pan out though. A couple have low bids on them already, but apparently the last couple of hours is where the real fun is to be had! I'm going to put any money I make into my Emergency Fund to try and beef it back up a bit!

Any experienced Ebayers out there with some tips for a newbie? :)

Get Organised and Make Some Money!

I am terrible for procrastination. Sometimes a simple To-Do list is a very effective method for me, because I like to challenge myself to cross something off. It helps me to get organised and get important things done.

The past couple of days, I have crossed a few things off that will be either saving me money or making me money in the near future! Some things also have the double bonus of decluttering, something I REALLY need to do now that I know I am moving to Bristol in October!

My Get-Organised To Do List!

• Sort out tax code (In Progress) – I have been on the wrong tax code at my job since I started in October! I've been paying £100 extra in tax each month. Yes I can claim it back after April, but I wanted it sorting! I got my P45 from the Chinese last week, so it should be getting fixed this month. (Just in time for my refund!)
• Sell old CDs (Done) – Sometimes you wonder why you ever bought something! I made £5.48 by selling some unwanted CDs online. I probably should sell before moving.
• Count and deposit change (Done) – Whenever I find 1p, 2p or 5p coins rolling around in my bag at the end of the day, I shove them in my cute floral piggy banks. Back in September I had a respectable £27 in small change, but I've somehow built up another £11 over the past six months!
• Get train ticket refund (In progress) – The University of Bristol offered to refund my £44 train fare to visit them, which was jolly decent of them if you ask me! I am also in the process of claiming a refund on a ticket that did not get used, which should be another nice chunk coming back into my pocket.
• Sell old textbooks (In progress) – I have now sold two textbooks, for a return of about £15 after posting fees. I did look into selling them back to AbeBooks as some of you suggested in the comments, however they were only going to give me £1.70 per book because they were older editions. You also have to have £25 worth of books to sell before you can send them all off. It certainly seems a cheap place to BUY used textbooks though, if anyone needs one.
• Sell/donate other books (In progress) – I have listed a few semi-valuable books on Amazon. The rest I will donate to charity, via my Nana who organises a lot of fund-raising events.
• Sell old child's keyboard – Anyone know of a good way to sell large-ish electrical items? I don't really want to post it as it will be a RIGHT faff!
• Sort out what I can't take with me and donate it.

Any money I get will be going straight into my Emergency Fund to replenish the hits it has been taking in the past few weeks, what with Jools breaking down FOUR TIMES and spending so much on finding a PhD.

Other things I need to do ASAP:

• Finish Mother's Day gift
• Make a friend's birthday present
• WASH MY CAR!
  
  
   Have you been putting off anything time-consuming that will save you money? Just do it! You'll feel smug for the rest of the day! :)

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Change!

There's a family in New York who pick up every coin they see discarded on the street. Would you feel strange bending down to pick up a penny? Perhaps you'd reconsider when you learn that in 5 years they've found $1087? Generally I only pick up a coin if it's silver and shiny, but for $200 a year I might be tempted to put more effort in!

And as for money that's already mine...

When cleaning out my old car for scrapping I found ~£6 in change. It made me wonder just how much change I have knocking around whilst I've been struggling to pay back my debts! I sling 1, 2 and 5p pieces into my flowery piggy banks (both gifts, it's not like I collect them!). I've never considered these coins to be worth my time as it takes sooo many of them to make a substantial amount. I'm slowly coming round to the frugal notion that every little really does help, especially when I can't justify spending 30p on a hot chocolate some weeks!

Well, it was time for me to look after the pennies and hopefully the pounds were about to look after me!

After opening up both piggies I was pleased to find a nice little pile of coins in each (although I felt that I was violating one of them whilst dragging the 2p coins out!). It looked like a fair amount of change but nothing to get too excited over. 

Sitting in my counting house counting out my money (wearing gloves because I really hate the smell of money!) I found I had accumulated £7.21 of coppers! 

The real excitement came from lining up stacks of 5p coins... I'd collected £14.50! This is over a few years, but hey, I can really use that money! :)

Altogether I'd been ignoring on £21.71 of “useless” change! That's a month of free phone contract with a fiver left over for a trip to the cinema (2-for-1 of course)!

Next time I see a penny, I'm picking it up!