Money Saving March: Enter a competition!

I'm on a mission to save money in March! I'll be posting three times a week with ideas and challenges. Free free to join in! :)

When I was a kid, I announced to my parents that I was going to enter any competition I could find. This was back in the days of "describe why you love our product in 100 words or less" - whatever happened to those? I remember winning an art set of pens, paints and crayons for a picture I sent to Twinkle magazine. Woohoo! Apart from that I didn't win anything, so I gave up on that idea pretty quickly!

You know what though, gang? SOMEONE has to win these things! Whether it's an all expenses paid trip to America or a free meal somewhere, I want to win!

Challenge 8 of Money Saving March is to enter a competition!

Whether it's a sport contest, a skills-based competition or a randomly chosen prize draw, you can't win if you don't enter! I suppose it's the lure of potentially winning £1000 or a holiday somewhere, but I've been signing myself up to anything I can find!

Skills based contests
No matter where your interests lie, there is likely to be a competition or contest that interests you. Maybe it's time to sign yourself up for that race or dance contest? You could submit a short story to a newspaper competition or perhaps enter a photograph in next year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year.

I'm a biology PhD student, and there are lots of science-y challenges out there for early career researchers. Within my University there was a science fair last week, where students create posters about their work and talk about it to people who wander past! I didn't win one of the prizes for best poster, but I can improve on the poster and submit it to other contests later in the year!

Another competition I am entering is the Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize. If you're an early career scientist with an interest in science communication, have a look! The deadline is the 28th April.

Prize draws
Even if you don't want to put any effort in, you can still enter competitions! For many prize draws, you simply shove your contact details into a website and click "submit". Money Saving Expert has a forum page dedicated to competitions and most of the supermarkets and newspaper websites have a big list of things you could enter.

To be honest, it's kind of addictive once you start entering in your details! So far I've entered several competitions to win holidays. I think I'd enjoy a free trip to somewhere sunny! :)


I wish I had some awesome results / photos of a sunny beach in the caribbean to show you (really, I do!), but I've only been entering stuff for the past couple of days so nothing has happened as of yet! In the meantime, perhaps you could share you success stories with competitions! Oh, and don't get me started on the time I won second prize in a handwriting contest at school. My dad was surprised because, and I quote, "your handwriting looks like a spider fell in ink and ran across the page"... Cheers father dear!