Credit Crunch is good! I earnt £120.60 since last night by making smarter choices (How has the Credit Crunch affected you?)

Member Name: snootybutnice

Product:	How has the Credit Crunch affected you?
Date:	20/02/09 (397 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: I'm getting smarter about how I spend my time and money

Disadvantages: I'm missing the opportunity of being able to foster

The credit crunch has affected me already. Last year I started fostering teenagers and now the agency I'm with is struggling to give me work. It seems like local authorities aren't referring children to private agencies now because of the cost and/or they're waiting for their new budgets in April.

Not only am I missing the actual foster children that I want to help - but I'm also missing the fact that we receive an income which helps both myself, my family and our foster child have a better life (in terms of holidays, after school activities, regular outings etc).

I'm now having to work SMARTER and I've had to cut back significantly on our spending habits. Food is currently one of my bug bears - we spend so much on food each week and then end up throwing half of it out. I'm now getting tough with myself. I spend time on the internet researching things/ways to earn more money and to get what little I've got to stretch further.

For example, I earned £120.60 since last night (if you can call it earning!) just by making a few smart choices - and I'll be doing things like this every night until we have enough money to be able to afford all the things we want or need: Here's what I did last night in case any of you were wondering!:

1. EARNT £1:00 - TIME 2 minutes: COMPLETED A SURVEY
Yesterday my friend at work asked me whether I'd joined YouGov (this is a polling company and most quoted research company in the country, a UK organisation). I joined and it took me all of 2 minutes to complete the first survey (which was a few questions about my income bracket, my job, my age, number of people in my family etc). £1.00 for 2 minutes is not bad at all. Apparently they pay at LEAST 50p per survey (and up to a few pounds if it's a longer survey!) and you get sent a cheque once your account reaches £50.00 (plus a chance to win other occasional cash prizes).
My friends mother has already racked up £50.00 and says it doesn't really take much time at all.
If you want to give it a go, please would you be kind enough to join via my link so I get a kickback for telling you about it!:

(Deleted: link to join - as I'm told its not allowed on Dooyoo, but please contact me for details via private message)

2. EARNT: £19.60 - Time: c.10 mins + 30 minutes grocery shopping: DID MY WEEKLY SHOPPING
I decided to go on-line shopping at Asda to save money on my weekly shop last night (I went to Tesco's on-line shopping last week - and I think on the whole I may prefer them but I still liked Asda!). First of all I went to a top cash back site called "TopCashBack" - they are the UK's best cash-back site (according to a pole on moneysavingexpert.com) ...I joined TopCashBack, and then signed up to Asda on-line shopping through them. TopCashBack pay you £5.00 for your first ASDA online-order. I then clicked through to Asda and spent the next half hour selecting my groceries after signing up. I saved £9.29 against multi-buys. Finally I put in the code M4-FD-FD-47 to get free delivery (your grocery order has to be over £50.00 for this code to work) which was worth another £5.00. Next I played around with the TopCashBack site - you can earn money for clicking through to retailers websites and I earnt another 31p by looking at 5 retailers.
If you want to give it a go, please would you be kind enough to join via my link so I can get a referral bonus - it won't affect your payments!:

(Deleted: link to join - as I'm told its not allowed on Dooyoo, but please contact me for details via private message)

3. EARNT: £100.00 - Time 3 minutes: OPENED A NEW BANK ACCOUNT
I took the advice of moneysavingexpert.com and opened an Alliance & Leicester Premier Current Account. Alliance & Leicester give you £100.00 for opening this account - but the key bug bear is that you have to transfer all your DD/SO payments from your existing bank account (which they do automatically for you) in order to qualify. They pay the £100.00 in 4 months time. You also have to have an account with at least 1 DD or SO in order to qualify and pay at least £500.00 into it each month. Here's the link!:

(Deleted: link to join - as I'm told its not allowed on Dooyoo, but please contact me for details via private message)

So in short, the credit crunch has impacted me - but also made me be a lot smarter about how I spend my money in the long term - so apart from missing the fact that I don't have a child to foster, it isn't all doom and gloom - I'm going to be saving lots of money in the future! :-)

Summary: Good and Bad - but has given me a much needed financial kick in the pants!