The second month has ticked by and so it’s time for another update.
One of the major things we announced this month is that all of our readers (so, that’s just about nobody at the moment) are going to get a 10% stake in our fund. Read more details about that here.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that currently the fund is in negative territory (don’t worry, we’re not coming after you to collect 10% of our debts).
As you will remember from last month, we were quite heavily in the red. While an initial investment was always part of the plan, what has been a little frustrating is the lack of revenue.
Now, this is not to say that we haven’t been witout our successes. Dave has managed to earn £12.08 worth of Royal Mail First Class stamps and Chris has made a few quid from taking on jobs from www.bemyeye.com.
Bringing up the rear is still yours truly. I’ve had some pretty narrow squeaks with Fat Lama, 3 in total where people have come to within a gnats cock of renting something, only to come up with some lame excuse as to why it can’t happen once they’d got me all excited.
To say it is all pretty annoying would be an understatement. Since the last update I’ve added a couple more bits to the site, some camera lenses but no one has shown any interest in them. Again, Fat Lama advised me to drop some prices, so I did, but that hasn’t made any difference at all.
I will be keeping everything listed for the time being, but obviously the strimmer will have a limited window as the grass stops growing the closer we get to winter.
I may have to have a hunt around the house and see if I can find anything suitable for winter rental.
The Bank Account Debacle
Another one of my projects for www.themoneymountain.com has been to open a bank account for the three of us. This has proved massively difficult.
Apparently there aren’t many banks who can offer a three-way joint account. I tried Santander, Halifax and we also spoke to Lloyds about this as well.
I had a fairly fruitful conversation with the guys at Natwest in that they said it could be done, but nothing in their demeanour gave me any confidence that it could happen.
The last port of call was HSBC; I spoke to their online chat who said it could be done. Excellent. I went to a branch to make an appointment for us all to go at the same time and take care of the necessary paperwork. The chap I spoke to went from “Yes, definitely,” to “I’m pretty sure,” to “I need to double check with my manager,” in less than 2mins.
Having checked with his manager, computer had indeed said yes and we made our appointment.
Now, Chris’s wife keeps him on a tighter leash than a gimp master keeps his gimp at a perverts convention and the whole thing was thrown into doubt. After so much leg work, this was a disaster in the making, especially as we had work travel, a house renovation and a wedding all happening which meant that another window where we could all meet up might not open for a while.
Luckily Chris is also smoother than Nigel Havers, so managed to rescue the situation.
Havers: Housewives favourite
We went to the appointment as planned and while there was certainly some jiggery-pokery which needed to be done in order to set-up the account, all seemed well and we left feeling confident that everything was taken care of. We were told we’d get our Welcome Packs in the post and that we should get a notification by email that everything is all hunky dory.
…that was a week ago. Chris and Dave, as the holders of the traditional 2-person joint account have got their notifications through; I on the other hand, have had nothing. A follow-up email to HSBC was sent today to see what the hold up is; I’ll report back once I know more. So, Chris and Dave have got a bank account, which thankfully is nicely in the red, so I’m pretty sure they won’t be blocking my phone number just yet, and I do not.
Bemyeye.com
This month, Chris has been using an app called bemyeye. I am sure he’ll give us a bit more detail on this in the coming weeks, but essentially the app sends out “jobs” for you to do (if you wish).
Chris went hell for leather into this and on day one was on the verge of developing type 2 diabetes after being sent on several errands for a well known soft drinks manufacturer. 3 sickly sweet, caffienated, carbonated drinks later and we were a few quid better off. Bouyed by this he took on a few more jobs, but geography got the better of him at least once and the only winner on that day were the Boris Bikes.
Kantar/TNS
Dave has been doing a little work through a portal run by Kantar/TNS which has yielded a profit of £12.08 in First Class stamps. He’s going to post about it in the next few weeks so I won’t give too much away here right now, needless to say though, given the perilous state of our finances, all contributions to the balance sheet are welcome!
So how did we do in total this month?
Well, at last there was income, from all of the above 3 schemes:
| Income | £86.58 |
|---|---|
| Kantar / TNS | £12.08 |
| Be My Eye | £64.50 |
| User Testing | £10.00 |
But alas, the Be My Eye income did incur some costs. As part of fulfilling two of the missions, a glass of coca cola had to be purchased (which they reimbursed us for, through the fee you earn). Also, two of the missions were further afield so needed some transport costs getting there:
| Expenses | -£9.70 |
|---|---|
| Coca Cola x 2 | -£5.70 |
| Boris Bikes x 2 | -£4.00 |
Overall total
Amount at the start of the month: -£151.81
Expenses: -£9.70
Income: £86.58
Total value of the Fund at end of August: -£76.93
So, this month didn’t quite hit the heights we wanted. We set an ambitious target of trying to clear all our debt, but we fell well short.
That’s largely because August is a tricky month with holidays. Two of us were out of the country and the other one was getting married. So money-making has had to take a back seat.
Goals for September
In September, the goal is Simple: clear our debt. We really need to get the fund out of the red. The good news is that if we have another month like we did in August then we’ll manage it. So let’s see if we can do this…
