So you have made a budget and cut your costs and the next item in your armoury of living on a shoestring is bringing in a little more. You can either bring in more money or bring in money equivalents, like services that otherwise you would have had to pay for.
One of the first items in this armoury is bartering for things you need. When USAShoestring needed some French tuition for his French GCSE I bartered French conversation lessons in exchange for some Maths tuition from me. I have also bartered babysitting for a Christmas bike !
Freecycle, Freegle and Trashnothing are also great sites to find items for free. We have also sold items on Ebay, Gumtree and Craigslist to buy things we need. So, in the USA we sold our car and then used the money to buy a new to us car in the UK.
Then there are sites where you can earn cash in exchange for surveys, YouGov is the most well known and pays out once you have done £50 worth of surveys. It did take me over a year to get to that amount but it was very welcome when it arrived. This year I have also investigated getting a tax refund and a refund of pension contributions which are insufficient to create a pension. The tax refund should be over a thousand pounds and similarly with the pension. Swagbucks allows you to earn gift codes for searching the web and doing other little tasks and I usually earn quite a bit from that which is useful for gifts. Similarly with the shopping panel, it's not a lot of points but it does amount to a treat we otherwise would not have. It's the same idea with shopping loyalty cards and our Tesco points keep us in free magazine subscriptions !
Lastly there is actually working an additional job or side business, such as baby sitting, dog walking or tutoring. All of these can make a substantial difference if you want to pay for little extras such as school trips !
Do you have tips for bringing in extra ?
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