Today I’m sharing a sideline money-making opportunity that – if you’re in a position to do it – can bring in a steady income for very little effort.
The shortage of parking spaces in many towns and cities has created an opportunity for anyone who has a driveway (or garage) they aren’t using all the time.
One of the best-known operators in this field is JustPark. Through their website and mobile app, they put drivers in touch with home-owners and businesses who have parking spaces (and/or EV charging spaces) available near their destination. They say they help over 10 million drivers a year find parking spaces at over 45,000 UK locations.
Listing your space is free and you can set your own price based on how long the driver wishes to stay. JustPark will suggest an appropriate price based on your location and the facilities you are offering, but you aren’t obliged to accept this.
JustPark charges space-owners a 3% fee on one-off bookings (so if you charge £10 they will take 30p, meaning you receive £9.70). For longer term or rolling bookings over two months, they charge space-owners a higher fee of 20% for the first month, with the fee reverting to the standard 3% after that.
JustPark also make money from drivers, adding up to 25% of the space-owner’s asking price to the fee charged. They say, however, that charges to drivers are still typically 30% lower than ad hoc street parking (if you can find it), which makes the service attractive to motorists as well.
One big attraction of JustPark is that they handle all the admin on your behalf. All payments are made via the website, and space-owners can withdraw earnings via PayPal or direct to their bank account. JustPark also ensure you still get paid even if the booker doesn’t turn up.
JustPark say that the money you earn from renting out your parking space is included in the property trading income allowance introduced by the government in April 2017 – so you can make up to £1,000 per year completely tax-free (and no need to declare it to the taxman).
All drivers using the service have to register on the site, so you know exactly who will be using your space on any given day. There is also a rating system so you can see any comments other users of the service have made about them. Space-owners are also rated by drivers, incidentally.
You can offer spaces by the day, week or month, and set any restrictions you wish on when your space is available. Anyone is welcome to advertise spaces on JustPark, but the locations in most demand are those near airports, stations and stadiums, and in major cities. According to one recent article in the Daily Mail, people in such areas are making more than £4,000 a year doing this. Even if that doesn’t apply to you, though, you can still earn from a few hundred pounds a year to £1000 or more by this means.
Obviously the pandemic and working from home reduced demand for parking spaces. But with life returning to normal now, demand for parking spaces is steadily increasing again.
Of course, if you don’t have a suitable space to offer, you won’t be able to benefit from this opportunity. You could still use JustPark to save money on your own parking costs, though. Either way, the service is well worth checking out 🙂
Another option for cheaper parking is Your Parking Space. Over 60s can get an exclusive 10% discount on this service through my friends at Over 60s Discounts.
Disclosure: As well as being a registered user of JustParkI am an affiliate for them and will therefore receive a small commission if you click through any of my links and sign up. This will not affect the money you earn through the site and/or any savings you make if you use them to find parking spaces.
Cover image by courtesy of BingAI.
This is a fully revised and updated version of my original article on this subject.
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I’ll start as usual with my Nutmeg Stocks and Shares ISA. This is the largest investment I hold other than my Bestinvest SIPP (personal pension).
As the screenshot below for the year to date shows, my main Nutmeg portfolio is currently valued at £21,044. Last month it stood at £20,419 so that is a rise of £625.
Apart from my main portfolio, I also have a second, smaller pot using Nutmeg’s Smart Alpha option. This is now worth £3,293 compared with £3,175 a month ago, an increase of £118. Here is a screen capture showing performance since the start of this year.
This has clearly been a better month for both my Nutmeg pots. Their total value has risen by £743 or 3.15% month on month. Since the start of 2023 the net value of my Nutmeg investments has grown by £1,417 or 6.18%.
Of course, all investing is (or should be) a long-term endeavour. Over a period of years stock market investments such as those used by Nutmeg typically produce better returns than cash accounts, often by substantial margins. But there are never any guarantees, and in in the short to medium term at least, losses are always possible.
Also, as you may know, both my Nutmeg pots have quite high risk levels (9/10 main, 5/5 Smart Alpha). If you haven’t yet seen it, you might like to check out my blog post in which I looked at the performance over time of Nutmeg fully managed portfolios at every risk level from 1 to 10 . I was pretty amazed by the difference risk level makes, with higher-risk ports over almost any period of three or more years in the last ten generating significantly better overall returns. If you are investing for the long term (and you almost certainly should be) choosing a hyper-cautious low-risk level might not therefore be the smartest strategy. The one exception is if you plan to withdraw your money soon and don’t want to risk losing too much if there is a sudden downturn.
You can read my full Nutmeg review here (including a special offer at the end for PAS readers). If you are looking for a home for your annual ISA allowance, based on my overall experience over the last seven years, they are certainly worth considering. They offer self-invested personal pensions (SIPPs) and Junior ISAs as well.
Moving on, my Assetz Exchange investments continue to generate steady returns. Regular readers will know that this is a P2P property investment platform focusing on lower-risk properties (e.g. sheltered housing). I put an initial £100 into this in mid-February 2021 and another £400 in April. In June 2021 I added another £500, bringing my total investment up to £1,000.
Since I opened my account, my AE portfolio has generated a respectable £124.53 in revenue from rental income. As I said in last month’s update, capital growth has slowed, though, in line with UK property values generally.
At the time of writing, 12 of ‘my’ properties are showing gains, 2 are breaking even, and the remaining 12 are showing losses. My portfolio is currently showing a net decrease in value of £15.53, meaning that overall (rental income minus capital value decrease) I am up by £109. That’s still a decent return on my £1,000 and does illustrate the value of P2P property investments for diversifying your portfolio. And it doesn’t hurt that with Assetz Exchange most projects are socially beneficial as well.
Obviously the fall in capital value of my AE investments is slightly disappointing. But it’s important to bear in mind that unless and until I choose to sell the investments in question, it is largely theoretical. The rental income, on the other hand, is real money (which in my case I have chosen to reinvest in other AE projects to further diversify my portfolio).
I also spoke to the CEO of Assetz Exchange, Peter Read, recently. He made the point that capital values on the platform simply reflect the latest price at which shares in the property concerned have changed hands on their exchange. They do not represent objective or independent valuations of the properties. If you are investing long term with AE, the annual yield from rentals is really a much more important consideration.
Peter also made the point that the current high inflation rate has actually been beneficial for Assetz Exchange investors. That is because properties on the platform generally have an annual review when rentals are increased in line with inflation. That means from the end of the financial year in April, rentals have increased in most cases by around 10%. Assetz Exchange recently published a blog post about this which is worth a read.
To control risk with all my property crowdfunding investments nowadays, I invest relatively modest amounts in individual projects. This is a particular attraction of AE as far as i am concerned. You can actually invest from as little as 80p per property if you really want to proceed cautiously.
Another property platform I have investments with is Kuflink. They continue to do well, with new projects launching every week. I currently have around £2,500 invested with them in 17 different projects. To date I have never lost any money with Kuflink, though some loan terms have been extended once or twice. On the plus side, when this happens additional interest is paid for the period in question.
My loans with Kuflink pay annual interest rates of 6 to 7.5 percent. These days I invest no more than £200 per loan (and often less). That is not because of any issues with Kuflink but more to do with losses of larger amounts on other P2P property platforms in the past. My days of putting four-figure sums into any single property investment are behind me now! Nowadays I mainly opt to reinvest the monthly repayments I receive from Kuflink, which has the effect of boosting the percentage rate of return on the projects in question
Obviously a possible drawback with Kuflink and similar platforms is that your money is tied up in bricks and mortar, so not as easily accessible as cash savings or even (to some extent) shares. They do, however, have a secondary market on which you can offer any loan part for sale (as long as the loan in question is performing and not in arrears). Clearly that does depend on someone else wanting to buy it, but my experience has been that any loan parts offered are typically snapped up very quickly. So if an urgent need arises, withdrawing your money (or part of it) is unlikely to be an issue.
You can read my full Kuflink review here. They offer a variety of investment options, including a tax-free IFISA paying up to 7% interest per year with built-in automatic diversification. Alternatively you can build your own IFISA, with most loans on the platform being IFISA-eligible.
Until 31 July 2023 Kuflink are offering enhanced promotional rates of up to 9.73% (gross annual interest equivalent rate) for their Auto-Invest products (IFISA-eligible). There is limited availability for this offer and it may be withdrawn any time before 31 July 2023 if the limit is reached. For more information, click here [affiliate link].
Last year I set up an account with investment and trading platform eToro, using their popular ‘copy trader’ facility. I chose to invest $500 (then about £412) copying an experienced eToro trader called Aukie2008 (real name Mike Moest).
In January 2023 I added to this with another $500 investment in one of their thematic portfolios, Oil Worldwide. I also invested a small amount I had left over in Tesla shares.
As you can see from the screen capture below, my original investment of $1,022.26 is today worth $1,153.25, an overall increase of $130.99 or 12.81%. in these turbulent times I am very happy with that.
Since last month the price of my Tesla shares has risen substantially and my copy trading portfolio with Aukie2008 has also done well (though less spectacularly). My most recent investment in Oil Worldwide has risen a bit this month but it’s still slightly down on when I invested. The Oil Worldwide portfolio has just been rebalanced by eToro, so I am hoping for better things in the months ahead
eToro also recently introduced the eToro Money app. This allows you to deposit money to your eToro account without paying any currency conversion fees, saving you up to £5 for every £1,000 you deposit. You can also use the app to withdraw funds from your eToro account instantly to your bank account. I tried this myself recently and was impressed with how quickly and seamlessly it worked. You can read my blog post about eToro Money here.
I had two more articles published in June on the excellent Mouthy Money website. The first was 10 Great Ways to Save Money on Amazon. Amazon is Britain’s – and the world’s – favourite online store. Prices on Amazon are generally competitive, but over the years I’ve discovered a variety of ways to ensure you get the best value for money from them. So in this article I set out my top ten tips for saving money on Amazon
My other article was Do You Need a Personal Financial Adviser? In this article I discuss the different types of financial adviser and what they do. I also revealed why – despite being a money blogger and considering myself reasonably financially savvy – I have a personal financial adviser myself.
As I’ve said before, Mouthy Money is a great resource for anyone interested in money-making and money-saving I always look forward to reading the articles by my fellow contributors. Shoestring Jane is a particular favourite and I enjoyed reading her recent article concerning how you can Save Money by Reducing Food Waste.
I also published several new posts on Pounds and Sense in June. One of these was My Short Break in Bath. Bath is, of course, a historic city on the River Avon, about 12 miles from Bristol. I went there for three days in June, the first time I had been for over 30 years. In my post I discuss the self-catering apartment where I stayed and reveal some of the things I did and saw. I also share a few top tips for visitors to Bath. The cover image shows the famous Pulteney Bridge, one of Bath’s best-known landmarks.
I also published a post based on a survey of Britons’ investing habits. This addressed questions such as what are the main barriers stopping people investing and where do people get their investment advice from. I thought the results were quite eye-opening. Take a look if you haven’t already.
Finally, I wanted to highlight that the free share offers described in last month’s update are both still open if you haven’t done them yet. The opportunity to Get a Free Share Worth up to £100 with Trading 212 was reopened after closing briefly. It is now on offer till 27 July 2023.
The opportunity to Get a Free ETF Share Worth up to £200 with Wealthyhood is also still open but the terms have changed slightly. To remind you, Wealthyhood is a DIY wealth-building app aimed especially at people who are new to stock market investing. As from 1 June 2023 they changed their fee structure to make it (even) more attractive to small investors. They have now increased the minimum investment to qualify for the free share offer from £20 to £50 – but on the plus side, they guarantee that your free ETF share will be worth at least £10.
That’s all for today. I hope you’re enjoying the summer months and taking the opportunity to get out and about in our beautiful country (or further afield).
As always, if you have any comments or queries, feel free to leave them below. I am always delighted to hear from PAS readers
Disclaimer: I am not a qualified financial adviser and nothing in this blog post should be construed as personal financial advice. Everyone should do their own ‘due diligence’ before investing and seek professional advice if in any doubt how best to proceed. All investing carries a risk of loss.
Note also that posts may include affiliate links. If you click through and perform a qualifying transaction, I may receive a commission for introducing you. This will not affect the product or service you receive or the terms you are offered, but it does help support me in publishing PAS and paying my bills. Thank you!
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Today I’m featuring a way you can get a free ETF share worth up to £200 by signing up for a DIY wealth-building app for investors called Wealthyhood.
Wealthyhood offers a quick and easy method for even complete beginners to start investing in stocks and shares. And currently if you’re new to the platform you can get a free ETF share worth up to £200 just by signing up via any of the referral links in this post and investing at least £50. The ETF share you will get is chosen at random, but could be worth up to £200 (with a minimum value of £10). You can either keep this share or sell it (after 60 days).
For those who don’t know, ETF stands for Exchange Traded Fund. ETFs are a package of shares from a particular section of the stock market. For example, an ‘Asia Pacific ETF’ is a collection of shares from the Asia-Pacific region. ETFs are different to most investment funds in that they don’t usually have a manager running them. Instead, most ETFs are run by computers that regularly balance their portfolios automatically. This helps keep costs low, while still producing respectable returns in most cases. You can learn more about ETFs here if you wish.
How to Sign Up
Signing up with Wealthyhood is pretty straightforward. Just visit the Wealthyhood website via any of the (referral) links in this post and follow the on-screen instructions to register.
You will need to indicate the type (or types) of investment you are interested in. Four broad options are available: stocks, bonds, commodities and real estate. You can choose one or more of these (personally I chose stocks). You will also be invited to indicate whether you want your investments to be global or US only (I opted for global).
You can then choose the actual stocks you want or have this done automatically for you, and indicate the level of risk you are comfortable with. I chose ‘Optimized for Portfolio Weighting’ and then clicked on ‘Create my Portfolio’.
You will then be required to provide various items of personal information, including your address, date of birth, UK National Insurance number, and so on. Once you have entered all the required details, click on ‘Complete Verification’. After a few moments your account should be verified.
In some circumstances the process may take longer. If that happens, Wealthyhood will email you once you’ve been verified.
The next (and final) step will be to deposit a minimum of £100 into your Wealthyhood account and make a minimum £100 investment within seven days. You must do this within seven days of opening your account to qualify for the free ETF share. (If for some reason you’re not bothered about the free share, you can start investing with a minimum of £20.)
Within five days you should receive your free ETF share worth up to £200 (Wealthyhood say that 95% of users get their free ETF share within 1-2 days). You should receive notification about this in the My Account section of the Wealthyhood website when you log in.
You may wish to set a calendar reminder for 60 days, since (as mentioned above) you have to leave your free ETF share in your account for this long before you can sell it and withdraw the proceeds. You can, of course, leave it invested for longer if you wish, but bear in mind that fees may be applied (see below).
What Are The Fees?
Wealthyhood compares favourably with many other share-trading and investment platforms. Deposits and withdrawals are free, and other costs are kept to a minimum.
Until recently Wealthyhood charged all investors a platform fee of £1 a month. That wasn’t excessive (in my view) but for small investors (including those just wanting to take advantage of the free share offer) it was a bit of a deterrent.
As from 1st June 2023, however, the monthly platform charge was scrapped. Instead investors in Beginner accounts (everyone starts off with one of these) pay a small ‘custody fee’ of 0.18% per annum (or 0.015% per month). That works out as an annual custody fee of £1.80 for a £1,000 investment, or just 15p a month. In addition, they have introduced an acquisition charge of 0.45% per order (e.g. £4.50 for £1,000).
These new charges work out much cheaper for investors starting with small amounts and those just signing up for the free share. If you decide to stick with the platform, however, you might in due course want to consider upgrading to the new Wealthyhood Plus plan. This offers fully commission-free investing with no charges per order and no custody fees for £2.99 a month or £35.88 a year. This is obviously not worthwhile for very-small-scale investors, but once your portfolio gets up to around £6,000 (by my calculation) you should save money this way.
How Safe is Wealthyhood?
Wealthyhood is registered in England and Wales and authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. In addition, all clients’ funds are kept separately in segregated bank accounts which are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. So even if the company itself were to go broke, any cash in your account would be protected up to a value of £85,000.
Of course, the FSCS guarantee doesn’t apply to the value of your stocks, which can go down as well as up. All investments carry a risk of loss, although in the case of your free ETF share you can never lose any more than the original cost, which was of course zero!
Referral Scheme
Any Wealthyhood member can also refer new members. All you have to do is send them your unique referral link which can be copied from your dashboard. If they join via your link and invest a minimum of £100 (as above), both you and they will then receive one free ETF share worth up to £200 (minimum £5). There is no limit to the number of friends you can refer by this means or the number of free ETF shares you can receive.
Don’t Miss Out!
I do just want to emphasize that in order to qualify for the free ETF share, you MUST click through a special referral link such as those in this article. If you simply go straight to the Wealthyhood website and join there, you won’t receive one.
What’s more, when I was researching this article I found that several other websites who were advertising this offer didn’t have the correct, up-to-date referral links. So even if you had clicked through them and signed up, you wouldn’t have qualified for a free share. To be safe, I strongly recommend clicking through my Wealthyhood referral link. You should then see a banner like this near the top of the page.
If you don’t see this banner, you haven’t clicked through a genuine, working referral link, and sadly will not receive a free ETF share.
Bear in mind also that this offer may be withdrawn any time. If and when I hear of that I will of course amend this post. But I do therefore strongly recommend taking advantage of this offer while you can.
Final Thoughts
Although in this post I have focused mainly on the free ETF share offer, Wealthyhood is also worth considering as an investment platform for the longer term.
Its low charges (especially from 1st June 2023) mean it is well suited for people who are dipping a toe into stock market investing for the first time. By contrast, the dealing fees and commissions charged by some other platforms can make small investments prohibitively expensive.
While you can’t invest in individual company shares through Wealthyhood, a wide range of ETFs is available via the platform. If you have a particular interest in an area such as video games, healthcare or clean energy (for example) you can invest in specific ETFs that track those sectors. This facility for thematic investing is not currently available through most other robo-adviser platforms, including Nutmeg.
I also like the simple, user-friendly Wealthyhood website. This allows you to easily build a balanced portfolio covering the investment types that interest you and reflecting the level of risk you are comfortable with. You can log in to your account at any time to see how your investments are performing and make any changes you wish to your portfolio, including investing more money or withdrawing.
In conclusion, I hope this post has inspired you to consider registering with Wealthyhood to claim your free ETF share. If you do, I hope you get a valuable one! Please let me know what share you receive in a comment below. And if you like Wealthyhood you may of course wish to consider investing long term via the platform as well.
As always, any comments or questions are very welcome.
Disclosure: Posts on Pounds and Sense may include my referral links. If you click on one of these and make a purchase or perform some other defined action on the website in question, I may receive a commission for introducing you. This will not affect the price you pay or the product or service you receive. Please note also that I am not a registered financial adviser and nothing in this post should be construed as individual financial advice. Everyone should do their own ‘due diligence’ before investing and seek advice from a professional financial adviser if in any doubt how best to proceed. All investment carries a risk of loss. Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns. Capital is at risk.
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I’ll begin as usual with my Nutmeg Stocks and Shares ISA. This is the largest investment I hold other than my Bestinvest SIPP (personal pension), from which I recently started withdrawing again.
As the screenshot below for the year to date shows, my main Nutmeg portfolio is currently valued at £20,632. Last month it stood at £20,680 so that is a modest fall of £48.
Apart from my main portfolio, I also have a second, smaller pot using Nutmeg’s Smart Alpha option. This is now worth £3,170 compared with £3,162 a month ago, a (very) small increase of £8. Here is a screen capture showing performance since the start of this year.
As you can see, this has been a roller-coaster month for both my Nutmeg pots, though overall the dial hasn’t moved very much. My Smart Alpha portfolio has done a bit better than my main portfolio and I might be tempted to switch more of my money into it, though there clearly isn’t a massive difference in performance between them.
The net value of all my Nutmeg investments has fallen this month by £40 or 0.17% month on month. That is obviously a little disappointing, but both pots are still comfortably up on where they were at the start of the year. And their total value has risen by £1,890 (7.77%) since mid-October last year.
Of course, all investing is (or should be) a long-term endeavour. Over a period of years stock market investments such as those used by Nutmeg typically produce better returns than cash accounts, often by substantial margins. But there are never any guarantees, and in in the short to medium term at least, losses are always possible.
Also, as you may know, both my Nutmeg pots have quite high risk levels (9/10 main, 5/5 Smart Alpha). If you haven’t yet seen it, you might like to check out my blog post in which I looked at the performance over time of Nutmeg fully managed portfolios at every risk level from 1 to 10 . I was pretty amazed by the difference risk level makes, with higher-risk ports over almost any period of three or more years in the last ten generating significantly better overall returns. If you are investing for the long term (and you almost certainly should be) choosing a hyper-cautious low-risk level might not be the smartest strategy. The one exception is if you plan to withdraw your money shortly and don’t want to risk losing too much if there is a sudden downturn.
You can read my full Nutmeg review here (including a special offer at the end for PAS readers). If you are looking for a home for your annual ISA allowance, based on my overall experience over the last seven years, they are certainly worth considering. They offer self-invested personal pensions (SIPPs) and Junior ISAs as well.
Moving on, my Assetz Exchange investments continue to generate steady returns. Regular readers will know that this is a P2P property investment platform focusing on lower-risk properties (e.g. sheltered housing). I put an initial £100 into this in mid-February 2021 and another £400 in April. In June 2021 I added another £500, bringing my total investment up to £1,000.
Since I opened my account, my AE portfolio has generated a respectable £108.37 in revenue from rental income. As I said in last month’s update, capital growth has slowed, though, in line with UK property values generally.
At the time of writing, 6 of ‘my’ properties are showing gains, 4 are breaking even, and the remaining 16 are showing (small) losses. My portfolio is currently showing a net decrease in value of £26.97, meaning that overall (rental income minus capital value decrease) I am up by £81.40. That’s still a reasonable rate of return on my £1,000 and does illustrate the value of P2P property investments for diversifying your portfolio. And it doesn’t hurt that with Assetz Exchange most projects are socially beneficial as well.
Obviously the fall in capital value of my AE investments is a little disappointing. But it’s important to bear in mind that unless and until I choose to sell the investments in question, it is largely theoretical. The rental income, on the other hand, is real money (which in my case I have chosen to reinvest in other AE projects to further diversify my portfolio).
To control risk with all my property crowdfunding investments nowadays, I invest relatively modest amounts in individual projects. This is a particular attraction of AE as far as i am concerned. You can actually invest from as little as 80p per property if you really want to proceed cautiously.
Another property platform I have investments with is Kuflink. They continue to do well, with new projects launching almost every day. I currently have around £2,500 invested with them in 18 different projects. To date I have never lost any money with Kuflink, though some loan terms have been extended once or twice. On the plus side, when this happens additional interest is paid for the period in question.
My loans with Kuflink pay annual interest rates of 6 to 7.5 percent. These days I invest no more than £200 per loan (and often less). That is not because of any issues with Kuflink but more to do with losses of larger amounts on other P2P property platforms in the past. My days of putting four-figure sums into any single property investment are behind me now! Nowadays I mainly opt to reinvest the monthly repayments I receive from Kuflink, which has the effect of boosting the percentage rate of return on the projects in question
Obviously a possible drawback with Kuflink and similar platforms is that your money is tied up in bricks and mortar, so not as easily accessible as cash savings or even (to some extent) shares. They do, however, have a secondary market on which you can offer any loan part for sale (as long as the loan in question is performing and not in arrears). Clearly that does depend on someone else wanting to buy it, but my experience has been that any loan parts offered are typically snapped up very quickly. So if an urgent need arises, withdrawing your money (or part of it) is unlikely to be an issue.
You can read my full Kuflink review here. They offer a variety of investment options, including a tax-free IFISA paying up to 7% interest per year with built-in automatic diversification. Alternatively you can build your own IFISA, with most loans on the platform being IFISA-eligible.
Until 31 May 2023 Kuflink are offering enhanced promotional rates of up to 9.73% (gross annual interest equivalent rate) for their Auto-Invest products (IFISA-eligible). There is limited availability for this offer and it may be withdrawn any time before 31 May 2023 if the limit is reached. For more information, click here [affiliate link].
Last year I set up an account with investment and trading platform eToro, using their popular ‘copy trader’ facility. I chose to invest $500 (then about £412) copying an experienced eToro trader called Aukie2008 (real name Mike Moest).
In January 2023 I added to this with another $500 investment in one of their thematic portfolios. I also invested a small amount I had left over in Tesla shares. My original investment of $1,022.26 is today worth $1,113.72, an increase of $91.46 or 8.95%. in these turbulent times I am very happy with that.
As I said last time, my big success was investing in Tesla at the right time, as their share price has risen by over 86%. If only I had put more than $19 into this!
My copy trading portfolio with Aukie2008 is well in profit. My most recent investment in Oil Worldwide, having started well, is still down fractionally (some might say this serves me right for investing in fossil fuels!). But I am certainly not going to worry about that at the moment.
eToro also recently introduced the eToro Money app. This allows you to deposit money to your eToro account without paying any currency conversion fees, saving you up to £5 for every £1,000 you deposit. You can also use the app to withdraw funds from your eToro account instantly to your bank account. I tried this myself recently and was impressed with how quickly and seamlessly it worked. You can read my blog post about eToro Money here.
I had two more articles published in March on the always-excellent Mouthy Money website. One is Some Ways to Save Money on Council Tax. Along with fuel bills and mortgages, council tax is many families’ single largest item of expenditure. There are various ways you may be able to reduce this bill (or even avoid it altogether), though. In this article I go through a range of methods, including household-based, income-based and property-based.
My other piece was Always Wanted to be in the Movies? Let TV Studios Use Your Home for Money. Clearly this opportunity won’t work for everyone. But if you live in a place with features that might be in demand by a TV or film production company, you can potentially make hundreds or even thousands of pounds. And as I say in the article, you definitely don’t need to live in a stately home. Studios need all types of properties – from two-bed terraces to penthouse flats, country cottages to 1970s-style bachelor pads!
Speaking of Mouthy Money, you might also like to read my in-depth blog post about this personal finance website which I wrote in March. It’s called (without any great originality, I know) Have You Seen Mouthy Money?
As you may know, I am nowadays contributing two articles a month to Mouthy Money, so you’ll understand that I have good reason for wanting to promote it 🙂 But that aside, it is an excellent resource for anyone interested in money-making and money-saving. I always look forward to reading the articles by my fellow contributors. Shoestring Jane is a particular favourite of mine. With Easter on the horizon, I highly recommend her latest article, How to Have a Frugal Family Easter.
Several of my other Pounds and Sense blog posts from March are no longer relevant due to deadlines passing so I won’t bother listing them here. You might perhaps like to read Two Places You Really Shouldn’t Turn for Tax Advice (and One You Definitely Should), though. This is an update of an article I wrote a while back, but it’s on a subject I feel quite strongly about and is still 100 percent relevant.
Finally, as I write this update there are just two days left to the end of the financial year on 5 April 2023. That means you have just two days remaining to make use of your 2022/23 tax-free ISA allowance before it is gone forever. With other tax-free allowances already set to be slashed in the years ahead, it’s more important than ever to make the most of this one while you can. Here’s a link to my recent blog post on this subject.
That’s all for today. I hope you and your family are coping in these challenging times. Don’t forget to check out the government’s Help for Households website, which sets out various types of financial assistance you may be entitled to and is regularly updated.
As always, if you have any comments or queries, feel free to leave them below. I am always delighted to hear from PAS readers
Disclaimer: I am not a qualified financial adviser and nothing in this blog post should be construed as personal financial advice. Everyone should do their own ‘due diligence’ before investing and seek professional advice if in any doubt how best to proceed. All investing carries a risk of loss.
Note also that posts may include affiliate links. If you click through and perform a qualifying transaction, I may receive a commission for introducing you. This will not affect the product or service you receive or the terms you are offered, but it does help support me in publishing PAS and paying my bills. Thank you!
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I have mentioned Mouthy Money a few times on Pounds and Sense. Some of you will be aware I’m a regular contributor to this UK personal finance website.
But while I’ve talked about it in passing a few times, I have never really discussed Mouthy Money properly on PAS. So I thought I should rectify that today!
What Is Mouthy Money?
Mouthy Money is a website dedicated to helping people understand financial matters and make the most of their money. It is run by a small, dedicated team from an office in London. Their efforts are supplemented by a team of freelance writers, researchers and bloggers, including myself.
Every week new articles are added to the website. They are in four main categories, as follows:
Earning covers boosting your income, e.g. by starting a side hustle. Saving is all about reducing your outgoings, while Spending is about getting the best value for your money, e.g. on your weekly groceries shop. Your Questions answers specific questions sent in by readers, e.g. What happens if I can’t pay my tax bill?
The main menu runs across the top of the page. You can scroll down to see the latest articles in the order in which they were added. Alternatively, you can click on any of the four category titles to see the latest articles in the category concerned.
If you scroll further down the Mouthy Money homepage, you will see brief biographies of all the regular contributors, including myself. They include my fellow bloggers and writers Shoestring Jane, Finance Dee, Tolu Frimpong, Jordon Cox, Dana Raer, and so on. There are also bios of the site’s co-editors Paul Thomas and Edmund Greaves. Clicking on any of these will take you to a page listing all articles on Mouthy Money by the person in question.
Example Articles
Here are just a few of my favourite articles from Mouthy Money. I hope this will give you a flavour of the breadth and quality of the content:
I hope you enjoy reading these and many other articles on Mouthy Money and will add the site to your list of finance websites to visit regularly (along with Pounds and Sense, of course!). You can also follow Mouthy Money on Facebook and on Twitter.
As with Pounds and Sense, you can also subscribe to receive emails from Mouthy Money notifying you about the latest posts. The blue sign-up box can be found near the top of most articles on the site (not in the sidebar as on PAS).
One final thing is that if you run a personal finance blog yourself, Mouthy Money are always on the lookout for additional (paid) contributors. You can find out more and apply via this page of the MM website.
As always, if you have any comments or questions about this post, please do leave them below.
If you enjoyed this post, please link to it on your own blog or social media:
I have always had a feature on Pounds and Sense allowing readers to sign up to receive updates any time a new post is published.
It recently came to my attention, however, that these updates, which were meant to be sent automatically, have not always been going out. Although I’ve looked into this, with my admittedly limited technical skills I’ve been unable to figure out why it was happening or how to put it right.
I have therefore taken the ‘nuclear option’ and signed up with an alternative mailing list service called MailPoet. This has worked perfectly in my initial trials.
I don’t just want to import the old list of subscribers to MailPoet. I suspect many people will have forgotten they signed up for updates and I don’t want to be accused of spamming. So if you’d like to receive – or continue receiving – updates every time a new post is published (and other very occasional emails) please could I ask you to sign up to the new service? All you have to do is go to any page on Pounds and Sense and enter your email address in the box near the top right. Click on Let’s Keep in Touch and confirm when requested. Of course, you can cancel any time via the link at the bottom of every email.
I do apologize to existing subscribers that this service hasn’t been working as it should, but hopefully with the new service that will be a thing of the past now.
Finally, just a very quick reminder that you can also follow PAS on Facebook and on Twitter.
Thanks again for being a valued reader of Pounds and Sense 🙂
As always, if you have any comments or questions about this post, please do leave them below.
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As is customary for bloggers at this time of year, here are the top twenty posts on Pounds and Sense in 2022, based on comments, page-views and social media shares. They are in no particular order. I have excluded any posts that are no longer relevant.
I hope you will enjoy revisiting these posts, or seeing them for the first time if you are new to PAS.
All posts in the list below should open in a new tab/window when you click on the link concerned.
I’ll be taking a break from blogging over the festive period (though I’ll still be around on Twitter and Facebook). I’ll therefore close by wishing you a Very Merry Christmas (strikes and cost-of-living crisis permitting) and for all of us a much better new year 🍾
If you have any comments or questions, of course, feel free to leave them below as usual.
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Today I have a guest post for you about something many of us in icebox Britain would no doubt love to do at the moment.
Buying a Spanish holiday home, both for your own enjoyment and as a potential investment, has many attractions. But there are various important matters to consider before signing on that dotted line.
Learn more below 🏖
If you and your partner have spent many happy years holidaying in Spain, perhaps you’d like to consider investing in a Spanish holiday home?
Not only would a stunning sun-kissed property provide a wonderful place to enjoy your retirement years, but you could also let it out while you are not there and make some additional income. After all, Spain is a highly popular vacation spot with much to recommend it, so you would certainly never be short of guests.
Whatever you would like to use your Spanish holiday property for, there are a few important things you need to be aware of before you start house-hunting on the Costa Blanca…
Many Stunning Locations To Choose From
As you surely already know if you relish a vacation in Spain, the country has a plethora of gorgeous locations to choose from. While on the one hand this is clearly a good thing, on the other, it could make deciding on a particular location rather tricky.
If you’re struggling to settle on one spot, take some time to think about your requirements for the property. For example, if you’re planning to purchase a home solely for your own use, it makes sense to choose a property in a location you particularly love. Alternatively, if you’re buying a home as an investment, you may prefer to think about the locale that draws the biggest number of visitors and has the highest rental prices.
Insurance Is Important
Insuring your Spanish holiday home is of the utmost importance, even if you won’t initially be spending a great deal of time there. After all, you never know what might go wrong – from fire and theft to flood damage or structural damage caused by extreme weather. If you don’t have cover then you could be liable for some truly hefty repair bills.
Fortunately, finding the right holiday home insurance for Spain should be a breeze, thanks to Quotezone.co.uk’s helpful comparison service. You can compare and contrast quotes from a range of UK providers and potentially save yourself a lot of time and money along the way.
You Will Need An NIE
When you buy a property in Spain as a foreigner, you will be required by law to have an NIE number. The authorities will be able to use this number to work out how much tax (if any) you owe each year.
Your NIE number can be applied for at the Spanish Consulate in your country of residence or in Spain itself. You will need to fill out forms and provide various supporting documents. The process can take anywhere between two weeks and two months.
Factor In All The Costs
Before you take the plunge and commit to buying your Spanish holiday home, it’s a good idea to dedicate some time to running through all the potential costs you are likely to incur.
After all, you won’t just be paying the asking price of the home itself. You will also have to pay various associated fees, not to mention mortgage payments, lawyers’ fees and surveyor charges.
There will also be additional annual costs, as you will have to keep the property maintained to a good standard, particularly if you’re letting it out.
To ensure a Spanish holiday home is the right choice for you and won’t prove to be too big a drain on your retirement savings, take some time to pause and reflect on the various costs involved. This will help ensure you choose the option that works best for you.
Thank you to my friends at Quotezone.co.uk for an informative article. If you have ever dreamed of owning a holiday property in Spain, I hope it will give you food for thought.
As always, please feel free to leave any comments or questions below as usual. I would be particularly interested to hear from any readers who have gone ahead and bought a property in Spain or are actively considering it.
This is a collaborative post.
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Today I have a guest post for you from my fellow money blogger Bilquis, whose blog you can read at http://getmoneysaving.com.
In the article below, Bilquis sets out ten work-from-home jobs that can be done without large amounts of training or experience. Whether you’re looking for part-time or full-time work, there may be something suitable for you here.
Over to Bilquis then…
The pandemic has changed how we do many things. A big one is how we work. A lot of companies now prefer the work-from-home (WFH) method. This saves money for the business as they don’t have to pay as much for office space. For employees it means they don’t have to spend time and money commuting and can stay in the comfort of their own home and work there.
While working from home can have drawbacks as well as benefits, it can’t be denied there are lots of opportunities. In this post I will set out ten jobs you may be able to do on a WFH basis.
Sales
If you’re good at selling, this is perfect for you. With improved technology and cloud-based software, having a home-based sales job is a realistic possibility for many. You can sell anything from carpets to pet food. And the great thing about sales jobs is that most pay commission for every sale you make.
There are plenty of businesses looking for salespeople. Check out job boards like Indeed and search for “work from home sales” – plenty of jobs will come up! If you want to brush up your sales skills then I suggest going on YouTube and watching videos from experts like Zig Ziglar.
Customer Service
As with sales, customer service is now in many cases fully remote. Many companies are looking for home-based customer service reps to help with enquiries from customers. These jobs are generally very flexible, so if you can only manage a certain number of hours a week, employers will often be happy work around that.
Again, the best place to find customer service roles is job boards like Indeed.
Admin
If you are well organized and good at creating reports and spreadsheets then you might like working as an administrator. This might include other duties as and when required. Look on job sites like Indeed or WeWorkRemotely.
Social Media Management
Do you like using social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook? Businesses are willing to pay good money for people who can help them grow their business through social media. After all, millions of people use social media and the numbers are increasing every day. Many businesses are clueless when it comes to social media and don’t know how to make the most of it.
That’s where you come in. As a social media manager you will manage and grow their social media by adding interesting content and responding to queries from clients and potential clients. If you don’t know anything about growing social media accounts, you can always learn. Go to Udemy and take one of the many courses available there.
As a social media manager you can either take the freelance route applying for opportunities on Upwork and Fiverr, or you can start your own business. You could also get a job with a company, working in their marketing department.
To start your own business as a social media manager it might help to offer to work free for the first few clients, to gain reviews and social proof.
Audio Transcription
Audio transcription involves preparing a written version of spoken content such as a video or podcast. Podcasts are a very popular way to consume information but some people prefer to read a transcript or at least have it available for reference.
So if you have good typing speed and enjoy listening to podcasts this job could be for you. There are plenty of companies in this field like Happy Scribe, Rev.com and Accuro. Some of these companies do require you to be a native English speaker. According to Happy Scribe, their top earners are making $3,000 (£2,400) a month.
Voiceover Artist
If you have a good voice and enjoy speaking, doing voiceovers can be a great stay-at-home job. The work may involve creating voiceovers for videos and courses. You may also work on audiobooks and other projects.
A good website to get started is Mandy. Others include Voices.com, Voquent and Backstage. Companies or individuals post jobs on these sites and you can apply for them by submitting a short audition.
Top earners can earn over $50,000 (£40,000) per year
Teacher
High speed internet and software like Zoom and Skype has made it easy and convenient to teach online from home. If you are knowledgeable about a particular subject, you can set your own hours and work as many or few as you want. There is also a big demand for native English speakers who can teach the language and/or help learners practise their conversational skills.
All you need is a laptop, internet connection and a working webcam/microphone. Some websites you can try are Preply, Cambly and SkimaTalk. Some of these do require you to have qualifications and/or experience.
If you are looking to boost your income you can create online courses. Using platforms like Skillshare or Udemy you’re able to create online courses that people can sign up to and you can profit from each sign up.
Paralegal
As a paralegal you will be helping solicitors and barristers by preparing legal documents, researching, providing quotes to clients, going to court and performing admin work, all based from home.
Most paralegal jobs will not require you to have a law degree, but some do require you to have some legal training or experience.
You can find WFH paralegal jobs on Indeed, TotalJobs or even social networking site Linkedin.
Virtual Assistant
This WFH job involves helping businesses with any task they may have such as data entry, admin, email, research, simple bookkeeping, and so on. The job can be varied and interesting. You can find jobs for virtual assistants on Upwork, Freelancer, and so on.
Web Developer
Businesses need an online presence and can’t afford not to be online. If a business isn’t online and doesn’t have a website, their competition most likely will. As a home-based web developer, you can use your programming skills to build websites for business clients. You can also enjoy a continuing income maintaining and updating the site for them.
Conclusion
With high-speed internet connections and ever-improving technology, working from home is now commonplace. For many of these jobs you do not need any special experience or qualifications. And because you will be working from home, you – and your clients – can be based anywhere in the world.
If you want to work from home, opportunities have never been better, whether you want to work for an employer or become self-employed and seek out clients yourself.
Good luck, and enjoy your new WFH career!
Thank you again to Bilquis for an eye-opening article. Please do check out his blog at http://getmoneysaving.com.
As Bilquis says, there has never been a better time to seek work from home. And as someone who has done this himself for over 30 years, I do highly recommend it! But it must be said that it can have certain drawbacks as well. You might enjoy reading my blog post The Pros and Cons of Working From Home in which I discuss this in much more detail.
As always, if you have any comments or questions about this post, for me or for Bilquis, please do leave them below.
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Today I have a guest post for you from my colleague Richard Winstone (not pictured above). Richard has just launched a new, diary-style blog called Financially Fat about his quest to achieve ‘financial fitness’.
I thought Financially Fat could be of interest to many Pounds and Sense readers, so I invited Richard to create a guest post about it. He was happy to oblige, so here is his article.
Hi everyone. I’m Richard Winstone and I write a blog called Financially Fat.
I want to start this post by thanking Nick for allowing me to guest blog on Pounds and Sense. I appreciate the feedback he has given on my blog and am really proud to have this opportunity to showcase Financially Fat to the Pounds and Sense community.
What is Financially Fat?
“If financial fitness is the aim, then I am Financially Fat.” This is the tag-line of the Financially Fat blog.
Being financially fat isn’t supposed to paint the image of a fat, wealthy man. It’s meant to imply that my finances are out of shape, which they are.
I’ve decided to take a no-holds-barred approach to financial honesty in my blog: the good, the bad and the ugly. So, in the second post I wrote down my complete financial position. I left nothing to the imagination and fully revealed my “financial nakedness”. I did this because I wanted my readers to know that I’m not another rich guy giving quick tips to save a few quid (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but that I’m actually financially struggling and that I’m taking action to improve my financial fitness.
Financially Fit is written as a diary, in which every Friday I comment on how I did with the previous week’s targets and set new targets for the following week. There are also a couple of sections of me rambling about my thoughts from the previous week, which I hope are insightful but may just be the ramblings of a mad man 😉
The purpose of the blog is two-fold. First, I want to chronicle my journey from being financially fat to being financially fit. I think this is easier to do weekly while I’m on the journey rather than try to remember what I did after (I hope) I’ve become financially fit. And second, I’m hoping to provide a step-by-step guide for others to follow to help improve their financial fitness. I write and post my blog to the over50smoney.com website and email it out to our over50smoney community each week.
So, below is a quick summary of how my blogging journey has gone so far, now that I’m five weeks in…
This is another introductory post, but it goes into much more detail. I start by detailing what I hope to gain from Financially Fat and then move on to set out my starting financial position, including my salary, savings, debts, shares, assets and anything else I could think of. It’s a complete works of my financial position, which I’ve committed to reviewing monthly in a similar format so I can see how my financial position improves month-to-month (the next review is this Friday and I’m nervous!).
Right, Week 2 is when it starts getting more interesting and where the format of the blog really starts to become clear. I started this post by highlighting three things I did that were bad for my finances over the previous week, which were:
Moving home (kind of unavoidable)
Working from Costa far too often
Dining out
I then came up with the idea of setting targets for the following week to address things that I’ve done wrong in the previous week, with the hope that I’ll eventually move away from bad habits that cost me way too much money. This seems to be working to be honest, at the moment I’m down to working from Costa only once or twice a week and usually only for a couple of hours each time rather than full days.
Continuing the development of the blog format, Week 3 is where I started titling the blog posts a little more nicely, and where I started summing up my financial savings from following the targets on my previous week.
In this post, I point out how working from Costa only once a week instead of five times a week can save me around £50 per week, over £200 per month! I also discuss setting yourself targets as you follow the blog. Reading it is (I hope) interesting, but for the blog to be useful you need to follow the thought processes I go through and make sure you’re applying them to your own life. So, if you have a small, seemingly inexpensive habit that you do frequently, then I recommend reviewing how much that habit has actually cost you over a month and see how much you could save by cutting down.
In Week 4 I discussed the target of reviewing my standing orders and direct debits. After just one review, which took about 45 minutes, I was able to save just under £600 per year! Which is insane. I continued to review into the following week but was only able to save an additional £1 per month by changing my gym membership.
This is also the week I formalised my “Ramblings” as an introduction to the blog, I hope you enjoy reading them and please feel free to email me any time to comment, ask questions or provide suggestions (I’ve been getting some great tips from readers!).
By this point, I’ve started getting really into the money-saving game. I’m also discussing things like increasing income to ensure I’m not reliant only on my salary.
But, as the title indicates, I talk about tackling my biggest challenge yet, which is currently destroying my finances – smoking! I know, it’s a horrible habit and I’m obviously very aware of the negative health affects as well as the impact it’s having on my bank balance. So, I’ve set out a five-week plan to quit (which I can say I’m currently doing okay on, but it has only been four days).
Cutting out smoking could save me around £2,400 per year, which means from the Financially Fat blog I would have saved around £3,200 a year in disposable income just in the first five weeks, and there’s still so much more work to do!
Follow the Financially Fat Blog
That’s it for the summary of my first six blog posts. I hope you will click through and give them a read as there’s a lot more information in there and some interesting views, I like to think.
If you’re interested in following my blog, please head over to over50smoney.com and sign-up for our newsletters. Or, if you’d rather not receive emails, you could just follow us on Facebook. I write and post every Friday and put links on our Facebook page, so please consider liking and following this. Thank you 🙂
I want to thank Nick again for letting me write this short summary of Financially Fat. I really hope you find it as useful as I am. If you have any questions or comments, or just fancy a chat about finances, please feel free to reach out to me directly at richard@over50smoney.com. I sometimes take a few days to reply, but I promise I get back to every email I receive.
I’m Richard Winstone and I am Financially Fat.
Many thanks to Richard Winstone (pictured, right) for this article. I hope you will take a moment to check out Financially Fat.
I particularly admire the honesty with which Richard sets out his financial position. I try to be honest about my finances on PAS as well, but not in nearly as systematic a way as he is doing!
If you are also ‘financially fat’ (as Richard defines it) I hope you may find the info and advice on the new blog inspires you in your own quest to achieve financial fitness.
As always, if you have any comments or questions about this post (for me or for Richard), please do share them below.
If you enjoyed this post, please link to it on your own blog or social media:
tic a way as he is doing!