events

October 6, 2017

Get Guaranteed Cash Prizes from this Promotion by Circle

A quickie today to let you know about a special promotion that is currently being run by the online payment platform Circle.

Anyone is welcome to enter their Education or Every Nation promo, whether or not they have an account with Circle already (if you don’t, you will need to sign up for free).

Everyone entering goes into a draw for a prize of a round-the-world trip or getting their university fees paid off – your choice. Luckily for me, I went to uni in the days students got grants rather than loans, so I asked for the world trip 🙂

But in addition, you get a guaranteed mystery cash prize of anywhere from 50p to £50 credited to your account. I got £0.61, but a colleague received £2.67. You can also introduce friends and relatives to this promotion (once you have entered yourself). For each one who signs up via your referral link – which is provided once you enter – you will get an extra prize draw entry and another mystery cash prize.

If you are a member of Prolific Academic – one of my favourite sideline earning opportunities – you may well have a Circle account already. It is a bit like PayPal, except the fees are lower!

Click here to enter this promo. Good luck, and please do leave a comment below saying how much you won!

Finally, please note that this is a limited-term promotion. I will aim to update this post as soon I know that it has closed, but to avoid disappointment I recommend entering as soon as possible.

Disclaimer: This post includes my referral link, so if you enter the promotion by clicking on it, I will get an extra entry as well.

If you enjoyed this post, please link to it on your own blog or social media:

August 3, 2017

Vote for Your Favourite UK Money Blog!

Nick Everything Else events 2 Comments

In this post a few weeks ago I revealed that Pounds and Sense had been nominated in the ‘Best Money Making Blog’ category of the 2017 SHOMO awards.

The SHOMO awards (it stands for Show Me the Money Bloggers) are given out every year to UK-based independent money bloggers. The main sponsor is the cashback site Quidco.

There are various categories, from Best Frugal Food Blog to Best Personal Finance Blog. Pounds and Sense has been nominated in the Best Money Making Blog category.

Pounds & Sense is also eligible for the People’s Choice Award, which any blog reader can vote for. If you enjoy reading Pounds and Sense, therefore, I warmly invite you to vote for it for this award.

Voting is open from now until the end of August 2017. All you have to do is visit this page of the UK Money Bloggers website and vote for Pounds and Sense from the drop-down list of blogs provided.

But whether you do or not, I highly recommend that you visit this page of the UK Money Bloggers website where all this year’s nominees are listed. There are some amazing blogs and other resources here, including many UK finance blogs I follow myself.

The winners of the SHOMO awards will be announced at the Show Me the Money Bloggers 3 Conference in London on 23 September 2017. For more information about the conference, and booking information (for UK finance bloggers only), please click here.

Finally, I should like to express my gratitude to the unknown person or persons who nominated Pounds and Sense for an award..

As ever, if you have any comments or queries about this post, please do leave them below.

If you enjoyed this post, please link to it on your own blog or social media:

July 18, 2017

Pounds and Sense Shortlisted for UK Money Blogging Award!

Nick Everything Else events 2 Comments

I am very pleased to reveal that Pounds and Sense has been nominated for a SHOMO award by UK Money Bloggers.

The SHOMO awards (it stands for Show Me the Money Bloggers) are given out every year to UK-based independent money bloggers. The main sponsor is the cashback site Quidco.

There are various categories, from Best Frugal Food Blog to Best Personal Finance Blog. Pounds and Sense has been nominated in the Best Money Making Blog category.

I don’t expect to end up winning the award, as I am up against some highly professional and popular blogs in my category. However, even being short-listed in my blog’s first year is something I am very proud of.

The shortlists were produced by the SHOMO awards committee, chaired by Karyn Fleeting, aka Miss Thrifty. There is also a People’s Choice Award, for which all short-listed blogs are eligible. Voting takes place for this throughout August and is open to anyone. If you should feel inclined to vote for Pounds and Sense, don’t hold back!

In any event, I do highly recommend that you visit this page of the UK Money Bloggers website where all this year’s nominees are listed. There are some amazing blogs and other resources here, including many UK finance blogs I follow myself. If you are interested in money matters, I highly recommend checking them all out.

The winners of the SHOMO awards will be announced at the Show Me the Money Bloggers 3 Conference in London on 23 September 2017. For more information about the conference, and booking information, please click here.

Finally, I should like to express my gratitude to the unknown person or persons who nominated Pounds and Sense for an award..

As ever, if you have any comments or queries about this post, please do leave them below.

If you enjoyed this post, please link to it on your own blog or social media:

July 2, 2017

When Ernie Became Scrooge: Why I Just Sold Most of My Premium Bonds

Nick Investing events, reviews 6 Comments

In late 2014 I invested £30,000 from an inheritance on premium bonds. I liked the idea of making a tax-free income this way, with the (admittedly slim) chance every month of winning a life-changing sum.

Initially anyway it went fairly well, though all I ever won were £25 prizes. Then in June 2016 the interest rate and hence the prize fund was reduced, and almost immediately I saw a big drop in the number of prizes I was receiving. For comparison purposes, here are the prizes I got from November 2014 (the first month my bonds were eligible for the monthly draws) to May 2016…

Month/Year	Number of Prizes won	Total Prize Value £s
11/14	1	25
12/14	2	50
1/15	1	25
2/15	1	25
3/15	0	0
4/15	2	50
5/15	2	50
6/15	2	50
7/15	0	0
8/15	0	0
9/15	0	0
10/15	1	25
11/15	1	25
12/15	0	0
1/16	3	75
2/16	1	25
3/16	4	100
4/16	3	75
5/16	0	0
TOTAL	23	600

In contrast, here are my winnings after the change was made in June 2016.

Month/year	Number of Prizes won	Total Prize Value £s
6/16	0	0
7/16	2	50
8/16	1	25
9/16	0	0
10/16	0	0
11/16	2	50
12/16	1	25
1/17	0	0
2/17	0	0
TOTAL	6	150

So in the period November 2014 to May 2016 I won 23 prizes totaling £600 in value, and from June 2016 to February 2017 I won 7 prizes totaling £150 in value.

Obviously we aren’t comparing like with like here, as the first period is 16 months and the second period just nine months. So here are the pro rata figures for the returns both pre- and post-June 2016.

Pre-June 2016 – 600 x 12/16 = £450 per year

June 2016 onward – 150 x 12/9 = £200 per year

So, in effect, my rate of return has more than halved since the June 2016 changes. When you calculate this as a percentage return on my £30,000 investment it looks even worse.

Pre-June 2016 – 450/30000 x 100 = 1.5%

June 2016 onwards – 200/30000 x 100 = 0.67%

By current standards, a tax-free return of 1.5% per year isn’t too shabby – it compares pretty well with cash ISAs, for example, even though the return with the latter is guaranteed (until the rate changes anyway).

On the other hand, 0.67% is clearly disappointing. I would have made more keeping the money in my Santander 123 current account which pays 1.5% (3% pre-November 2016), even though they only pay this on the first £20,000 in your account.

It’s hard to quantify what the chance of winning a big prize is worth. On the one hand you probably won’t – but on the other hand, somebody has to!

So What Action Am I Taking?

After nine months under the current premium bond terms I have decided enough is enough.

I withdrew £25,000 of my £30,000 today and plan to put this in a variety of equity-based investments. Obviously these are not guaranteed either, but by a conservative assessment they should generate an annual return of around 5%, or about eight times what I am getting from premium bonds currently.

I am going to keep £5,000 in premium bonds for the time being. At least it gives me a bit of excitement at the start of every month. And I am never going to lose this money, although obviously in time its value will be eroded by inflation.

So that’s my view of premium bonds, but what do you think? Are they still a worthwhile investment or are they now a mug’s game? Please leave any comments below as usual!

I highly recommend this premium bonds prize calculator from MoneyMarvel which will show your likely (median) winnings from any given holding of premium bonds.

Save

If you enjoyed this post, please link to it on your own blog or social media:

January 1, 2017

Happy New Year 2017!

Nick Everything Else events 0 Comments

Happy New Year from Pounds and Sense!

I do hope 2017 is a good year for you, and the year you achieve (or at least start to achieve) some of your financial and other ambitions.

Thank you also for visiting my blog. If you haven’t already, I do hope you will sign up to receive notifications when it is updated using the box in the right-hand column.

You can also follow Pounds and Sense on social media, including Facebook and Twitter. And I also recently added PAS to the popular Bloglovin platform. If you are a member of this free service you can get all my latest posts delivered to you with your updates (and updates on any other blogs you follow as well, of course). Just click through this link to sign up.

Finally, if your interests also extend to writing, you might also like to check out my Entrepreneur Writer blog. I regularly share tips, advice and market information for writers and aspiring writers here. It would be great to see you there as well 🙂

Once again, I wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

If you enjoyed this post, please link to it on your own blog or social media:

December 24, 2016

Happy Christmas 2016!

Nick Everything Else events 0 Comments

Just wanted to take this opportunity to wish all of you a happy and peaceful Christmas, and a fulfilling and prosperous new year.

Even if you don’t celebrate the religious festival, I hope you enjoy the festive period. Thank you for your interest in Pounds and Sense. Without you, I really would be whistling in the wind!

Pounds and Sense is of course still very new, so I thought it might be helpful to list the posts I have made so far, in case you want to catch up with them over the holiday period. They are as follows:

Make Money and Help University Researchers with Prolific Academic – I’m a big fan of this website, which not only allows you to earn a few pounds helping researchers, but gives your little grey cells a workout into the bargain.

How I Scored a £1200 Mattress for just 10 Minutes’ Work as an Amazon Vine Reviewer – In this post I reveal the amazing range of products I have been able to obtain for free as an Amazon Vine reviewer. I also explain how you may be able to become a Vine Voice yourself, and suggest an alternative that is nearly as good to try in the meantime.

Sign Up Now for this Free Online Course on Managing Your Investments from FutureLearn – The course in question, which is run by The Open University, starts on 9 January. I’ve enrolled on it myself. Hope to see you there!

Save Money with Cashback Sites – You can save a lot of money on your online shopping with cashback sites, and even make money as well. Find out about the top two UK cashback sites in this post.

Get Money Off Gift Vouchers with Zeek – Zeek is an online platform for buying and selling gift vouchers. Right now they are running a special Christmas promotion where you get 10 percent cashback for every £100 worth of vouchers you buy (In addition to the discount of 4-15% on the face value of the vouchers themselves). Plus you can get an additional £5 off your first voucher purchase by signing up via the link in the post. What’s not to love?!

There will, of course, be many more posts to come on Pounds and Sense in the coming months, and I don’t want you to miss out! So please do sign up in the box on the right to receive notifications any time the blog is updated or when I have urgent and valuable information to pass on. You can also follow Pounds and Sense on Facebook, Twitter and other social media (again, click on the relevant icons in the right-hand column).

It only remains once again to wish you a wonderful Christmas. I will hope very much to see you regularly on Pounds and Sense in the new year.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

If you enjoyed this post, please link to it on your own blog or social media:

December 12, 2016

Sign Up Now for this Free Online Course on Managing Your Investments from Futurelearn

Nick Investing events 1 Comment

Futurelearn is a UK-based platform for short online courses from British and international universities. All Futurelearn courses are free and open to anyone in the world.

I thought you might like to know that a course titled Managing My Investments begins on 20 March 2017. It comes from The Open University. It will run for six weeks and you can enrol now if you wish.

Managing My Investments is intended for anyone with an interest in developing their personal financial skills to make good decisions when managing their investments and buying investment products. The course does not require any previous experience of this subject.

On the website, it says:

On this free online course, you’ll learn about different investment choices, the returns and risks associated with each, and the evidence about their historical performance. You’ll explore investment strategies, as well as the practicalities about involvement in personal finance markets. And you’ll look at how to avoid the individual and group behavioural traits that can impair effective investment decision making .

Throughout, the course will provide recent and current case studies on investment issues, to demonstrate how the ideas and issues explored in the course are reflected in the arena of personal investments.

The course is up-to-date and covers the current reforms to UK pensions due to be rolled out in 2015 – changes that will radically alter the way many people will use their pension savings as they move into retirement .

Managing My Investments aims to give you the knowledge and confidence to take charge of your investments and your financial future.

Finding Out More

The course is run by Martin Upton of the OU Business School (previously Treasurer of the Nationwide Building Society). It requires a commitment of around three hours a week.

For more information (including a video trailer) and to register, visit the Managing My Investments information page of the Futurelearn website.

Futurelearn have lots of other interesting free courses, incidentally. I recently took one called Strategies for Successful Ageing from Trinity College, Dublin, which was informative and thought-provoking. I am currently half-way through a course on understanding diabetes (I was diagnosed as prediabetic earlier this year).

As well as the teaching, another big attraction of Futurelearn courses is the opportunity they provide to interact with fellow students from all over the world. There is often almost as much to learn from the other students as the course material itself!

I am also enrolled on Managing My Investments, so if you decide to sign up for the course, keep an eye out for me on the course website. I try to comment regularly and get as actively involved as I can in discussions 🙂

If you have any comments or questions about this post, please do post them below.

NOTE: This course has been postponed till 20 March 2017 from its original start date of 9 January. I have amended the post accordingly.

Save

If you enjoyed this post, please link to it on your own blog or social media:

«< 13 14 15 16 17