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How I earned £128.96 an hour by being skint…

…and the curious case of cashback crack!

I don’t know about you but I’m glad January is out of the way. It always feels like such a long month and a time when I have absolutely no money. And 2013 was no different as I was about to move into a new house (right in the middle of the worst snow we’ve had for 2 years!).

When payday finally arrived I felt a little like a kid at Christmas – at least I did until I checked my bank balance. After paying the deposit, first months rent for my new house and the final utility bills for my old house I was absolutely skint.

February was going to be a long, cold and lonely month. Now I have to say, after moving house I didn’t have a lot planned for February (which was handy!) all I needed was enough money to buy food and to fill my car up with enough petrol to get to and from work each day.

So after a lot of deliberating I decided to go down the route of getting a credit card. You see I’ve never been a big fan of credit cards, the temptation to go on a mad shopping spree could easily get the better of me, but after hours of research I felt that it was the best option.

I ended up going for cashback credit card and this was for two reasons. Obviously I liked the idea of getting a little money back in a year’s time but also it didn’t have a 0% offer associated with it, meaning I had to pay the full balance each month – meaning I couldn’t go mad!

However this is where things started to get interesting.

Before signing up for the card I’d seen a message on MoneySavingExpert which reminded me to use Quidco to sign up for the card. So off I tootled to Quidco and I got a tasty £15 just for signing up for a credit card through them.

And that was it, my first hit of cashback crack!

I couldn’t stop myself, within two hours I’d changed my broadband supplier to Plusnet and got £70, I signed up for contents insurance and got £35 and then followed it up with a tasty £141.90 from nPower, just for switching my gas and electric.

Then, to complete my cashback binge I changed my current account to First Direct and got £125.

Overall I would say it took me the best part of three hours to earn £386.88, that’s £128.96 an hour, I just wish my job paid that much!

Now I know not all of these options will be available to you, by moving house these deals were perfect for me. They’re available if you’re switching from an existing account as well. How long have you had your bank account for? I bet it’s been years. And when was the last time you changed your gas and electricity supplier? All of those direct debits that you fork out for each month could in fact earn you a nice little bit of cash.

So why not try it yourself? Go for something easy like switching your broadband supplier. Just don’t blame me if you get hooked on cashback crack!

This post was written by David from Ashley Park who specialise in debt consolidation loans and other financial solutions. He also writes about finance and shares money saving tips on the company’s own blog.

4 thoughts on “How I earned £128.96 an hour by being skint…”

  1. I am a big fan of quidco and uswitch, I have made over £400 on quidco and counting. I stick with O2 for broadband though, since they renew my 50% discount every year, and have really good customer service.

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