109. Christmas Money Challenge (throw back to WMC 2)

🎙️  The Christmas Money Challenge Revisited!
Back at the start of the WMC podcast journey, Julie and Catherine ran a challenge to make some extra cash for Christmas. Back then finances were stretched as we dealt with a pandemic. Two years on and the cost of living has hit hard. So we thought we'd revisit some quick wins to make extra cash.

Areas Covered:
- Easy tips to quickly make extra money
- Maximizing bank account benefits and cashback offers
- Decluttering and reselling items for a profit
- Uncovering government allowances for extra earnings
- The power of creativity in making and selling products
Websites Mentioned:
- Money Saving Expert
- Vinted (an app for reselling clothes)
- eBay and Facebook Marketplace (platforms for selling various items)
- Government Gateway (for claiming work from home allowance)

YOUR HOSTS:
Julie Flynn is an experienced independent financial adviser and financial coach. Justice and equality drive Julie. Which is why she’s spent years studying and researching how stress affects our financial decision making.

Julie is best known for her work with women who have lost their partner and coaching financial services business who want to implement fair and transparent charges.

Ebb & Flow Financial Coaching|Bree Wealth & Tax|Instagram

Catherine Thomas-Humphreys is an Award Wining Financial Coach, Qualified Financial Adviser and Family Will Writer. Catherine believes money is a force for good and when in the hands of good people can be used to do great things.  She loves working with purpose-led parents who are ready to change  their money habits & beliefs to achieve  financial success for themselves and their family.

The Finfluencer|Finfluence|Instagram

Transcript

Julie Flynn [00:00:05]:

Welcome to the Women and Money Cafe. I'm your host, Julie Flynn, independent financial adviser and financial coach. And this is the weekly money podcast for women by women, exploring the practical and emotional side of money. Hey. Back in December 2021, we released our 2nd episode of the Women and Money Cafe podcast, and it was called the Christmas Challenge. And this is off of the back of in a Facebook group. We were running this this challenge to make extra money for Christmas. I thought it might be a good time to revisit that because, you know, now more than ever, people are looking for a little bit of extra cash.

Julie Flynn [00:00:48]:

And what we did in this episode is we shared some ideas on how you can quickly make some extra money. Some of them are going to be, like, you know, extra money in your bank account within a couple of days. Some of them going to take a couple of Some of them are going to arrive in time for January, but I thought it'd be timely to share this with you. Just a quick update because one of the things that we've touched Done on this episode was switching bank accounts. Now the place I always go for up to date information on this is the money saving expert website. So if you have a little look at that now, you'll see that the amount of money that you're being offered to switch is higher now than it was back in 2021. So for instance, right now, today, nationwide, are offering you 200 pounds just to switch to them, and you get access to the 8% regular saver. The other one off the top of my head is 1st Direct.

Julie Flynn [00:01:38]:

1st Direct are offering you a 175 pound if you switch to them with access to their 7% regular saver. And if you know someone or you already bank with a coop, if you recommend someone to the coop, they will give you a 125 pound each. But hopefully, this episode is going to give you a little bit of inspiration to go and create some extra cash. Until the next time. Take care. It's that time of year where it's always handy to have a little Extra cash, doesn't it? And today, what we're going to do is we're going to run through with you some ideas we've had to generate extra money. And this could be either just to help out at Christmas, or some of the ideas could run into January. And let's face it, January is the longest month.

Julie Flynn [00:02:25]:

So we put our heads together to see what ideas we could come up with to help get a little bit of extra cash for this time of year. So, Catherine, we talked about this in the Facebook group, didn't we, that we have with the Women and Money Cafe?

Catherine [00:02:40]:

We did. We did. We set the challenge, nearly 2 weeks ago now, with the first idea to make it to a £100 for the Christmas savings, and then hopefully levelling it up a little bit more. So we had a number of ideas from actual banking ideas to some more creative or flipping ideas. And it got a little bit competitive between ourselves and some of the other experts that join us of the cafe.

Julie Flynn [00:03:09]:

Yeah. So what we've been doing is we've been running this for a couple of weeks now, but there's still time for you to come and join us in the group and join in on the challenge. But what we're going to do today for you is we're going to do, like, a little summary of all the best ideas that we've had so far. So, Catherine, help me remember. You know what my memory's like? Who came up with the app subscription?

Catherine [00:03:32]:

That was that was originally SITC. SITC suggested that It's a really good time of year to go through your bank statements in the first instance just to make sure that anything we are subscribed to, you're still benefiting from, you're still using. And if it's something that you're not, then that's a really easy place to cancel and make an initial saving. Obviously, that's a saving rather than new magic money, but you could then take that saving and put it aside towards your Christmas. Kitty, for lack of better word. But when we went through that, what we noticed as well. It's not all subscription show on the bank statements. So for example, I have had a very long standing yoga app subscription, which is sat within my App Store within my iPhone.

Catherine [00:04:20]:

So we suggested also going into your apps, either your settings in your iPhone, if you've got that, or into the App Store and into subscriptions and checking if there are any active ones That's due to come out. It's usually the annual ones that catch people out. And a great idea they had in January to do the fitness or whatever it was they wanted to do at that Time and it runs through, and we just forget it's there until it goes out again. So that was the first starting point for a small amount of the saving.

Julie Flynn [00:04:49]:

Yeah. What this popped into my head is, if you've bought a new Apple product in the last 18 months or so, The chances are that Apple gave you free Apple TV when you bought the product. Now if you're like me, you've not noticed that the free trial has now run out and you're Be paying Apple £5 a month. So quick tip. Jump into your phone. Go into the subscriptions and see if you're paying for Apple TV. If you are and you don't use it, then cancel. And that's £5 a month you've just saved.

Julie Flynn [00:05:19]:

Absolutely. I think when we were talking about this, Michelle, Jill, one of our regular cafe panels, she was saying to us as well that the Lloyds yes. The Lloyds Banking app now has a subscriptions tab in it where you can check out there, what your subscriptions are. And I know the Starling app does it as well. I'm sure lots of banks do it. So

Catherine [00:05:39]:

Yeah. After Michelle mentioned that, I went and checked in mine as well, and it does have a subscriptions tab, which is really handy. But until someone had said, we don't look, do we? So it's always worth Checking that one out as well. Yeah. I think on subscriptions as well, we also remembered That there are things like Amazon Prime. So one of the common things we're finding in the group is that 2 family members may actually have had Prime. So where you signed up For the quick delivery, Gone With A Prime, perhaps you're benefiting from it, but do you need both people in the family when you could use one member of the family? So potentially another it's around about £8 a year, saving there as well.

Julie Flynn [00:06:21]:

Okay. So we recommended them, like, almost like Family app order. Go and check how many people in your house are paying for Spotify. How many people need to pay for Spotify. I'm going to see if you can just rationalize things a little bit. The great thing about this, Catherine, is it's not just putting a bit of extra money in your pocket for Christmas. This is for the rest of the year. Every month, it's a little bit extra money, isn't it?

Catherine [00:06:45]:

Yeah. Absolutely. So I think, again, it was Tsitsi where Spotify's people have had the individual memberships, but the family membership allows you to have 6 members of your family, which would work out significantly cheaper than six Separate Spotify subscriptions. So that one is a really good saving. For me, I couldn't do without Spotify. I can do without Amazon, but I couldn't do without Spotify. So we are on a family subscription, and that works.

Julie Flynn [00:07:10]:

Alright. Now we were just talking about the banks, weren't we? And, like, The challenge we set ourselves is we're setting mini goals, and the 1st goal is the 1st person to reach a £100. Okay? Yeah.

Catherine [00:07:20]:

I think I'm winning.

Julie Flynn [00:07:21]:

Yeah. We'll get back to that bit. Right? Okay. You cheated. I'm sure you got a head start. Right? But for everybody that's listening, right, you want to set yourself this first mini goal of a £100, and you want to a dead easy. Alright? I'm going to give you a secret now. Okay? It's switching bank account.

Julie Flynn [00:07:37]:

It is the easiest 100 pound you are ever going to make. So, just a quick rundown of some of the banks and the deals that you can get. Santander 123 Lite, if you switch to them, you can get a 130 pound cashback Just for going and playing with them. They want you to pay £500 a month into them. And their cashback does take a little bit longer than the rest of the banks, but it's the highest cashback. You got First Direct, the 1st account, which will give you a £100 a month a £100, sorry, cashback, with minimum monthly Payment and we've got nationwide flex giving you a 100 pound cashback. We've got HSBC, the advance account, Paying a 110 10 pound cashback and a 30 pound Uber E voucher, and then Lloyd's and NatWest for a 100 pound. Simples.

Julie Flynn [00:08:23]:

Right. So that's what's on offer. Catherine, talk to me about why people might not want to switch the bank accounts.

Catherine [00:08:28]:

I think there's a perception that it's hard work or that the Standing orders won't get paid. Having done a bank switch in the past, I'm not wanting to do one at the moment, but I'm going to come back to that. It's very, very seamless now. You set the process off. Everything goes across. So there isn't really a reason not to. I think maybe the only thing to consider is what do you want from a bank, what do you want from a banking service, and making sure that that that suits you. Julie, do you know If you do switch, how long you have to stay? Or can you switch back?

Julie Flynn [00:09:06]:

Well, it's not even so much how long you have to stay. It's whether you actually use them. So for example, let's say you wanted Santander's 130 pound cashback. Okay. So you go and open the Santander 123 account. Let's say it was me. So I bank with Starling. So I'm going to carry on banking with Starling.

Julie Flynn [00:09:23]:

I'm going to open the Santander account. What I'm going to do is I'm going to arrange a standing order from my Starling account For 500 pound, to go into Santander on a specific date. Then the next date, I've got another standing order from Santander going back to Starling. So the money's just sort of running through the account. I think there might be some requirements with regards to direct debits. Let's say, for example, you need to have a minimum to direct debits. What I'll do is I'll just move to my direct debits over to Santander. So along with the £500 standing order that visits There, I'll also set up a standing order from Starling that just deposits the money in Santander to cover the direct debits.

Julie Flynn [00:10:00]:

Did that make sense, or was I rambling?

Catherine [00:10:03]:

It made sense, but I did want to ask. It's got to be a switch, hasn't it? You've got to change a bank account to a new bank account. So if you only had that Starling account, you would have to switch over. But if you had a different account, you could switch that one. When I looked at this for my son, He could switch, but some of the requirements were hard. So your suggestion there of having the direct debits put on or your understanding orders Sounds like a good one. And there is a minimum income requirement because it does look like they want you to have a kind of a working account. Would that work with the scenario you've just walked told her story?

Julie Flynn [00:10:39]:

If Felicia's son or someone that's not got the same level of income, First Direct might be a better approach Because they don't have minimum income requirement.

Catherine [00:10:47]:

Okay.

Julie Flynn [00:10:47]:

So it's just worth looking into them individually. The only thing I would say is when you open up a bank account, bear in mind, it will show on your credit record. So you don't want to be going and opening up 5 different bank accounts. Okay? So maybe just do 1, at the most, 2, And then it won't affect your credit rating. That's the only the only thing I would say.

Catherine [00:11:06]:

Okay. So just to recap and make sure I didn't lose the thread there, it has to be a switch. You can switch your account to and it was first direct, Santander, and there were a couple of others you mentioned. All of them will pay the £100 or thereabouts Christmas, except for Santander, if you get going now, that's what it was a couple of weeks ago. It might just be worth a sense checking, actually, that The dates still apply.

Julie Flynn [00:11:33]:

Yeah. Well, the worst case scenario is the money's going to arrive in January. So it's going to make that longest month just a little bit easier.

Catherine [00:11:41]:

That is a really good point. I hate January for that. It just feels like it goes on and on. So okay. Okay. So I I'm not going to switch, even though it is a tempting, easy money, for one of the better term, only because I'm really happy with I'm also with Starling, and I've only recently set that up, in terms of a new business account. So I quite like the fact that I can have my business my personal account next to each other and to switch between them. So I'm going to have to think of a different way to make my 100 pound, which obviously I did because

Julie Flynn [00:12:18]:

Okay. I'm happy, Catherine. The I know that you guys are only listening to us and you can't see. So let me just describe right now how smug Catherine is looking. On a scale of 1 to 10, Catherine is rating around about a 9 on the SMUG scale. So, Catherine, do you want to tell us about how you've how you've magic topped some money for yourself?

Catherine [00:12:34]:

Okay. So I always start anything that I'm new with a declutter. I do that because We actually have much more lying around than we think. I'm an old fashioned squirreler. So this comes from My early adult years, so there was never really enough income, and I built up little habits of squirreling away 10 pound here, 5 pound there. And then Been really super surprised when I found it however many weeks later in the sock drawer, wherever it was. So decluttering for me is almost just like the little mini treasure hunt to remind myself where all these, squirrels are. And I think that we all do this.

Catherine [00:13:14]:

We get a gift voucher maybe for our birthdays or for Christmas. We put it away in the drawer in the purse, so we spend some of it, but not all of it. And there's actually little balances on those on those cards, so that's well worth looking. So I did start the challenge with a declutter, and I've put it all anything I have found in a really nice glass bowl, which is behind me so that I can see it. I don't have to spend it. I think it's just about acknowledging it that this is the money that I found. This is the money that I've had. I can use it if I want to.

Catherine [00:13:46]:

But by acknowledging it, then it kind of makes space for more magic ink, For want of a better term. So I did find 12 pound on an Amazon voucher, and then £25 In coins, in the car, in the drawer by the bed, and on the windowsill. Who leaves money on the windowsill?

Julie Flynn [00:14:08]:

I tell you, next time I get in your car, I'm going to be having a little rummage round on the choir.

Catherine [00:14:12]:

Oh, I missed a chance now. It's all it's all in the bowl. It's all in the bowl. So that was £37 for just mooching around the house, really. So that that was that was a good start. And then from after the declutter, I'll do the next level of decluttering, which is kind of reselling. Anyone who's got children, you probably already do this, but the feed that they grow out of clothes and toys, and then they'll get to an age where suddenly they don't want to be playful children anymore. They don't want to be on their devices.

Catherine [00:14:43]:

So Christmas is a really good time whether you're using it for kind of charity shoeboxes. I know that's not going to make you You're part of the money, but it's giving something back to someone else, or whether you're using any of the really easy to use, apps and websites where you can resell.

Julie Flynn [00:15:02]:

Okay. So talk about easy to use apps where you can resell. I got all excited Because you guys introduced me to Vented. So I've been having a walk around the house looking at so I had some issues during lockdown with buying clothes. So I told them online that arrived. I'm like, no. I'm not wearing that. And then I couldn't have bothered going back to the shop because you were queuing then and they wore masks.

Julie Flynn [00:15:23]:

So some of them still got the tags on. So the wonderful women in the cafe, you lot. You introduced me to Vinted, and I got terribly excited, didn't I?

Catherine [00:15:30]:

You did. And you keep sharing your screenshots.

Julie Flynn [00:15:34]:

I've got another one to share later on today. What I like is I don't like faff. I can't be bothered with faff, and Vinted just made it so easy to sell clothes. So I think after you guys told me about it, I think I'd made £10, hadn't I? Pretty quickly. So we highly recommend Vinted as a way of selling some of your clothes. You know more about it than me, though, Catherine, don't you?

Catherine [00:15:57]:

I hadn't used Vinted. I knew about it. This is my daughter's contribution to, to the cafe. I had, in the past, used eBay, but then I was finding it more and more faffy, and Less successful, I think, eBay when I first began. You did feel like it was kind of worth it, but I don't so I tend to only use eBay on the bigger items now. There's Facebook Marketplace, which is really easy to use straight up on the app. You can hide your settings if you don't want everyone in your family See that you are, selling the items that they gifted you for Christmas last year, or whatever it is that you're decluttering. So there's a tick box If you just want it listed on Facebook Marketplace, but don't necessarily want everyone in your friends group to know.

Catherine [00:16:44]:

And then I think the other one I want to say Depop. Again, not one I've used. And they all have different fees. I think it's vinted free, Julie.

Julie Flynn [00:16:53]:

It is. Right. So can I tell you quickly about my vintage experience? Go. Okay. So I got the app. I registered. All very easy. I took photos of the stuff, uploaded the stuff, described the stuff, and off we went.

Julie Flynn [00:17:09]:

And about 10, 15 minutes later, Someone bought the stuff. And in the app, it just tells you. And then you click on a bit and they've paid for the postage. And you just print out the postage thingy, Stick it on the so I had packaging for it. Stick it on the packaging. Took it to a UPS drop off point, which is about 2 minutes down the road. Boom. Done.

Catherine [00:17:29]:

Excellent. Excellent. I find Facebook Marketplace in the same process of photographing and uploading that is really easy. Some of the feedback we got from the ladies in the cafe is it doesn't always attract the right sort of buyer. Sometimes it does. You get some really good Sales, nice and easy. Easy communication. They come and they pick it up and collect.

Catherine [00:17:50]:

I guess you could post it, but I just tend to do collection only. Whereas sometimes you can get time wasters. So when we moved house earlier this year, I decluttered everything. So and that did all go on Facebook Marketplace place with varying success. So IKEA day bed, that was quite good success. Big yellow canoe, total fail.

Julie Flynn [00:18:14]:

So for those of you that that didn't meet us when we were in Clubhouse, there is an ongoing saga with Catherine and her canoe. And if you keep listening into future episodes, I'm sure the story will be revealed. And if there's anybody out there that's interested in a canoe, Do get in touch with us.

Catherine [00:18:35]:

So, yeah, that one's not going to be successful on Vinted. So, yeah, just to recap then, Vinted, eBay, Facebook Marketplace. We'd love to hear any comments from anybody who's had Good successes or failures. We're all interested in the humour of this story as well, so do feel free to get in touch with us. What other ideas did we have, Julie?

Julie Flynn [00:18:57]:

Okay. We've shared if you come and join us in the group, you'll get all the ideas there as well. But a couple of new ones that we haven't shared with the group yet, so you're getting an exclusive. Right? So, yeah, big excitement. Okay. These are Probably not the most exciting ways of making money, but they're e again, they're easy. So marriage tax allowance. But there's some easy money to be had there.

Julie Flynn [00:19:21]:

So if you're married, that's criteria number 1. Okay? And if one of you is a nontaxpayer I'm one of you as a basic rate taxpayer. The revenue we'd like to give you some money back. Nice.

Catherine [00:19:35]:

How would I do that?

Julie Flynn [00:19:38]:

But it's the is it there's a form. You can I think you can do it online? And the way it works is you get to transfer 10% Of the amount you don't need to pay tax on. So the amount you don't pay tax on is it 12570?

Catherine [00:19:51]:

Yeah. We just snuck up slightly, didn't it?

Julie Flynn [00:19:54]:

Yeah. So and also you can claim back for the 4 previous years. So if you're doing just this tax year, what will actually happen is it'll go on your tax code. So what will happen is each month, the person that's a basic rate taxpayer will pay slightly less money than tax, which means you've got more money in your pocket. If you haven't if you're eligible and you haven't claimed for the previous 4 years, this, they will send to you as I check.

Catherine [00:20:21]:

Brilliant. Top tip. Top tip. So I will see if I can find a link for that, Julie.

Julie Flynn [00:20:25]:

Right. That and the backdated one, that takes about 6 weeks process. So that's going to be a really nice boost in the middle of January for you.

Catherine [00:20:35]:

Great tip. Thank you very much.

Julie Flynn [00:20:38]:

Okay. So in total, I think it's about £970 up for grabs there if you haven't claimed for the previous years. But we'll do the maths later, and we'll let you know. The other one, not terribly exciting, but, again, it's free money from the revenue, so we'll always take that. Well, it's not the revenue. It's just the government. Is the work from home Hello. Is that you?

Catherine [00:20:56]:

Yeah. That is I had forgotten about that. That is a really good tip. Can you talk us through that?

Julie Flynn [00:21:02]:

Alright. So if you're an employee And if at any point in the last year, you've had to work from home, which is many of us, isn't it? Even if it's just one day, There's an allowance that you get to claim for the entire year. Even if it was just one day, you can have the whole year's allowance. And, also, you can claim for last year as well. So I think it's a 140 pound. And the way you can claim for it is if you are taxed under self assessment, you can claim for it there. If you're not taxed under self assessment, you can use the working from home micro service. So just go and stick that into Google, and off you go.

Catherine [00:21:41]:

Brilliant. You're right. It's not exciting. And do you think that's one of the reasons that we don't do these Thanks. Because there's a lot of words there that don't sound super exciting like marriage and tax allowance and government and revenue.

Julie Flynn [00:21:56]:

Are you telling me you don't want a macro service for you working from green tax allowance?

Catherine [00:22:01]:

That you've made that slightly more appealing. But I think that if we know how to do it easily, then we're more likely to go and do it. So you just described that Not wanting the faff and the vintage app, and it's got to be easy for us. But sometimes, it's worth that little bit of extra effort. So, Again, maybe we could just what was it? Working from home microservice is what you would Google for that one.

Julie Flynn [00:22:28]:

Yeah. And I think if you if you've got a government gateway ID, Then you just do it all online from there. So instead of calling it the microservice, it would have been better if they called it the easy service.

Catherine [00:22:39]:

I think there should be more easy words in finance.

Julie Flynn [00:22:42]:

Well, I think this maybe the government don't want to make it too easy for us to get the money. So that they're So they're trying to put barriers or mental blocks in your way to stop you getting the money, but it's you're entitled to it. So go get it, folks.

Catherine [00:22:55]:

Okay. And once more, if you do that, we'd love to hear your experience, what you got back from that, and where you are with your Christmas challenge in the totals.

Julie Flynn [00:23:04]:

Alright. It turns out, what else did we cover? Can you remember?

Catherine [00:23:07]:

Do you know? I think they were the 3 main ideas. The bank switch, The decluttering to get started, and then the reselling of things that we already had, your extra ideas of the government and the reliefs that are available to people. So that's 5 really great places to start. And I think from there, we threw it out to everyone else to hear what their thoughts and their ideas were, about how they could make some more. I am I was kind of thinking now what I would have done in the past, and I think So, again, this is you get I think you have to get creative. So my daughter and I, 1 year, we made candles. Do not look at me like that because you can probably tell I'm not super creative. But luckily, my daughter is far more talented than I am, and we sold them, so locally.

Catherine [00:24:05]:

But it's I'm not saying that's right for everybody, but I think it's more like Asking your mind to come up with what creative things could you do. What can you make, that you could then resell that is useful in and around Christmas? So we've done decluttering, and we've done reselling. But there is also what can be paid and what can be sold.

Julie Flynn [00:24:23]:

Yeah. No. I think that's great. And I think that that kind of ties things up nicely as to why we started this the cafe in the 1st place. And really what we're all about is trying to help women get empowered around money. Be it that you need more money or you want to make the most of what you've got. But, really, we're just here to answer questions, to help in any way that we can. We have got a little bit competitive with the challenge.

Julie Flynn [00:24:46]:

Catherine is But I'm convinced I'm going to be Michelle. So I hope you found this helpful and useful, interesting, maybe entertaining at times. What we would like what we'd absolutely love is if you come and join us in our Facebook group and share any wins that you've got, you can see how we're getting on and see who's going to be the ultimate winner of the Christmas money challenge. And it just remains for me to say thank you very much for listening today. Yeah. Thank you Thanks for listening to the Women and Money Cafe. If you've enjoyed it, please leave us a review. It really does help.

Julie Flynn [00:25:24]:

And, also, please note the podcast is for education and information only It doesn't constitute personal financial advice. Please reach out to one of us or any of the other fantastic financial us in the UK, for that kind of help.