From flogging old stuff to switching bank accounts, I tried some classic money-making tips to see if they actually work.
Recently, I finished a contract and was between jobs.
So, I thought I’d try out some of the things financial commentators sometimes suggest will help you make additional money.
1. Selling on Vinted
Money tipsters often say you should sell your old items on second-hand selling websites, such as Vinted and eBay, to make some extra money rather than just take them to a charity shop.
Usually, I don’t have the patience. But this time, I decided I’d have a go at selling old clothing and shoes on Vinted.
I’d bought plenty on there recently after being introduced to it by a friend at work, and previously sold the odd thing on eBay, so how hard could it be?
I opened an account, took lots of photos of my items, priced them at around £3, and waited for the offers to flood in.
Within minutes I got loads of likes but, after a few hours, no buys.
2. Pile them high, sell them cheap
I assumed my items must be overpriced, so I soon found myself slashing the prices to £1.50 or even just £1 to get a sale.
This worked and soon I had a few items to despatch. One even sold as I was uploading it.
Vinted doesn’t tend to use Royal Mail, so you can’t just pop your packages in your local post box. Instead, it uses couriers such as Yodel or Inpost.
This involves dropping things off at locations where someone will scan your item.
We now live in the sticks, so this means driving a few miles to the local petrol station for Yodel or for Inpost, to our local Tesco.
There, you have to press a few buttons for a random safe box to open to deposit your item.
I quickly realised that the £2.50 I had made from selling my items I’d most likely spent on diesel dropping them off.
Plus, one customer didn’t pick up her item from the mysterious box in time and I had to give her a refund when it returned.
Maybe I didn’t have the right items to sell. I think people who have access to good quality branded clothing at a low price – or even for free – such as Seasalt, Nike, etc. are the ones making any money on there.
It’s a good way to recycle, though.
And I did use the £11 I ‘made’ overall to buy some Christmas presents too.
I'm not going to count this money in my total though as I feel the exercise was financially neutral at best.
3. A stall at the Christmas Fayre
My nine-year-old suggested we took a stall at the school Christmas fayre. “It will be fun,” he said.
“I’ll make lots of earrings!”
Ever the entrepreneur, he had been raiding my old jewellery-making kit, trying to sell the items he’d made to his classmates.
I paid the £10 for the stall and, after my son failed to keep to his word, ended up making some earrings myself and making up the shortfall with used clothing items and old kids’ books I hadn’t yet sold on Vinted.
On the night, I was shocked to find almost all the stalls were professional ones, selling expensive items, such as Christmas gonks, silver jewellery or subscriptions to utility services.
I felt embarrassed setting up our stall, which looked more at home at a jumble sale.
However, some kindly school pals visited and bought bits and pieces – a pair of long winter socks, leopard print trainers that didn’t fit me and some earrings.
Two schoolchildren bought some books.
Towards the end of the four hours we were there, I wound up giving one of my son's friends a book for free as he didn’t have the required 25p and his parents wouldn’t give him any more cash to spend.
In the end, I made £8.50 – so a £1.50 loss – which he then frittered away on lollipops at the fayre...
In fact, he and his friends set up an 'off-the-books' tombola, effectively reselling items they won at the fayre to unsuspecting classmates and, I think, made more money than me!
At least we contributed to the school’s fundraiser, and they made £660.
4. Online survey time-waster
My father and grandfather were great salesmen in their day but maybe, I reflected, the gene had skipped a generation.
Perhaps I should try surveys.
Doing them online seems a breeze – you fill in a few questions or sit in on an online session for an hour and get £80 for your insights, or you plug something into your TV that measures your viewing habits and get an Amazon voucher.
I signed up for at least 10 good quality surveys paying £60 or more through Take Part in Research, but didn’t get picked for any of them – probably because I’m a journalist.
I was able to sign up for YouGov surveys, however.
These are fun but take forever to fill out, often have nonsensical questions in an effort to be humorous (“Did you spend this weekend skiing in Aspen, playing to 500,000 people or visiting the Louvre? Tell us about your personal medical history…”) and you have to spend hours on them just to get £50.
I am nowhere near that target yet despite having completed quite a few now.
Surveys are definitely not an easy way to get money fast – unless you happen to have the ideal profile for a focus group member.
5. Bank switching – is it worth it?
Perhaps I would fare better switching banks. That’s where it looks some of the big money can be made for just pressing a few buttons on an app.
After previously switching in the early noughties, I’ve had the same account for years and get next to no interest or perks from it, unlike many modern bank accounts.
But I do like it because it’s free.
Switching to NatWest could secure me £180 as well as rewards for logging in each month and using the debit card to buy items from certain stores, so I downloaded the app and applied. It’s important to read the fine print, however.
The difficulty is that you only get the bonus if you completely close your old current account via the switching service.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to as, as well as being free, my old account came with a £500 overdraft facility.
With the NatWest switching bonus, you also have to pay in £1,250 each month to qualify.
Each bank’s switching conditions are different.
For example, with the recent Lloyds offer, you had to switch completely but there was no minimum amount to pay in and you could switch with only 3 direct debits.
See our roundup of the best bank switching bonuses here
Use a dummy account
As such, some money experts suggest setting up a dummy current account to switch from if you don’t want to shut your main current account.
I had another current account, so I decided to swap over some direct debits to it and switch this one over instead and keep my existing main account for the time being.
It’s definitely worth checking the terms and conditions of these things before applying. You could also harm your credit score if you switch banks too often.
All in all, I was £171.50 up on my quest to make extra money despite my initial lack of success – although, £147.50 if you include the fees for the next year for the NatWest account of £3 a month, minus the £1 monthly reward for logging into the app.
One last-minute bonus was discovering by accident that I’d actually earned around £30 in vouchers in my Microsoft Rewards account by using Bing to search the internet.
I think this may have taken me several years to accumulate, however!
As they say, it turns out there really is no such thing as a free lunch or free money in this case.
Want to try more tips? We've compiled a list of other money-making tips here