I can almost taste those cocktails

You may remember the challenge I set myself last week of forty countries before November when I turn 40. Part of me thought there’s no way I could manage it financially. Honestly, not because I don’t earn enough money, because I do, but because I am very bad with money and spend it faster than I can make it. You’ll have seen on other posts the collections I own, the masses of bags, jewellery etc etc. I just cannot stop buying stuff. It’s always ‘oh just this one more thing.’ Every day. In the past I would have just whacked the flights on a credit card and winged it. Literally. Can’t do that any more. No credit allowed. Not quite ready to delve into that yet but let’s just say it’s part and parcel of what we are discussing. My next fall back has always been the bank of mother dearest but as she decided to depart us for good in November, that is not an option either. I don’t generally need to save money. I get paid weekly and as long as I actually go to work, I get paid enough each week to pay whatever bill will come my way until the next payday. So I’ve never developed the saving habit and at 39 I have exactly £139 in savings. Absolutely shameful. Again this is not because I am struggling to earn, it is because I cannot keep hold of it.

My biggest blog fan and Mother-(not)-in-Law, Catherine read my last post and very kindly said she wanted to gift me something to help with the challenge and so wanted to pay for the new passport which has now been sent and should be back soon. Hurdle number one, hurdled. Thank you so much!

And so we come to another aspect of money making. Or what I like to call my second job. It started as a bit of a curiosity 3 years ago and has now become something that means I work one or two days a week less than I did last year but still have roughly the same amount of money. Everybody looks at me with raised eyebrows or rolled eyes or just immediately dismiss me before I can explain it but it genuinely earns me thousands and thousands of pounds. I’ve done the maths. I made about 25k in 18 months and it’s all from my phone. What is it? It’s matched betting. But you’ll never beat the bookie I hear you cry and every single person has told me over and over and over again. Told me I’m delusional etc etc. Just look at my accounts. It’s not gambling. Just let me explain it and go and look for yourself. I’m not going to go too much into it but here is a very short summary:

Ladbrokes have an offer at the moment where you sign up, bet £5 and get £30 worth of free bets. Yeah yeah but the bets will all lose. But here is why it doesn’t matter. What you do is place he bet with Ladbrokes but then on a different website or a ‘betting exchange’ such as Matchbook or Smarkets you place a bet that the even you bet on at Ladbrokes won’t happen. So think of it as binary. Either the event will happen or won’t happen. So it’s not that in a match you’re betting for one team on one and one on the other because if it’s a draw you lose on both. You bet for the team to win on Ladbrokes and for the team to NOT win on the exchange. This covers a loss and a draw. You may lose a few pence with this initial bet but then you are given £30 by Ladbrokes to do the same thing again and then you are essentially gaining back the value of the free bets each time. So you’ve just made around £23 quid. There are hundreds of bookies and they do offers every day. There are websites that have run through instructions and tell you exactly what to bet on. Once you’ve got the basics under control there are so many other ways to make money from gambling just by using calculations. I’ve moved away from the betting and concentrated more on casino offers which are usually ‘spend £20 on this game and get 20 free 10p spins.’ Every game has to have a disclaimer with the percentage ‘return to player’ value. So you can work out how much you’d expect to make from each offer. If the RTP in the game above is 96% you’d expect to lose 80p on your initial wagering but then you’re gaining £2 worth of spins which on average should return around £1.90 so you can expect to make £1.10. Of course with casino it’s never guaranteed but doing lots and lots of offers over time will mean that you are making money just by way of the statistics. There is of course the chance that you will lose money with casino or the other chance that you will win big. I do so many offers in a day that I usually win £100+ on at least one offer per day and will usually be in profit by £60-80 a day. Or if you have a really lucky day it can be over a grand. Like today….

Thank you fishies! Thats almost the flights paid for. If I can just keep my dirty, spendy disinhibited hands off it! I can almost feel the sand on my feet. I should stop standing in the cats’ litter tray really.