What Would You Do With An Extra £1,000 A Month?

I sometimes like to play a little game about winning the lottery. If you won the jackpot, that is. Things like who I would tell first, what I would buy. Perhaps where we would travel to. I think it’s fun to dream sometimes about something that is particularly unachievable. Because, winning the lottery is. Apparently, the chance of winning the jackpot is 1 in 13,983,816 or approximately 1 in 14 million. So, I’d say unachievable. In fact, winning the lottery is just a chance. Luck, perhaps if you believe in that kind of thing.

What makes it even harder for us is that I rarely buy a lottery ticket 😉 We sometimes buy one when the Euromillions gets to a ridiculous number jackpot like £120 million. But then, I presume everyone else buys one then as well! But, I don’t buy them as I think they’re a waste of money. We were part of a syndicate at one point but barely won anything through that as well.

But, what would you do if you had an extra £1,000 in your bank account every month?

Unlike the 1 in 14 million chance of winning the lottery, earning an extra £1,000 is actually achievable. With a little effort needed, I think it is possible to earn that extra every month. And, think what you could do with that! We now regularly receive between £300-£500 a month extra. And that is beginning to make an impact.

The main ways we earn our extra money are:

Through this blog. I am lucky enough to earn money through blogging. Whether that’s through affiliate payments or sponsored content, I earn some money through it. Now, it isn’t particularly stable from month to month [read: not at all] but it does come in fairly regularly.

If you are thinking about starting a blog and wondering if it is for you, then I recommend you start straight away. Starting this blog has been one of the best decisions I have ever made. I host my website through Bluehost after seeing many other bloggers doing the same. If you fancy starting a blog of your own, I would recommend Bluehost. I have used them from the start and my hosting has been excellent. And, if you sign up through my link, you will be able to get hosting for only $5.95 which is cheap when converted into £s! You could be starting your own blogging adventure in a matter of minutes.

Through dividend income. I have talked many times on here about my investing journey and the dividend income I am building up. I started at the end of 2015 and my dividend income for the whole of 2016 was £168.57. I have already doubled that in 2017 and hopefully it’ll only grow from here! All of this is within a stocks and shares isa so the dividend income I receive is tax free. I currently reinvest all of the dividend income I receive in order to grow my account.

My stocks and shares ISA is with Hargreaves Lansdown, which is very easy to use and I’d definitely recommend them. You can get information about that here or even open an ISA in about 5 minutes.

Through selling online. Although this has slowed down lately, or sometimes non existent, selling our unwanted items online has brought us some good income in previous months. If I could find the time to sort through items, photograph them in a good light and get them listed, I’d do this much more regularly. It does seem to take up a lot of time, but if you get clear photos with good listings, then your items are much more likely to sell.

I have started to follow some resellers, particularly on instagram, and it’s very inspiring to see some of the numbers they pull in month after month. There is seemingly quite a lot of money to be make in the right items!

We also receive child benefit for Frugal Baby, which adds some money to the pot each month. I’m not sure if this will go up when Frugal Baby #2 arrives, so I should probably read up on that. It’s not a lot each month but it all adds up, especially when combined with everything else.

You could also:

Use cashback sites. Every time you purchase something online, you should go via a cashback site first to check you aren’t missing out on potential money! Topcashback is the main one we use. Between Mr FC and I, we’ve had over £800 in cashback over the years, purely by buying things through there first.

Use Swagbucks. Swagbucks is a survey site and search engine, where you earn bucks for completing tasks. I use this mainly for searching the web, but you can complete other tasks and surveys for bucks. You then exchange these bucks for gift cards or paypal credit. There are lots of well known brands on there to choose from! If you sign up via my referral link, we’ll both get 300 swagbucks! I’ve also got a post about Swagbucks here.

Try Matched Betting. Matched betting is a way to make money from betting on various sporting activities. If you join Profit Accumulator, there are beginner offers that should make you around £40 that you can do for free! There are lots of bloggers who make a lot of money from matched betting over the year. I must confess that I have only done the beginner offers as I find it quite confusing.

I then started to think about what I would do if we had an extra £1,000 in our bank account every month. What I would spend the month on. Would I spend it all? I came up with the following:

I’d hire a cleaner. If I knew that we consistently had £1,000 a month coming in on top of our salaries, I would be very tempted to hire a cleaner. This seems like quite a luxury, but something to aspire to, I think.
Likewise, I’d hire a gardener. We are lucky that the house we currently live in has quite a large back garden and also a (smaller) front garden. But, neither Mr FC or I are particularly keen on gardening. I like the garden looking nice but don’t have the time nor patience to spend doing it up. I’d definitely do this if we had the extra income.
I’d save at least £300 of it. This would go towards our Ultimate Dream Fund, to keep it growing. £300 doesn’t seem like a big chunk of this, but it would certainly help. And, over time, increase our dividend income stream so a win-win!
Lastly, I think I would indulge in a monthly massage. I love having a massage and only get them very occasionally as a treat. They don’t cost a lot but it seems such a frivolous thing to do so I don’t do it very often!
Spend the rest on Mr FC, Frugal Baby #1 and soon-to-be Frugal Baby #2 🙂

Now, as we don’t consistently have £1,000 extra every month I don’t do any of these things. But, it is definitely something to aspire to and to use as motivation.