Mini Mad Money

After 4 years away from this blog I am back to thinking about weird and wonderful ways to make money. I feel like a Lotus eater who has run out of fruit and awoken to find all the mad ideas have been tried, made someone rich or at least richer and are now old hat. My children want to make money by doing the traditional household chores and one is obsessed with running a lemonade stand on the street. The first only works if I have cash to pay for the chores, and the other would be beset with licensing fees and safety considerations- if you want to sell food or drink in Australia better make sure you pass inspection!

Over the holidays SGSM St George Scrap Metal advertised, in our local discount coupon flyer, an extra 10c per kilo for non-trade quantities of scrap metal. We read the site details carefully and concluded we didn't have enough metal in the form of two battered chairs to cover the cost of the petrol to take it to the site. However it did present a great opportunity to show the children how difficult it can be to earn a dollar or two. We decided to start collecting aluminium cans, beginning with my brother in law's V cans. Having weighed one can we know it is going to take a huge number to reach one kilo for which we will probably be paid about a dollar. It wouldn't make sense to go and buy cans of soft drink just for the metal. I decided I would collect cans where ever I see them littering the streets of Sydney, on my daily commute and on our weekend adventures.

One day at Central I noticed that a platform bin was literally overflowing with waste, and surrounded by mostly full cans of lemon ice tea. I concluded there had been a promotional give away but that giving it away was all they could do as no one seemed to have liked the taste. Why else could see 20 plus open but undrunk cans of the stuff? I managed to collect and empty half a dozen cans before my train came, tossing them into my handy plastic bag. Sadly that hardly made a dent in the collection still ringed around the bin like little metal worshippers of the waste cornucopia above.

Two weeks later 6 more of these decorated the brick fence which runs down the middle of the forecourt at Eddy avenue, looking like a decoration rather than the public littering they are. Perhaps who ever is giving out these promotional drinks needs to be held responsible for the litter too. Sitting  with my treasure of trash, as yet unemptied as I hadn't seen a bin before I bolted onto my train, I noticed ANOTHER of the yellow beasties left on a seat.

Tonight as I rode down the escalator at the Chalmers Street entrance I saw a coke can and one other sitting, 3/4 full at the top of the rail, and managed to grab the coke can as I glided down to the station. Emptied into a bin it because another score for the growing stash.

Clearly this is not likely to make much money anytime soon, but it is certainly raising my awareness of how much littering goes on in our city. I was bored waiting on the platform tonight and so collected 4 tall paper cups with soft drink in them and tossed them in the bin, as well as finding one more can for the collection.

Cans seem lighter and thinner now than in my  Coke can-crushing and kicking youth, and I am wondering if they have been made of aluminium at all. It will be some time before we have enough for me to answer this question by visiting SGSM.

Perhaps in the meantime I 'll invest in a metal detector and see if that pays better...

EverdayMoney Credit Card Reward-Earned my first shopping voucher.

At the beginning of the year, I finally gave in an applied for a pink Everyday Money Credit card, which is a Woolworth's product underwritten by HSBC. I admit that this was AFTER having spent nearly 3 years paying past foolish credit card debt (CCD). I basically gave in to the repeated advertising offers I saw almost daily via WDYT, Rewards Central and other similar companies. They were offering one year fee free and a $50 Woolworht's voucher, plus 6 months low rate transfer of other debts. I didn't have any of those thankfully. Also evert $1 spend earns a point for a shopping voucher sent out every  three monts. Woolworth's Select products earn bonus points as do products from their shopping partners, like Dick Smith's. I tend not to get bonus points as I have been using hte card isntead of cash then paying it back each month. In otherwords I wasn't shopping for particular products to get the extra points. If you want to know why not visit my earlier posts on the foolishness of Flybuys.

Anyway...after expenditure of nearly $9 k - that's right $9,000 AU over 3 months, and an additional 1000 bonus points plus 324 Woolworth's bonus points, I was rewarded  with a $70 gift card which expires on 14 October this year....wow....mad money indeed.  Can you hear the dry tone in my writing ?

What they are paying me for of course is a whole lot of vaulabe consumer spending patterns data. $70 for 3 months of my data. No wonder the reputable market research companies warn you doing their surveys won't make you rich.

Still as I am a reformed shopaholic and a Simple Saver, that will cover at least half a week's groceries. Some of my forum mates could make it stretch to a week's worth.