2008 Review

The year 2008 will always be remembered as the year the phrase ‘credit crunch’ entered the dictionary, despite the fact the severe shortage of credit started back in August 2007 when French bank BNP Paribas admitted it could not value some of its assets due to a “complete evaporation of liquidity” in the market. Within a month the European Central bank had pumped 95bn euros into the banking market although this wasn’t enough to prevent a run on the Northern Rock and it’s eventual collapse.

Only days into 2008 and the World Bank issued a statement predicting that global economic growth will slow in 2008 as the credit crunch hit even the worlds richest nations. But I doubt even they expected the FTSE would end the year down 31.3%, with interest rates across the globe being slashed to record lows. But despite all this doom and gloom I was still able to make money as my Millionaire Adventure continued.

As you can see from the chart below the year started rather slowly with me trimming a little here and a little there from my regular expenses. Then in June things really took off when I started matched betting during Euro2008 which helped me to earn over £200 during the 3 week tournament.

After that I was on a run quickly notching up a £240 saving by threatening to leave my mobile phone provider and a further £140 saving from switching my broadband provider. Then in August I received news that I had finally won my battle to reclaim my credit card charges which along with some more matched betting brought my summer earnings to over £1000.

Octobers highlight was selling on eBay which earned me £172 although did require a lot of effort and a substantial amount of my time. The final couple months of the year saw cashback that I had earned earlier in the year finally starting to make its way into my bank account with almost £24 cashback being earned just from booking a weeks holiday.

As you can see from the chart below my earnings were roughly equally divided between Money Saving, Money Making and Gambling. Which is why the more astute of you may have noticed that these are now the sites main categories.

The challenge for 2009 is now to start making my existing earnings work to earn me more money, which is why you’ll shortly see the appearance of an Investments category, but more on that later in the month.