My Budget Review Q1 2008

As today marks the start of the new tax year I thought it would be appropriate to review my spending for the first 3 months of this calendar year.

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Comply or Die wins the Grand National

After my disappointing selections in last years Grand National I had low expectations of receiving any returns on this years bets. However you have to speculate to accumulate so wasting no time studying the form like last year I instead picked Comply or Die and Slim Pickings purely based on the fact I liked their names and backed each with a £2 bet.

Slim Pickings at odds of 13 came in a respectable fourth but Comply or Die that I backed at odds of 11.5 was heavily backed in the hours prior to the race to joint favourite. All this money going in Comply or Die’s direction proved a shrewd investment for punters as he was able to hold off a strong challenge by King Johns Castle to win the Grand National by four lengths. Finally I had picked the right horse and my ‘luck’ was rewarded with an £18.25 profit.

$2.6m for Pizza.com

A US man has sold the domain name pizza.com for $2.6m (£1.3m) after maintaining the site for just $20 a year since 1994. That’s a 9286% return on his £140 investment.

He said he now regretted not buying more domain names in the 1990s. Whilst I am regretting not buying pizza.com before him!

GT5:Prologue for £17.27 using Quidco

I had to purchase Gran Turismo 5: Prologue for my PS3 and having searched online to find the lowest prices I also checked Quidco for cashback offers.

I discovered that Play.com were offering 4% cashback so I went with them as they also had the lowest price. Ok so I didn’t have to purchase this game but I would have done anyway so at least this way I saved myself 72p.

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Free £10 for playing PaddyPower games

I received an email from PaddyPower last week offering me a free £10 to play with on their games site simply for clicking a link in there email. Seemed too good an opportunity to turn down so I gave Blackjack a go.

In total I played 11 games at a £1 a go, winning 4 and losing 7 (I’m clearly not that good at the game!). This left me with £6.40 in my account which I tried to withdraw as a little bonus for my MillionaireAdventure pot. Unfortunately this is where the real games begun…

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