surviving the recession

Have found a new website that lists all Amazon goods that are half price or less.

PriceCutReview works for Amazon sites in the USA, UK, France and Germany. You don’t actually have to join the site to use it. You simply type in what you are looking for, and if it is half-price or less, it comes up in their results. You then click on the item and go through to the Amazon site to buy. It saves having to trawl through Amazon item by item looking for the things that are on sale. They say that they are considering adding non Amazon items in the near future.

Note that I am not connected in any way with the site, and they do not have a referral program.

Many online money-making projects, such as affiliates, get-paid-to-click, sponsored posting etc also pay you to introduce people to their service. Typically, they ask you to introduce a member, and that member has to earn a certain amount before you get your introduction fee. Many bloggers get very excited at this and plaster referral links all over their blogs. But how successful if this as a money-making project?

In my experience, nine out of ten referrals earn you absolutely nothing, as they give up way before they earn enough for you to get your introduction fee. Occasionally you might be able to refer someone who is absolutely great, and you earn a lot from introducing them, but this is very rare. And then you get referral schemes where the scheme owner changes their mind about paying for referrals, so all the work you have done introducing people to their site is for nothing.  

My advice is, sure, put the referral links on your blog, as you never quite know if one of those rare diligent referrals will turn up. But don’t count on the money - it’s a very nice-to-have iceing on the cake, if and when you get paid, nothing more. And don’t be so foolish as to neglect your real sources of online earnings because you are too busy promoting referrals.

If you are a British mortgage holder, you should always aim to have your mortgage less than the value of your home - if your loan is more than the value of the house (a negative equity situation) and you have to sell the house in a hurry, you will be liable under UK law for the difference in what the sale of your house realises and the mortgage.

Therefore one of the safest things you can do in these times of property price falls is to overpay your mortgage if your contract allows it, to ensure that you always have at least 10% equity in the property. That way, if you lose your job and have to sell in a hurry, or if you simply need to remortgage, you can do so.

But how do you tell if you are in a negative equity situation? You can always get an estate agent to value your house, or you can use this calculator from the Financial Times - FT equity calculator - to check if you have equity in your property. It won’t be exact, but should be a good rough guide as to what your situation is.

I have written a lot of posts on how to earn extra money, both online and offline, and it occured to me that it would be handy to summarise them in a single post, so that people can see what the options are.

Why would you need to earn extra money? Perhaps you’ve lost your job, or need to raise cash to clear your debt, or simply because you are retired and your investments no longer provide an income big enough to live on. Here’s a list of ideas on earning money. Where the idea is only applicable to one country, I have put that country’s name in brackets. Where there is no country named, it is suitable for everyone.

Make money by tutoring online (USA)

Making money from YouTube

Making money from Newsvine

Making money renting out space (UK)

Making money putting ads on your car (UK)

Making money renting your goods out

Making money house-sitting (UK)

Making money participating in clinical trials (UK)

According to the Guardian, the rates on fixed rate mortgages are coming down - but they still come accompanied by hefty arrangement fees (ranging from £599 to £1049) and the fixed rates are still higher than many standard variable rates. They advise people not to be seduced by the low standard rates and to fix now, as house prices are continuing to fall and it might be difficult to get a 90% loan in the future should standard variable rates rise.

I think their advice is wrong. We are going to have low standard variable rates for at least the next year. And yes property prices are falling, but borrowers can use the savings from the falling standard rate to overpay their mortgages to bring the loan down. It’s certainly a lot cheaper to do that than to commit yourself to a fixed rate with an expensive arrangement fee.

In any case, all borrowers who can overpay without penalty should be looking to get their loan-to-value below 80%. For ways to raise money money to pay off debt, please see the categories in the sidebar for “earning money” and “earning money online”.