the richest man in atherstone

Stoozing is something I happened upon whilst browsing the Internet about eighteen months ago. It is a technique to make free money from credit cards. I thought it was a marvellous idea when I first read about it however I had to put it on hold for a while because I was planning on moving house and didn't want the credit checks from credit card applications having an adverse affect on my credit rating and cutting down my choice of mortgage.

Regular readers will know that I moved house about six months ago and so I decided to pick up where I left off and begin my first 'stooze'.

What is Stoozing?
There are a fair number of credit cards available that offer an interest-free period on balance transfers for a specified amount of time as well as having no balance transfers fees. There are also one or two credit cards that offer the option to do a balance transfer to a current account, rather than a credit card (known as a super balance transfer or SBT in the trade). Using the two, it is possible to get a free loan for the time period of the 0% offer that can be utilised as a method of earning interest.

For example: I apply for a credit card that gives me 0% on balance transfers for 7 months. I am offered the card with a credit limit of £8'000. I do a free balance transfer of all £8000 from that card to the SBT card, then a second balance transfer from my SBT card to my bank account. From there I can put the money in a high interest savings account until I have to pay the money back at the end of the introductory offer. If my savings account has a 5% net interest rate, I would earn £200 interest over 6 months. The important thing to remember is to pay the minimum payments each month and make sure the capital is paid off on time, but I don't think that would pose a problem for me.

My First Stooze
Around six weeks ago, I applied for an Egg Money card. This is a Super Balance Transfer card as I can use it to transfer funds to my Current Account. Egg charge balance transfer fees, so it can't be used as a Stoozing Card but it acts as the 'middle-man' between the Stoozing Card and my bank account.

Next, I applied for an Ulster Bank Credit Card, which offered an introductory 0% interest rate on balance transfers for 6 months. Basically, this means I can borrow money from it and not be charged any interest for 6 months. When it arrived, I found they had given me a credit limit of £2000. A nice amount to test the water with, I thought.

The next step was to perform a balance transfer of the £2000 from the Ulster Bank Credit Card to my Egg Money Card, which was achieved with a quick phone call. I asked for the exact date the interest-free period ran out and made a brief note of the date and time of the call as well as the name of the guy I spoke with (just in case something went wrong).

A week or so later, the funds had arrived in my Egg Money account and I made a quick call to them requesting a BACS transfer of £2000 to my current account, which they did. The funds are in transit as I write.

What Next?
Well, providing everything goes to plan, I should earn around £32.50 over the next 5 months. The money is going to my A+L current account which has an interest rate of 6.5% (5.2% after tax). I am going to keep £1500 in the account and the other £500 will be bounced between this current account and another. The reason for this is that the A+L Premier Direct account requires a £500 deposit each month.

If everything goes well, I plan on applying for a few more credit cards early next year to replace the Ulster Bank card when the introductory period runs out and also to bump up my credit limit so I can earn more interest

Where Can I Find Out More About Stoozing?
For those interested in trying it, stoozing.com is a fantastic resource and has a very useful Guide to Stoozing. What's more, there is a fantastic forum full of friendly 'Stoozers' that will happily answer any questions you have or explain the bits you don't fully understand. I've experienced this first-hand and can say they're a great bunch of guys and gals.

A couple of warnings: Firstly, you need to be on the ball. If you're lazy with your finances and don't have a fine attention to detail, don't do it. A little mistake could easily wipe out your profits or even worse, cost you money. Also, make sure you read those terms and conditions.

Happy Stoozing

This series of articles was inspired by a wealth-building strategy created by Stuart Goldsmith. It is called 'Double Your way to a Million Plan' and you can sign up for your free copy on this webpage.

I completed another survey from LightSpeed Consumer Panel yesterday, which bought my points total to just over the 1150 required to get a tenner via PayPal. Today I received the cash in my PayPal account.

I've also completed work on a cashback website comparison matrix over on W3WAD.COM, which I'm pretty sure will be quite popular and generate a bit of cash as an affiliate. For this reason, I spent £5.85 marketing my it on Archerfish. For that I get 2000 paid-for clicks - or 2000 visitors. Hopefully, one or two of them will take up the opportunity to start earning free money from cashback websites.

Wow! Step 15 is finally within my sights

Step 14 In Progress
Cumulative Cash: £70.34

This series of articles was inspired by a wealth-building strategy created by Stuart Goldsmith. It is called 'Double Your way to a Million Plan' and you can sign up for your free copy on this webpage.

Things are progressing much slower than I planned for October's Doubling exploits but nevertheless things are still moving (albeit at a snails pace).

I received the £10.90 I earned via the cashback website RPoints, which bumped up my Doubling Pot.

I also earned a further 18 pence by linking my new Doubling PayPal account with my new Doubling current account. PayPal verifies that you are the legitimate owner of a bank account by making two credits of small amounts to it. In my case it was 11p and 7p. I'm almost 100% certain I get to keep the cash but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

As for outgoings, I spent $4.50 (£2.28) on 1000 paid clicks to W3WAD.COM from AdBux.Org for marketing purposes. I'm hoping on seeing a return from W3WAD.COM before the end of the year.

Step 14 In Progress
Cumulative Cash: £66.19

I've just received the interim dividend from the 236 Lloyds TSB shares I invested in earlier this year - a total of £26.43 or 11.2p per share.

They originally cost me £1406.33 including fees, so I've seen a return of nearly 2% on them over the half-year I've held them and the final dividend is still to come. The final divi should be at least 23.5p per share, so I'm looking at an extra £55.50 in 2008 all being well. That should create an annual return of around 6%.

I'm pleased with the returns from these shares thus far - much better than my previous foray in the stock market! I'm also happy with the way these stocks have stood up during difficult market conditions - especially for banks.

The plan was always to hold onto these shares for the long-term (around 20 years) and I am confident I'll get an even better return over this period. I also planned to reinvest dividends in more shares but for some reason my online stockbroker didn't do that. It is most probably my fault as I didn't return my dividend reinvestment form until recently.

For this reason, this dividend payment is going into my savings account as it's not worth the broker fees to spend this small amount on further shares.

This series of articles was inspired by a wealth-building strategy created by Stuart Goldsmith. It is called 'Double Your way to a Million Plan' and you can sign up for your free copy on this webpage.

A while back, I joined up with Lightspeed Consumer Panel - a survey website. Basically, you get points for completing surveys, which can then be redeemed for vouchers that can be used in a wide selection of stores. As I couldn't get hard cash from Lightspeed, it originally wasn't part of my Doubling project.

Yesterday, I noticed that I'd got just over 2000 points (the equivalent of £20), so I decided I'd redeem them and use the voucher to get my wife a little present. To my surprise, they've changed the rewards system and I could now redeem my points via PayPal. Fantastic, I thought. This is perfect for my Doubling project. Unfortunately, it costs 150 points (or £1.50) to get them to send 1000 (or £10) via PayPal which I think is a bit of a swindle but nevertheless, I went ahead and got the cash bumping up my Doubling Pot by a tenner.

With the 150 points expenditure, I didn't have enough to redeem the full 2000 points but I'm only one survey away from doing so, so I should get additional funds for the old Doubling Pot soon.

As for my wife, she'll have to wait a bit longer for a present

Step 14 In Progress
Cumulative Cash: £57.39

This series of articles was inspired by a wealth-building strategy created by Stuart Goldsmith. It is called 'Double Your way to a Million Plan' and you can sign up for your free copy on this webpage.

Just a few quick updates today.

Firstly, I've cashed in £10.80 from my RPoints account and it should be hitting my bank account sometime in the next fortnight.

Secondly, I've finally sold enough items via Clickbank to cash in my earnings, so I should receive a cheque for around £40 from them sometime this month (See my article on the Bum Marketing Method for details of Clickbank).

And thirdly, I've earned a monthly interest of 2p from my Alliance + Leicester Premier Direct Current Account. Not bad considering it's been mostly in the red over this time period from utilising the interest-free overdraft they gave me

Step 14 In Progress
Cumulative Cash: £47.39

This series of articles was inspired by a wealth-building strategy created by Stuart Goldsmith. It is called 'Double Your way to a Million Plan' and you can sign up for your free copy on this webpage.

On Monday, I spent £7.75 of my Doubling stake on advertising W3WAD.COM on Archerfish, a popular UK Paid-To-Read, Paid-To-Click website here in the UK. For my money, I get 2000 visitors plus my banner shown at the very top and bottom of the website (rotated with other banners) for 30 days.

I'm hoping that as well as bringing targeted visitors to my website who will earn me referral cash, it will also help to spread the word about W3WAD.COM.

If any of my readers here know of anyone that they think would be interested in discovering some fantastic tips for making money online, I'd be grateful if you could direct them to W3WAD.COM.

Cheers

Step 14 In Progress
Cumulative Cash: £47.37

This series of articles was inspired by a wealth-building strategy created by Stuart Goldsmith. It is called 'Double Your way to a Million Plan' and you can sign up for your free copy on this webpage.

Last week I invested £3.50 of my Doubling funds advertising my new website W3WAD.COM on the paid to click/paid to read emails website Archerfish.co.uk. This bought me 1000 unique visitors over two days and from looking at my stats, it looks as though around 20 of them liked what they saw and revisited. Hopefully, this investment will pay for itself as word gets around. I'm actually planning on using this cheap advertising method again in the very near future.

As well as spending cash, I've earned a little as well. Someone downloaded the free 'Double Your Way To A Million' report by clicking the banner above and went on to buy one of the products provided by the same company, earning me a $19.98 commission. This equated to £9.06 after taking into account PayPal fees and currency exchange.

So, I've spent £3.50 and earned £9.06 creating a profit of £5.56 to add to my Doubling Pot.

Step 14 In Progress
Cumulative Cash: £55.12