the richest man in atherstone

I received the following email from IceSave a couple of days ago:

Dear Customer

Icesave accounts with the London branch of Landsbanki Islands hf

This email has been sent to you because records available to us indicate that you hold an account with Icesave. If you do not hold such an account, please contact us by email at enquiries@fscs.org.uk.

This email invites you to log on to your Icesave account to be paid compensation in respect of your deposits with Icesave under the electronic payment process managed by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). We previously wrote to you about how the process would work on 4 November 2008.

For the FSCS to pay you compensation, you will need to take the following steps:

1. Log on to your account as usual through the Icesave website which is now operational. You will need to confirm your User ID, unique password and memorable information, in the normal way. If you need to reset your password, you can do so at the log in screen.
2. You will be asked to verify the account balance of your Icesave account(s) and the details of your selected nominated account to which the payment is to be made. By completing the process you will instruct a payment of the Icesave account balance shown to your selected nominated account by an electronic transfer. The money should then arrive in your nominated account within approximately five working days.
3. If you hold an Icesave instant access account or ISA account, you will be paid compensation after you confirm your agreement to the terms for payment, including the transfer to the FSCS of all your rights in respect of your Icesave deposits against Landsbanki Islands hf, the Icelandic Depositors’ and Investors’ Guarantee Fund (DIGF) and any other relevant party. This transfer will not affect your deposit in any way and is a legal requirement for the FSCS to be able to recover money from Landsbanki Islands hf, the DIGF or any other relevant party.
4. For ISA holders, the same process will apply as for instant access account holders. The money you held in your ISA will not lose its tax-free status if you follow this process. An ISA certificate will follow by post to allow you to reinvest that sum in an ISA with another provider by 5 April 2009. You should receive your ISA certificate within 2 weeks of claiming compensation using the electronic process and you will have to give this certificate to your new ISA provider when you open your ISA with them.
5. If you hold an Icesave fixed rate savings account, you will be offered the option of payment of your deposit through the electronic payment process. Alternatively, you will be able to opt to receive the principal amount of your deposit, together with accrued interest up to the maturity date, at the end of the fixed term. If you choose this latter option, then the electronic process option is not available to you. However, you should still log on to the website and tick the appropriate box to confirm that this is your wish. At that time, we will be notified that you wish to wait until the end of the fixed term and we will then send you an application form to complete and return to the FSCS. This process will be slower, although we aim to complete this process so far as possible within 6 weeks of receipt of a completed application form, with payment following the maturity date of the account. You should also be aware that if you hold a fixed rate savings account that pays interest on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis, and you decide to hold that account until maturity, you will not be paid any interest prior to maturity.
6. Irrespective of what type of Icesave account you hold, if you choose to participate in the electronic payment process for that account, then the payment amount you receive will be the principal sum deposited plus interest up to and including 7 October 2008.

If you have more than one account with Icesave, you will need to repeat the process described above for each account.

If you do not seek payment within one month from the date of this email, you will be contacted separately by the FSCS with details of how to make a claim for your deposits with Icesave. This will be through a paper-based application process once the electronic process is complete. This process will be slower (we aim to complete this process so far as possible within 6 weeks of receipt of a completed application form), but you will receive the same amount no matter which process you use (unless you hold a fixed term deposit and opt to await payment until the end of the term, as explained above).

If you experience any difficulties with the process, please seek assistance by calling Icesave’s Customer Services Helpline on Tel. 0845 605 6050.

Further details are also available on the FSCS website (www.fscs.org.uk).

I dutifully logged on to my IceSave account and followed the procedure as laid out above - it was remarkably easy to do. My money is now wending it's merry way to my current account.

Thank you, Alister Darling, for bailing me out

Today I received an email from the FSCS detailing the compensation procedure. I've reproduced it below for IceSave depositors that haven't got it yet (and for those that are just interested).

Dear Icesave account holder

Icesave accounts with the London branch of Landsbanki Islands hf

This email has been sent to you because records available to us indicate that you hold an account with Icesave. If you do not hold such an account, please contact us by email at enquiries@fscs.org.uk

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) is pleased to confirm the arrangements by which account holders with Icesave will be paid compensation. This will be done through a streamlined electronic process using the bank account that was nominated by you for the purpose of receiving funds from your Icesave account.

Icesave was operated by the UK branch of Landsbanki Islands hf, an Icelandic bank, which stopped doing business on 7 October 2008 and, for the purpose of claims to the FSCS, was declared to be in default on 8 October 2008. Depositors with Icesave are protected for the first part of their loss by the Icelandic Depositors’ and Investors’ Guarantee Fund (DIGF) and for the next part of their loss (up to £50,000) by the FSCS. On 8 October 2008, the Chancellor of the Exchequer confirmed that all depositors with Icesave would be paid their deposits in full, including what they are entitled to from the DIGF and the FSCS and any amounts above the maximum compensation payable by the FSCS.

This communication sets out the basis on which compensation will be paid to you. The full payment will be arranged by the FSCS, although HM Treasury (HMT) will in the first instance fund amounts to which depositors are entitled from the DIGF and, if applicable, amounts above the current FSCS limit of £50,000. Depositors will be paid without needing to submit a separate application either to HMT or the DIGF.

We will be using the existing Icesave website to pay compensation. You may notice that the website looks a bit different. This is because we have removed some of the images on the website to improve its performance during the electronic payment process. The website will be unavailable this week whilst we develop it to pay compensation. Please also be aware that the log on process will be the same as usual and although you will be asked to confirm your nominated account details you will not be asked to provide these details.

As noted above, compensation will be paid into your nominated account (that is the linked account you nominated for your account with Icesave). Although instructions received via the Icesave website on or before 7 October 2008 to change the details of that nominated account will be processed, no further changes will be possible if you wish to receive payment in this way. This is for your security.

We are aware that some customers will not be able to take part in the electronic payment process for a variety of reasons, such as not having a nominated account set up, or where notification has already been given to Icesave that the account holder is deceased. We have tried to identify these account holders and will begin sending out application forms to them from mid-November 2008 onwards. If you fall into this category, you do not need to take any further action at this time. The non-electronic process will be slower (we aim to complete this process as far as possible within 6 weeks of receipt of a completed application form), but you will receive the same amount of compensation no matter which process you use (unless you hold a fixed rate savings account and opt to await payment until the end of the term).

The Icesave systems were not designed to pay all deposits at once. The electronic payment process will be phased to manage the demands on the systems and in the interests of security. Over the next three to four weeks, depositors will be sent a further email inviting them to initiate the payment process. These emails will be phased and sent in batches. Once you have received this invitation email, please log in and follow the instructions on the Icesave website as soon as possible after receiving your invitation email. If you do not receive this second email by 4 December, please contact Icesave’s Customer Services Helpline on 0845 605 8050.

This electronic payment process will operate on the following basis:

1. You will need to log on and access your account as usual. The same security measures will apply, including your User ID, unique password and memorable information. You will be guided through a process where you will be asked to confirm the balance of your Icesave account, and then make your application for compensation. This process will take a short while to complete, and you should be paid your compensation within five working days of completing the application.

2. For instant access account holders, you will be able to be paid into your selected nominated account. You will be paid the principal sum and interest accrued up to and including 7 October 2008.

3. For ISA holders, the same process will apply as for instant access account holders. An ISA certificate will follow by post to allow you to reinvest that sum in an ISA with another provider. The money you held in your ISA will not lose its tax-free status if you reinvest by 5 April 2009. You should receive your ISA certificate within 2 weeks of claiming compensation using the electronic process and you will have to give this certificate to your new ISA provider when you open your ISA with them. You should ask for an ISA transfer form from your new ISA provider.

4. For fixed rate savings account holders, Icesave offered a range of accounts which are not repayable in full before their maturity (in some cases for up to three years). If you wish, you will be able to use the same electronic payment process to be paid the principal sum plus interest on that sum up to and including 7 October 2008. In other words, you do not have to wait until the end of the fixed term to have your money back. As above, payment will be made to your selected nominated account. On the other hand, if you prefer to wait until the end of the fixed term, and receive interest which would have been due at maturity, the electronic process option is not available to you. However, you should still log on to the website and tick the appropriate box to confirm that this is your wish. At that time, we will be notified that you wish to wait until the end of the fixed term and we will then send you an application form to complete and return to the FSCS. As described above, this process will be slower, although we aim to complete this process so far as possible within 6 weeks of receipt of a completed application form, with payment following the maturity date of the account. You should also be aware that if you hold a fixed rate savings account that pays interest on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis, and you decide to hold that account until maturity, you will not be paid any interest prior to maturity.

5. If the account you hold with Icesave is a joint account, the invitation email will be sent to the first named account holder, in accordance with the account terms and conditions. This will enable your joint savings to be paid to the first named account holder. As described above, electronic payment will be made to your selected nominated account. If you do not wish payment to be made in accordance with the account terms and conditions, you will need to inform the FSCS and we will send you a paper-based application form to complete.

When you access the Icesave website to proceed with the payment process, you will be asked to confirm your identity and the details of your selected nominated account. In addition, before the payment can be made, you will be asked to confirm that you accept the payment in satisfaction of your claim for compensation against the FSCS, and to confirm the transfer of your claims against the DIGF, Landsbanki Islands hf or any other party in connection with your Icesave account to the FSCS. This will enable the FSCS to seek to recover the cost of paying compensation to you from the DIGF, Landsbanki Islands hf or any other relevant party.

We hope that this communication has explained what to expect. Please now wait for the next email which will invite you to seek payment of compensation. You do not need to do anything more until you receive your next email.

We believe this electronic payment process best meets the needs of the vast majority of Icesave account holders by offering a relatively quick payment mechanism and avoiding the inconvenience of completing paper application forms and awaiting payment by cheque.

If you have any questions, please contact FSCS’s Customer Helpline on 0845 7300 131 (Icesave enquiries only). If you have any queries regarding the online operation of your Icesave account, please contact Icesave’s Customer Services Helpline on 0845 605 6050.

Yours faithfully

FSCS

Last Tuesday, I awoke to the news that Icelandic bank, Landsbanki, had be nationalised, it was in the hands of the receivers and was expected to go into liquidation. For me, this was a disaster! I'd put a sizeable chunk of my cash in my IceSave account - IceSave being a UK subsidiary of Landsbanki. And, what's more, IceSave had stopped depositors making withdrawals.

At first I was concerned, but I knew that I could claim my money back from the Icelandic financial services compensation scheme so I thought I may lose a little interest but at least my money's safe. Checking up with the news, I was gutted to find out that the Icelandic economy was in turmoil and the Icelandic Prime Minister had said it would take care of domestic depositors but this guarantee did not extend to International customers.

My heart dropped! I was worried, anxious and felt like crying - as a grown man, being close to tears is hard for me to admit but that is exactly how I felt. My hard-earned savings were lost and there was nothing I could do about it. Fair enough if I had put my money in shares or other riskier investment vehicles - that would be a bitter pill but manageable - but this was a savings account with a regulated financial institution. On top of the sadness and anxiety, I also felt angry and cheated and helpless.

Further investigation revealed that the Icelandic compensation scheme did not have enough reserves to fulfil it's obligations. I thought about taking legal action against the Icelandic authorities but what would be the point of suing an organisation with no money? I began to wish that maybe I should have been more diligent or even just spent the money or put on my mortgage. At least the cash would have been put to good use.

Fortunately, I was extremely busy at work so it helped to take my mind off it. When I got home and told my wife, she was extremely supportive (as always). I was convinced our money was gone and couldn't stop blaming myself but she was a tower of strength and made me feel a bit better about it - and for that I am extremely grateful and consider myself very lucky.

The only ray of light was rumours in the news that the British Financial Services Authority (FSA) would step in to help. There was a chance that they would compensate savers up to the £50'000 covered by their compensation scheme. Although this would have helped me, I felt gutted for those that had deposited more than this figure in their IceSave accounts.

That night, I was restless with worry and didn't sleep very well.

First thing the next day I checked the news but there was no update about IceSave accounts, however there was a press conference scheduled by the government to address the issue.

A little later, I checked the news again and read that the chancellor had guaranteed that no IceSave Saver would lose their deposits. I cannot describe to you the relief I felt. A cliché, I know, but it felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. If Alistair Darling had been in the room I would have given him a great big kiss! I was almost brought to tears again!

Since last Wednesday, I've had chance to reflect upon the situation and think about what lessons I could learn from the experience. Despite Landsbanki having an excellent credit rating up until it went bust, I feel that the 'writing was on wall', as it were, with regards the Icelandic economy. Unfortunately, the warning signs were very well hidden and perhaps impossible to see without thorough research. I think that my due diligence was lacking and spending more time and effort on it could have avoided the situation. A number of people started to withdraw their cash the week before, whilst I was completely oblivious to the situation. These people, I applaud and aspire to be like them.

A week on from this crisis and IceSave depositors are no closer to finding out when they will get their money back or how they go about claiming it. The government have frozen Icelandic assets in the UK and are in discussions with the Nordic "powers-that-be".

I am extremely pleased with the British government for digging me out of this hole and assuring me I will get my savings back. Now I am just hoping for a speedy announcement from them telling me what I need to do next so that I can get the wheels in motion for a quick recovery of my money.

I am worried sick and feel like crying.

IceSave's parent company, Landsbanki, have gone under the control of the Icelandic government and the security of UK savings accounts remains unclear. I have two accounts with IceSave.

I am providing updates on the situation over on my IceSave Review page.

I need to take a lot of deep breaths to stop me from cracking!

Arkad

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. For a brief outline of the strategy, take a look at this post.

July to September has been a bad quarter for my Doubling project. I've been very busy with my day-job and my growing family seem to be taking up a lot more time just lately. In addition, one of my main sources of income (IceSave) has dried up - they've reached their quota for the year but hope to continue the campaign in 2009.

I've managed to roll out a couple of new ideas (FABDEX and Financial-Info) and have been working on promoting a new ClickBank product but haven't really had time to promote them properly - or monetize them. Here's a breakdown of the quarter's results:

Income
Advertising on my websites£1071
Interest£25.94

Total£1096.94

The IceSave promotion bought in the most cash with the remainder coming from Matched and Money4Banners.

There are also a couple of income sources that have been earned but did not make this quarter's results in time. I have a Clickbank cheque sitting in front of me for around £100 and there is about $120USD (£60) sitting in my Google Adsense account awaiting payment.

Expenses
Web Hosting & Domain Names£55.74
NICS (Class 2)£29.90

Total£85.64

For those not accustomed to Class 2 NICS, it's a fixed National Insurance Payment to the taxman that us British self-employed people have to make each week.

Profits
£1096.94 - £85.64 = £1011.30

I decided in January, to pay myself a wage for my Doubling exploits equal to one third of profits earned. This month, I have chosen not to take any payment from my project for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I have not put in as much work into the project as I expect of myself and feel I do not deserve a share of the profits. Secondly, heading into the final quarter I am concerned that I may not achieve my 2008 goal of completing up to Step 20 of my Doubling project, so I want to throw everything that I can into it.

I've guesstimated that another third will be deducted as taxes but I won't need to account for this until the end of the financial year so (at least for now) it's mine

Before this quarter, I had earned £1648.31 for my Doubling Project, so adding my latest earnings to this, I now have £2659.61. This means I've completed Steps 19 of the 28-step process and am now part-way through Step 20.

Now I just have to figure out how to earn an extra £2340.39 before year-end

Step 19 Complete
Step 20 In Progress
Cumulative Cash: £2659.61

A little late getting the report in This is because nothing much has changed in terms of my goals for 2008 since April's tri-annual review.

Below you can see the 6 goals I set myself for the year and their current status:

1. ON TARGET Save 10% of my salary - This goal is very much on target. I've been saving a little more than 10% of my salary each month and have budgeted for at least 10% to be saved each month for the rest of the year.
2. COMPLETE Review utility bills - I reviewed our current expenditures and ascertained that I could probably reduce our mortgage, gas and electricity bills. Further investigation into the mortgage market revealed that there really wasn't a better deal out there in the current climate. I switched my gas and electric provider to get the cheapest deal, however they increased their tariff not long after (my own fault for not researching it adequately). Although the results weren't exactly what I had in mind, this goal can be ticked off as complete.
3. COMPLETE Set up and run my own company - At the beginning of February, I registered as self-employed.
4. COMPLETE Reduce our mortgage capital to below £60'000 - With the help of an inheritance plus regular overpayments, our mortgage now stands at around £56,500 - a far cry from £65'000 worth of capital we borrowed in April 2007!
5. INCOMPLETE Complete steps 16 to 20 of my doubling plan - I'm currently on Step 19 and will hopefully be on Step 20 (or thereabouts) by the end of the month. One of my biggest earners has dried up, so I am slightly concerned that I may under-shoot the target without this source of income, however I've been working on a few things that I hope will become profitable before Christmas.
6. ON TARGET Donate 1% of my salary to charity - I have budgeted for this goal and so should have no trouble making my annual donation to charity.

So, just one goal left to complete. The final few months of the year will be increasing my sources and amount of income.

I created my own online contact management system a year or two ago that was designed specifically for my own needs. Recently I've been working on sprucing it up so that it can be used by others and it is now at an advanced stage.

The next stage is to thoroughly test it and so I need a number of volunteers to use the system and report any bugs or problems they can find. Therefore, you are cordially invited to set up a FREE lifetime account and try out the system.

By registering and using the system (named FABDEX), you discover just how easy contact management can be and will gain access to many fantastic functions that are useful to internet marketers and anyone looking to create and maintain a mailing list. This includes:

- Powerful contact search functions
- Saved searches
- Easy creation of user signup/subscription forms for your website
- Quick and simple contact management
- Categorisation of contacts using tags
- Import & export utilities
- Access to your contacts from any Internet-connected computer

As a BETA tester, you will get priority response to any technical issues you have as well as having the opportunity to shape how FABDEX evolves in the future.

I have limited the number of BETA Testers to 10 to ensure that there are no capacity issues, so if you're interested be sure to get in quick.

Create your FREE account by clicking on the link below:

FABDEX

and I look forward to working with you on this exciting project.

Mathematics is an essential element of running our personal finances effectively. Working out how much our mortgage costs us, how much interest our savings earn and how long until we have enough cash to retire can all be time-consuming tasks.

Over the years, I've used my website development skills to create a number of calculators that make performing calculations such as those described above much much quicker.

Earlier this year, I thought it would be a good idea to put them all in one place and share them with others who may also find them useful, so I bought the domain name Financial-Info.co.uk and planned to neaten them up and put them online. Unfortunately, I became busy with other projects but today I had a few hours spare so decided to get back to it.

I knocked up a quick website and added my Compound Interest Calculator to it. I have also provided the functionality for other websites to display the calculator in an inline frame so it's just a matter of copying and pasting some code to get a free Compound Interest Calculator on your website as I have done below:

I have a compendium of other calculators on my computer that require a bit of sprucing up but I expect to add them Financial-Info over the coming weeks. In the meantime, I'd be grateful if any website owners out there in Internet Land would give the calculator a go on their own websites and give me some feedback on their experiences using the comments field below or emailing me (arkad@therichestmaninatherstone.co.uk)

Cheers,

Arkad

I've been neglecting my journal quite a bit lately! My time has been taken up with working on a few different projects for future and taking a nice long holiday

Earlier today, I was checking out a few of the affiliate networks I am a member of and was pleased to discover that I've reached my $200 threshold limit for Clickbank, which means I should receive a cheque from them sometime soon.

And that was when I thought that I really should update my blog and let you know how the Bum Marketing Method I experimented with last year has earned me over $200 from Clickbank.

Towards the end of last year, following a few successful sales of The Complete Ragdoll-Keepers Handbook, I decided to expand on my work in this niche. I bought the domain name ragdoll-cat.info and set up a quick website using drupal CMS. I added all the Ragdoll Cat articles I'd written as part of the Bum Marketing Method as well a few pictures I'd found on the Internet (with the kind permission of the photographer). I also wrote a quick review of the e-book I was trying to promote and, of course, the obligatory privacy policy and website disclaimer. All in all, it took about 2 hours.

At the beginning of this year, after a number of sales, I noticed from the search terms people were using to find my website that many were looking for breeders and catteries in their area, so I created a simple breeder list. I then emailed as many breeders as I could find in Internet Land to populate the directory. I also added an option for visitors to sign up for a newsletter and wrote a few more articles. This was about another 6 hours of work.

Since then I've pretty much left it alone. There's quite a lot I would still like to do in this niche (the cat-folk I've communicated with are lovely people) but unfortunately I've been busy with other stuff.

Since it's inception, the website has sold 18 copies the Ragdoll Cat e-book with no refunds. Each book earns around a fiver, so a total revenue of around £190. Subtract the cost of the domain name (around a tenner) and that's a net profit of £180 for around 8 hours work.

Don't believe me? Here's the proof

Yeah, I know - Not as impressive as the screenshots from other websites but I'm only a beginner and at least it's not photoshopped

I'm still of the view that Bum Marketing probably isn't worth the time spent on it but I can't help but think that if I kept at it maybe one could possibly earn a small fortune.

I have long been an admirer of cashback websites such as Cashbin, TopCashBack and LineMyPocket - I find them to be a nice easy way of earning a little extra fun money (take a look at my article on Quidco gambling).

In a nutshell, these websites can save you money by giving you a certain amount of cashback when you buy from certain shops (usually a percentage of how much you spend). This can be very useful in itself, however it is possible to earn more cashback than you spend - for example, when joining bookmakers or bingo websites you may be offered £20 to put just £10 on a bet. And there's also the option of earning cashback without actually parting with so much as a penny - by applying (and being accepted) for credit cards.

At the start of the year, I set myself the goal of earning £100 in cashback by applying for as many credit cards as I could in one evening. I made the decision to do it all in one evening to ensure I was accepted for as many credit cards as possible. This is because every time you apply for a credit card, your credit rating is checked and every time your checked, it is logged in your credit rating. If a lot of checks are recorded, it adversely affects your chance of getting credit, so my thinking was that if I applied for them all at around the same time, my credit rating would not have been updated therefore giving me more chance of being accepted by the credit card companies.

I should add that one of the downsides of this project is that I have screwed up my credit rating for a while but as I don't really need credit at the moment and don't envisage I will in the near future, it wasn't really a big deal.

Anyhow, I found the following credit cards that offered a nice amount of cash for simply filling in a form:

• Goldfish - £41
• Post Office - £20.50
• Natwest - £24
• RBS - £24
• HSBC - £20
• GM Card - £22
• Vanquis - £20

The plan in place, I spent an hour and a half on the cold, winter evening of the 14th of January applying for the credit cards online (via cashback websites, of course). Goldfish and GM refused my applications, however I was accepted for the remaining five.

Over the next ten days or so, I received the paperwork and cards from the five credit card companies that had accepted me and phoned to activate each one - it took about 20 minutes. I'm not sure if the credit cards had to be activated to receive the cashback but I thought I'd be best to do it anyway to make sure.

I also checked that my applications had been tracked by the cashback websites and was happy to see that I would be receiving payment for all of them.

Well, here we are in July and I've finally received my final cashback payments and achieved my target of £100 (actually, I earned £108.50). HSBC and Vanquis were the first to pay up in March, followed by NatWest in June and The Post Office and RBS in July.

It's been a nice little earner (over £50 per hour for exceedingly easy work) and I've earned enough to take the family out for a few "free" meals. However, it's not something that can be repeated as I can only receive cashback from a particular company for a particular product once. As I said earlier, chances are that my credit rating is screwed for a while but as I don't need credit I'm not particularly bothered. It's also quite a slow process waiting for the merchant to pay the cashback website and the cashback website to pay me but as it didn't cost me anything, I was more than happy to wait.

Now, I just need to call up the credit companies to cancel those cards...

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. For a brief outline of the strategy, take a look at this post.

Things are going well in my Doubling to a Million Project, so much so that I haven't had the time to update my journal as much as I would have liked. At present, I am working on an web application idea that will hopefully help me make it to Step 20 by the end of the year. I'll perhaps talk a little more about that in the near future as it's still in the development phase right now. Meanwhile, here's a breakdown of my income and expenses between April and June 2008:

Income
Advertising on my websites£1739.86
Freelance Work£24.00
PayPerPost£9.92
Squidoo£3.16
Interest£18.31

Total£1795.25

The lion's share of website advertising came from the IceSave Savings Account Review I wrote on this website with the remainder coming from a mixture of Google Adsense, Affiliate Marketing and Banner displays. The freelance work is for the provision of website hosting to a friend and the interest came from my Alliance + Leicester Premier Direct Account.

I also earned about £50 from ClickBank (using the Bum Marketing Strategy) but that is sitting in my ClickBank account waiting to reach my withdrawal threshold (set at $200USD - about £100) and so has not been accounted for in this quarter's report.

Expenses
Web Hosting & Domain Names£18.42
Marketing£40.00
PayPal Fees£1.68
NICS (Class 2)£22.00

Total£82.10

The Marketing category was an experiment with Google Adwords that didn't turn out too well. Fortunately I stopped it before all my funds were dried up, so I still have a little sitting in my Adwords account until I can think of a better use for it. For those not accustomed to Class 2 NICS, it's a fixed National Insurance Payment to the taxman that us self employed people have to make each week.

Profits
£1795.25 - £82.10 = £1713.15

As mentioned in January, I am now paying myself a wage for my Doubling exploits equal to one third of profits earned, so that brings my total to:

£1713.15 (Profit) - £571.05 (My Wages) = £1142.10

I've guesstimated that another third (£571.05) will be deducted as taxes but I won't need to account for this until the end of the financial year so (at least for now) it's mine

Before this quarter, I had earned £506.21 for my Doubling Project, so adding my latest earnings to this, I now have £1648.31. This means I've completed Steps 17 and 18 of the 28-step process and am now part-way through Step 19.

Only two more Steps to go to achieve my goal of completing Step 20 by the end of the year.

Step 17 Complete
Step 18 Complete
Step 19 In Progress
Cumulative Cash: £1648.31

Today, my mortgage dropped below the £60,000 mark (to £57,942.92 to be exact) thanks to an overpayment of £3000.

One of my goals for the year was to do this and I can now happily strike it off the list.

When I moved house 13 months ago, we (my wife an I) took out a £65,000 loan for the property, so to reduce the capital owed by £7000 in little over a year marks a major achievement. From the moment we moved in we decided that we would consistently overpay the mortgage each month with 30% of any extra income we earned. We'd forecast that we should be able to achieve our target by the end of the year. A recent inheritance helped us to do it six months early.

So what does reducing our loan do for us?

Well, had we simply paid the minimum payments each month the capital we'd owe at this moment in time would be around £63,800. This equates to a minimum monthly payment of around £417 (interest and repayment combined) for the remainder of the term. Due to the overpayments, the minimum monthly payment is now around £379 - that's about £38 less, which may prove very useful if we run into cashflow problems when I quit employment in the near future. Over a year that is a saving of £456.

To put it into context, if I were to put the money I have overpaid my mortgage with into a savings account instead, I would need to earn around 7.9% after tax in interest to equal the savings I made by "investing" in my mortgage.

Of course, reducing monthly payments is one just option when making mortgage overpayments. The other is reducing the term of the mortgage. If I continue paying the £413 that I was paying before, the debt would be cleared in 20 years - knocking four years off the mortgage term!

So, there's a lot to be said for overpaying your mortgage. Some people like to use their spare cash to save, whilst others prefer to pay off their debts. I am somewhere in the middle - I can see that both holding onto cash and reducing liabilities have their own merits.

I think it is important to realise that when opportunities to make worthwhile investments are scarce, reducing liabilities such as your mortgage should not be overlooked as an addition to your portfolio (even though the numbers work the other way).

Calculate the savings you could make by making overpayments to your mortgage using my handy Mortgage Calculator.

In May 2006, I opened a Lloyds TSB Monthly Saver paying 8% gross interest for a maximum of two years. I've been diligently putting the maximum of £250 per month into it and the two-year maturity date is now approaching. By my calculations I should have around £7000 at the end of the month ready to reinvest and am now faced with the decision of what to do with it.

I've been looking around at what's available and have narrowed the choice down to the following:

Cash ISA
I think it would be prudent to put £3600 of my cash into my IceSave ISA. If I don't use my tax-free allowance this year, I lose it and IceSave are currently offering tax-free savings of 6.1% with a rate guarantee.

Fixed-Rate Bond
Still with IceSave, they also offer a 7.01% (around 5.6% after tax) fixed rate bond with maturity after a year. This would be the safe option, however I am quite tempted by other slightly riskier options.

Stocks
The recent 'Credit Crunch' has seen many people and firms removing their cash from the stock markets and putting it into safer bonds and savings accounts. This has resulted in a tumble of share prices, which to me looks very tempting at this moment in time. My personal view is that although the economic climate looks a little bleak at the moment, it is not as bad as many experts would have you believe - maybe that's why they're experts and I'm not

I don't believe it is all doom and gloom and now is an ideal time to be picking up a few equities on the cheap. Within a year (or two at most) everything will be back on track and we'll wonder what all the fuss was about - feel free to point out how wrong I was when Britain is in economic meltdown!

I haven't done extensive research but shares in the financial sector (banks) seem to have been hit hardest and two that have caught my eye are Lloyds TSB and Alliance & Leicester. Now, I'm probably biased because I use products from both of these companies and own shares in one of them but they both look tremendous value for money to me.

I've always believed that Lloyds TSB are excellently managed and although they don't always offer the best products, they do offer great customer service and have plenty of capital available to carry them through the rough periods. This is why I use Lloyds TSB for my basic personal banking. I also think their shares have been unfairly hit by the sudden exodus of shareholders and believe they will come back even stronger once the 'crisis' is over. The share price has fallen by around £1.75 over the previous 12 months.

The merits of A+L are slightly different - they tend to offer fantastic table-topping products such as their Premier Direct Current Account, which offers a whopping 8.5% in-credit interest rate. I use one of these for my business dealings. Over the last few years, I've seen A+L systematically release great products with (what seems to me) the strategy of getting their hands on loads of liquid cash which can then be used to lend or invest. This meant that when the money markets dried up (and the subsequent nationalisation of Northern Rock) A+L had plenty of money in reserve. A+L have lost around £7 per per share in value over the last 12 months.

I believe that all the good companies on the various stock exchanges will recover the share value they had around a year ago and more within five years.

Mortgage
One of my goals for this year is to reduce the outstanding capital on my mortgage to less than £60,000. Earlier in the year I had thought of using some of this cash to pay off my mortgage but a recent inheritance has helped me to complete this goal quicker than anticipated. Nevertheless, paying off more of my mortgage is still an option.

Summary
So, I will have around £7,000 to utilise and have to decide where it goes. I think I've pretty much made my mind up that £3600 will be transferred to my cash ISA meaning I have another £3400 to put into a bond, shares and/or my mortgage. I'll let you know what I decide but if you have any better ideas about where to invest a few grand, I'd love to hear them.

After much deliberation, I've finally decided to try out PayPerPost as a source of revenue for my journal.

PayPerPost is a network that brings bloggers and advertisers together, however instead of selling advertising space, the blogger sells posts on their blog, the article you're reading now being an example.

The interface, or 'Blogger Dashboard' as they call it, is very user-friendly and easy to use. I had no trouble navigating around, editing my details and looking at the opportunities available. There are two ways of locating advertisers. The first is to include a 'badge' on your website that invites advertisers to contact you directly and negotiate a price. The second is to look at the 'Open Opportunities' section and reserve any that take your fancy.

With the latter, each opportunity displays the price that the advertiser is willing to pay for your post as well as what is required from you. Requirements include the number of words you write, whether it must contain a link or an image and whether your post should reflect positively on the business/product/service or can remain neutral.

I initially joined PayPerPost back in the Autumn of last year after having seen a number of my blogger friends using it but I had doubts as to whether being paid for my posts would taint my views and be detrimental to the website over the longer term. After a lot of thought, I decided that I would experiment with PayPerPost for a couple of months but set myself a few rules to adhere to:

• Sponsored posts must fit in with the theme of the website (e.g finance, money-making etc.)
• My posts will continue to be 100% honest (meaning that I will not write sponsored posts about something that I do not truly believe to be good value)
• I will only write one sponsored post for every three or more normal posts (to stop the website becoming saturated with advertisements)

On the whole, I think that the idea of PayPerPost is a great idea and I am looking forward to giving it a try. Bloggers get to cash in a little on their hard work and advertisers gain relatively cheap exposure for their business/product/service. I'll let you know how it goes

I experimented with the strategy of Stoozing at the back end of last year. Here's my report of the experience.

What is Stoozing?
In a nutshell, Stoozing is a method of making a bit of extra cash from credit cards. A number of credit card companies offer interest-free introductory periods, whereby you can borrow money and not pay any interest on it for a limited time. The idea is to bung the money from the free loan into a savings account and earn interest on it, remembering to pay the minimum payment each month and the whole of the remaining capital when the introductory period ends.

My original Stoozing article goes into a bit more detail and explains how I got started.

Did it Work?
After transferring the £2000 to my A+L Premier Direct Account at the beginning of October, I started to earn interest on the cash. Each month, the capital reduced by about £50-£60 as I paid the minimum payments, however this was offset by my bank account bumping up it's rates by 2% about halfway through the experiment. The interest I earned was:

Nov...£3.04
Dec...£8.56
Jan...£7.60
Feb...£7.79
Mar...£7.98
Apr...£7.93

Total...£42.90

So that's a £42.90 profit for about half an hours work.

Summary
I was pleased with the result and eager to transfer the balance to another 'free money' credit card at the end of the first's introductory period. Unfortunately, I couldn't get another card for a number of reasons; 1) I tried another experiment at the beginning of the year (I'll write about it soon) that involved a large number of credit searches, which probably reduced my credit rating, 2) There aren't a lot of suitable Stoozing credit cards on the market and 3) The credit crunch is making lenders more fussy about who they accept.

So towards the end of the term, I simply paid the balance off on the card.

I enjoyed this money-making experiment and will probably use this strategy again sometime in the future (perhaps in a milder economic climate). If you want to find out more, visit Stoozing.com to get all the info and if you're unsure about anything, don't be afraid to ask on their friendly forum.

It is one third of the way through the year and the time has come to review my progress in achieving my goals for 2008.

I've set myself 10 goals for this year, however only six of them are related to the financial and business aspects of my life, so only these will be discussed here on my website.

1. ON TARGET Save 10% of my salary - This goal is very much on target. I've been saving a little more than 10% of my salary each month and have budgeted for at least 10% to be saved each month for the rest of the year.
2. COMPLETE Review utility bills - I reviewed our current expenditures and ascertained that I could probably reduce our mortgage, gas and electricity bills. Further investigation into the mortgage market revealed that there really wasn't a better deal out there in the current climate. I switched my gas and electric provider to get the cheapest deal, however they increased their tariff not long after (my own fault for not researching it adequately). Although the results weren't exactly what I had in mind, this goal can be ticked off as complete.
3. COMPLETE Set up and run my own company - At the beginning of February, I registered as self-employed.
4. ON TARGET Reduce our mortgage capital to below £60'000 - This goal was helped along by an inheritance I received earlier in the year. I paid off £1000 of my mortgage capital and am currently deciding whether to pay off more with the rest of my windfall or invest it. No matter what I decide, I have budgeted to get my mortgage below the £60,000 mark by the end of the year so this goal is very much on target.
5. INCOMPLETE Complete steps 16 to 20 of my doubling plan - I recently completed step 16 of my Doubling Plan and am now halfway through step 17. I now account quarterly for my Doubling and business exploits, so I won't be reporting my progress until the end of June, however early indications show that I should be on at least step 18 by this time. That will leave me six months to complete steps 18, 19 and 20.
6. ON TARGET Donate 1% of my salary to charity - I have budgeted for this goal and so should have no trouble making my annual donation to charity.

So, I've completed two of my goals and three are on target to be completed by the end of the year without much effort. That leaves me with my goal to complete up to Step 20 of my Doubling strategy for which I will devoting all of my time and energy (across various different money-making projects).

I fully expect the later Doubling steps to be more difficult than the earlier ones and I think that I could maybe have advanced more than I have in the first four months of 2008. However, I'm glad that I'm effectively left with just one goal to complete for the rest of the year and look forward to focusing on it and and achieving it.

A while ago, I wrote that one of my goals for 2008 was to review my mortgage, gas and electric suppliers and see if I could get a better deal elsewhere.

Well, I jumped right in and used the excellent energy price comparison website Energy Helpline to find the cheapest supplier. The top result was Atlantic Electricity & Gas, so I switched there and then.

Over the next couple of weeks I received letters from them to formalise the signup process, however it wasn't until recently that I discovered that although most energy suppliers have increased their prices, Atlantic hadn't yet but were due to do so at the end of March. So, although they were the cheapest when I checked, it wasn't a level playing field!

So, I made a bit of a cock-up due to my lack of proper research - a lesson learned!

Fortunately, Atlantic Electric & Gas are still one of the best buys for my circumstances, however they're not the best. I need to check my paperwork to see if I am tied in to a deal with them and for how long. If not, I'll probably switch again in the Summer.

I was recently made aware of a couple of website advertising networks that offer fixed payments for displaying banners on your website. They are Matched and Money4Banners.

Matched
With Matched, you submit up to five pages per website and they try to 'match' an advertiser to your website's content. For each page displaying an advert they pay you £3 per month.

Money4Banners
With Money4Banners, you select three pages from your website to display the banners. If accepted, they pay you £5 per month to display banners on the three pages plus a one-off £10 sign-up bonus.

My Experience
I have a few domain names that I secured for projects that I haven't got around to finishing and thought that I'd try the aforementioned advertising networks with one of them. The website I chose has a fair bit of niche content but not a whole lot of visitors at the moment due to lack of marketing. It already earned about a dollar (50p) per month from Google Adsense, so publishing adverts from both Matched and Money4Banners would provide a significant boost in revenue.

In early March, I subscribed to both Money4Banners and Matched and submitted my webpages to them.

Within a day or two, I had been accepted by Money4Banners and so I copied and pasted the 'ad code' into my website. A few days later I received my £10 sign-up bonus via PayPal and have subsequently received my first £5 monthly installment.

Matched are still trying to 'match' my webpages to an Advertiser, so no earnings from them.

Summary
I think that Matched and Money4Banners provide a great revenue-earning option for smaller websites or websites that serve a small niche market. As I mentioned previously, I was only earning about 50p a month from my 'test' website and Money4Banners has increased the revenue tenfold (plus an extra tenner for signing up).

I now plan on integrating this method of advertising with all my half-finished websites to bump up my monthly income from them.

I'm also considering buying a few domain names and knocking up a few quick websites specifically for serving banners. It should take about an hour to create a website with content and after a couple of months, the domain name would have been paid for leaving 10 months of pure profit

The guy who made me aware of this, Phil (a subscriber to my newsletter) earns himself around £100 each month by doing this. Great job, Phil, and thank you for sharing

I recently wrote that, as part of my expenditure review for 2008, I would be looking to remortgage to a better product.

I spent a lot of time in March trying to find mortgage that improves upon the 6.09% Standard Variable Rate I am currently getting with ING Direct. I checked a number of price comparison websites and consulted with ten mortgage brokers but none of them have a mortgage that I believe to be better.

My personal view is that basic mortgage rates won't rise too much higher than they are at the moment so I was looking for something that was around quarter of a percent less than the 6.09% I was on at the moment and with no fees. I also wasn't too bothered about it being another standard variable.

Despite hunting high and low, there doesn't seem to be anything better than the deal I have at the moment. The mortgage brokers I spoke to were actually more of a hindrance than a help. A couple went through a lengthy process of collecting my details before telling me they couldn't offer me anything and the others lured me in with their promises of superior products that weren't available to the general public and then went on to offer me mortgages that were significantly poorer than what I currently have. There was also a certain amount of what I would describe as 'scaremongering' with regards the UK economy. One broker even advised me that if I didn't fix at 7% right now, I'd be paying over 10% by the end of the year as the world goes into economic meltdown!

On the whole the advice and experience was poor and I went away feeling very sorry for the people that don't know better and are convinced to remortgage. It will be a long time before I use the 'expertise' of a mortgage broker.

So, I will be sticking with my current mortgage for a little while longer. Although it's not the absolute best, it's at the right end of the scale and with no redemption fees, it will be easy to change once a significantly better product comes along. Plus there's an unlimited overpayment facility which I plan on making the most of this year.

Of course, I'm just a common bloke and these brokers may be completely right and I completely wrong...but I doubt it

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. For a brief outline of the strategy, take a look at this post.

The first quarter of 2008 has been very lucrative for my Doubling Plan compared to previous periods, however I need to start earning a lot more if I want to achieve my goal of completing step 20 by the end of the year. Here's a breakdown of my income and expenses between January and March 2008:

Income
Advertising on my websites..£423.49
Freelance Work..............£97.00
Surveys.....................£10.00
Interest....................£15.77

Total.......................£546.26

The lion's share of website advertising came from the IceSave Savings Account Review I wrote on this website, the freelance work is for website design to a local organisation, the surveys I did for company called Lightspeed and most of the interest came from my Stoozing project. Technically, I've earned more in website advertising but the dough is sitting in affiliate accounts waiting to reach the withdrawal threshold.

Expenses
Web Hosting & Domain Names..£61.96
Sundries....................£3.59

Total.......................£65.55

The sundries were just some stamps and a pack of envelopes for posting invoices.

Profits
£546.26 - £65.55 = £480.71

As mentioned in January, I am now paying myself a wage for my Doubling exploits equal to one third of profits earned, so that brings my total to:

£480.71 (Profit) - £160.24 (My Wages) = £320.47

I've guesstimated that another third (£160.24) will be deducted as taxes but I won't need to account for this until the end of the financial year so (at least for now) it's mine

This completes Step 16 (Hooray!) and puts me over halfway through Step 17. However, to reach step 20 by the end of the year, I'm going to have to find ways of earning more.

Step 16 Complete
Step 17 In Progress
Cumulative Cash: £506.21

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. For a brief outline of the strategy, take a look at this post.

This is just a short note to let you know that The Doubler's Den has just launched a search engine designed specifically for Doublers. Here's the link:

Doubler's Search Engine

Now it is quick and easy to find what your looking for in the world of Doubling.

Arkad

I've been using the A+L Premier Direct Current Account for around six months and thought it was about time I shared my views and experiences of it.

Background
My original motivation for opening a second current account was to keep my personal and business earnings separate. I looked into a number of dedicated business banking accounts but they generally had poor interest rates and additional fees and it seemed the only benefit I would get would be the ability to cash cheques using my business name instead of my real name. Being self-employed, all my business income was in my real name so I decided that I had nothing to lose and everything to gain by using a personal account for my business pursuits. I was not planning to change my day-to-day personal banking provider - Lloyds TSB - although I am now seriously considering it.

About Alliance + Leicester
Originally a Building Society, the Alliance + Leicester floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1997, where it has been part of the FTSE 100 (the top 100 shares) ever since. It is the UK's seventh largest bank and has five and a half million customers. They are members of the Financial Services Authority Compensation Scheme, which means that in the unlikely event of them going bust, account holders can recover up to £35,000. They also subscribe to the Banking Code, which ensures that banks offer a fair deal to the public.

Opening an Account
Opening an account was relatively straightforward. I applied online and over the next week or two I received a number of letters from A+L in the post. The main letter contained a welcome pack filled with lots of information about how to use the account. Other letters included my debit card, card PIN, telephone banking PIN and Internet banking PIN.

That is more or less all there was to it, however I didn't opt to have my salary paid into the new account. A+L state that their 'Premier Switching Service' will make sure that salary, direct debits, standing orders etc. will all be transferred from your existing website without fuss, but having not experienced it, I cannot comment on this aspect of the account.

Benefits
I primarily chose the Alliance Leicester Premier Direct Account because of it's table-topping 6.5% interest rate (recently increased to 8.5%). Not only is it the best interest rate on the market for a current account, A+L guarantee that this rate will remain fixed until April 2009. Unfortunately, this interest rate only applies to the first £2,500 in the account. For anything above two and half grand, the interest rate plummets to 0.10%. This was not a major concern to me as I only planned to keep a maximum £2'500 in the account at any one time. Any extra would be siphoned off to a high-interest savings account.

When opening the Premier Direct Current Account, A+L also open a PlusSaver Savings account which has a 5.5% interest rate on balances up to £50,000. Although this interest rate is far from poor, I haven't really used my PlusSaver due to the better rates I get from other institutions such as
IceSave (6.10%).

My Premier Direct Account also came with a 0% overdraft facility of up to £1000 for 12 months. The size of the overdraft does vary according to personal circumstances but if you need to borrow a few hundred quid, this account can provide you with an interest-free solution . This was beneficial for me in the first few months for another reason (see below).

Finally, the account also has an optional 'Reward' credit card that earns a 'point' for every pound spent on it. The points can then be exchanged for gifts, but having taken a look what was on offer it didn't seem like a good deal. I decided to keep with my 4% Cashback Capital One Card instead. NOTE: The Capital One card is no longer available, however the Amex Platinum is a great alternative.

Requirements
To open a Premier Direct Current Account, you need be at least 21 years old and be able to deposit at least £500 each month. When I first opened the account, I didn't have the income to fulfill the latter requirement (due to my salary not being paid into it). Fortunately, I was able to use A+L's kind offering of a 0% overdraft - I transferred £500 of the overdraft to my regular current account and back again. I still don't earn £500 per month regularly, however my balance is now large enough that I can bounce the surplus between the two accounts.

Internet Banking
For a month or two after I opened the A+L current account, I found that the Internet Banking was quite slow and occasionally I would get an error. They now seem to have sorted this out and haven't experienced any problems at all this year.

Login comes in two phases. The first is a regular Customer No. and Password combination. On the next screen, A+L display an image and phrase that is chosen by the user the first time they login. This helps to ensure that you are indeed on the Alliance + Leicester website and are't been duped by an impostor. Also on this screen, you have to enter a PIN number before being taken to Internet banking.

The design of the A+L Internet banking website is not the best I have come across - I much prefer the simplistic design provided by Lloyds TSB. Despite the design, I found running the account via the Internet relatively straightforward and all operations are intuitive.

Summary
The primary advantage over other current accounts is the unbeatable 8.5% interest rate but the comparatively low monthly deposit requirement of £500 (most banks require £1000 or £1500) and the 12 month 0% overdraft facility go a long way to making this the leading current account for both personal and business use.

All in all, I've been very pleased with the Alliance + Leicester Premier Direct Current Account since I opened it six months ago - so much so that I am now thinking about migrating my personal banking over to it.

I was looking back over my old accounts today and was slightly taken aback by how far I've come over the previous three years.

Back in 2005 I read 'The Richest Man in Babylon' by George S. Clason and decided to dedicate five years of my life putting in practice the wealth accumulation tactics described in this inspirational text. When I began the project, I hadn't really had much previous interest in financial matters and, after nearly a decade of working, had just £3000 to show for it. The graph below shows how I have progressed over the years:

I achieved this through a mixture of reducing my expenditures, saving 10% of my income, experimenting with different savings and investment vehicles and earning additional income to my salary.

Year one (2005 to 2006) showed the biggest increase in value mainly due a complete blitz on all my expenditures and consolidating all my existing savings into a single decent savings account - this took quite a bit of work due to my previous lack of paperwork organisation.

Between 2006 and 2008, I have managed to accumulate an average of £3000 per year, which has been an little more than 10% of my salary over the period.

I am pleased with the way my net worth has increased in value over the last three years but I'm even more impressed by how much I've learned over the period. I've changed from someone that didn't really understand interest rates, mortgages, types of investment vehicles etc. to someone that has a fundamental grounding in a growing number of financial subjects.

There's still a long long way to go both in terms of things to learn about and accumulating enough wealth to retire at the age of fifty (my primary long-term goal) but these last few years have given me a solid foundation on which to build and I can say with truth that I've enjoyed every step of the journey so far.

One of my goals for this year is to review our utility bills and see if we can get better deals by changing our providers. The last time I overhauled our expenditures was two years ago, so things are about due a change.

First of all, here's a list of the expenses that we are unable to reduce along with the reasons why:

• Grocery bill - We currently pay around £300 per month on groceries for a family of five. This has more than doubled since we brutally slashed our shopping budget around 18 months ago but the kids are growing up and with the extra addition of our 1-year old comes extra expense in terms of nappies and associated baby products. Also, our two first-schoolers are constantly being invited to friends parties, which requires the customary card and present. My wife and I have looked at this and unfortunately decided that we can't knock it down any lower.
• Telephone and Broadband - Toward the end of last year, I signed an agreement with my telephone and broadband provider (Plusnet) that tied me into a contract for twelve months in exchange for a £30 discount over the year (this works out at around one free month). Consequently, I cannot change provider this year. Judging by some of the deals I've seen advertised I'm starting to regret tying myself in but we live and learn
• Council Tax - Although it is possible to get a council tax band regraded (see this great article at MoneySavingExpert), mine is already in the correct band (around £130 a month).
• Water - Our water bill is fixed and not based on consumption and it is not possible to change provider so, again, there's not a lot I can do to reduce it. It costs around £18 per month.
• Mobile Phone - I spend about £2 a month on this contraption so there is not much room for improvement.

So that leaves me with the following expenditures that I can potentially make improvements on.

• Gas - I'm currently with NPower for my gas, as they offered me the best deal two years ago. Since the recent energy price rise (and possibly even before that) I believe they have become uncompetitive, so I'll be looking to see if there are any better offers on the market. I currently pay £60 per month, double what I was paying last year!
• Electricity - Ditto for my 'leccy bill. I'm currently with NPower and pay £43 each month.
• Mortgage - I'm currently paying ING Direct's standard variable rate of 6.09% AER for my mortgage, which costs me a smidgen over £420 per month. It has never been the most competitive rate but it was suitable for my needs when I took it out nearly a year ago when we moved house. I knew I'd probably have a fair bit of cash left over from the move but wasn't sure if I would need to use it for DIY on the new property. Therefore I had to keep the cash liquid but still have the option to overpay the mortgage if needed. ING's mortgage allows unlimited overpayments and no redemption penalties, so I applied for it with the view that I could keep it for a year until I knew where we stood financially before changing to something with a better interest rate. That time has come

So, there it is. To complete the second goal on my list, I need to find the best deals for my Gas, Electric and Mortgage and swap. I'm guessing it will only take around a week to do the research and I should be able to make the changes before the end of April.

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. For a brief outline of the strategy, take a look at this post.

Since becoming self-employed a few weeks ago, I've been thinking an awful lot about whether I should keep my business income and Doubling income separate. This is the way I've done it over the past year, the main reason being that the rules for Doubling state that Doubling money should be kept separate from personal cash.

This poses a number of problems. Firstly, I will have two sets of accounts to keep and working out the split for National Insurance and taxes will be quite difficult. Secondly, each time I come up with a new money-making idea, I will have to decide whether it contributes to my personal or Doubling income. I would have to design some sort of criteria to help me make the decision - and what sort of criteria would I use?

Over the weeks, I've come up with a number of strategies for keeping the funds separate, however none of them 'felt right' and they were all unnecessarily over-complicated. I feel I could continue to ponder upon this until the cows come home but, even then I don't think I would come up with a satisfactory solution.

So, I made a decision.

I will combine my Doubling quest with my other business ventures and split all the income between myself and the Doubling Pot. Although this is technically breaking one of the rules of Doubling, I believe it is the only satisfactory solution to the dilemma. My business will become my 'Doubling Account' and one of the expenses from said account will be my salary. I think at some point everyone that attempts to 'Double to a Million' will have to pay wages or labour costs, and that is the way I think about drawing a salary from it.

As well as gaining personally from my Doubling exploits, my Doubling Project will gain from my personal business income (including income from this website). A joining of forces, as it were.

The way I intend to split the profits is by totting up the income earned every quarter and splitting it three ways. The first third will be held back to pay the end of year tax bill. The second third will be retained as the Doubling Fund and the third third(?) will be transferred to my personal bank account.

My salary will be further divided as highlighted in my personal financial plan for 2008.

This also has the advantage of amalgamating the Doubling updates I make here into a single quarterly post.

So, with this plan in hand and a little math, I find that I need to earn a little over £15000 during 2008 to achieve two of the goals I set myself at the beginning of the year (goals 4 and 5).

I'd better get cracking...

A little over a week ago, I registered as self-employed with HM Revenue & Customs.

Now that I am earning hundreds of pounds from my money-making ideas ideas (rather than just a few extra quid as in previous years) it seemed like the right time to put them into a more taxman-friendly structure. Additionally (and more importantly to me), one of my goals for 2008 is to set up and run my own business. This was also on my goals list for 2007 but procrastination and apprehension resulted in it not being completed. I was determined not to let that happen again this year.

My initial plan was to set up a Private Limited Company, but the additional costs and administration soon quashed that idea. I got a few quotes from accountants and realised that it would take a big chunk out of my projected profits if I were to run a Ltd Company and the over-complicated tax-structure in the UK would be too big a learning curve to do the accounting myself. I also found that the legislative responsibilities required to run a Limited Company would take up a lot of my time and/or money - time and money that I think would be better spent on the business's growth during it's infancy. At this point in time, I felt that the best course of action would be to trade as self-employed with a view to incorporation in the future, once profits are large enough to cater for the additional requirements.

Before registering as self-employed, I did a lot of research into the responsibilities of running a business as a sole-trader from home and would like to share the process I went through in the hope that it will help someone in a similar position. Of course, this article is no substitution for your own research and due-diligence but it will hopefully provide you with a few pointers in the right direction.

Homeworking
The nature of my work meant that a lot of the regulations and legislative requirements of running a business were not applicable to me. Being a one-man-band, I don't have to worry about employment law and tax for employees, my own wages being withdrawn directly from the business.

I checked the smallprint on my mortgage to make sure there were no conditions preventing me from running a business from home - fortunately there wasn't. I also checked my home insurance policy. Business items are not insured, however this wasn't an issue as my business assets are primarily the websites I run. The only other thing is my laptop, which is also a personal item and therefore covered. The data on my laptop is probably more important than the laptop itself, however making regular backups and storing them at another location (my mum's house) should mean I won't have to change the policy.

I thought that working from home would mean that I would have to pay business council tax rates on my house, but after a quick phone call to the local authority I discovered that one guy sitting at home with a laptop is not liable.

Banking
I opened an Alliance + Leicester Premier Direct Current Account last year as part of my Doubling Project. I believe that this is the ideal bank account for anyone starting a small business as a sole trader. This account pays a whopping 8.5% on all balances below £2500 - a rate which is fixed until April 2009 - and comes with a 0% overdraft for the first 12 months. A deposit of at least £500 is required each month, but if cashflow is poor, you can easily use the overdraft to bounce £500 to another bank account and back again. It is not a bona-fide business account, so cheques and deposits cannot be written in the name of the business, but this was not a problem for me as everything is set up in my own name.

Stationery
All business stationery such as letters, invoices etc. must display the name of the business owner and address of the business by law. I also wanted to include my business name, logo, telephone, website and email address on all external documentation. I used OpenOffice - a free suite of business tools similar to Microsoft Office - to create a few templates for the business. This included a standard letter template, standard email template and a basic template for internal documentation.

Trading
Trading under a business name that is the same or very similar to another business could lead to legal wranglings in the future, so I did a few checks to make sure no-one else was using the name I planned to use for my business. I did a check on Companies House website for other Limited Companies as well as doing a Google Search to see if it was being used by anyone else. Fortunately, nothing turned up.

It is also necessary to become acquaited with a few pieces of legislation when trading including the trade descriptions act (how you allowed to describe goods and services), the sales of goods act (how to deal lawfully with sales, returns etc) and, if trading over the Internet, the distance selling act. It is also important to understand the data protection act when storing the details of customers and prospects.

Health & Safety
Although most legislation with regards Health & Safety will not apply to me (being a lone home-worker), I had to carry out a risk assessment of the area that I was working in, as required by law. Basically, this just meant having a look around for any potential hazards and making adjustments to reduce the risk. As an example, I noticed that the power cord for my laptop could cause a tripping hazard. I reduced the risk by moving my desk closer to the wall where the plug socket resided. Although a risk assessment has to be conducted by all businesses, it does not have to be documented unless there are four or more people working in the area.

Accounting
Accounting is not something new to me as I have been keeping my own personal accounts for a few years now and it is just a matter of transferring my existing system to the business. I aim to keep my business and personal accounts completely separate or sake of clarity. I use a fantastic double-entry book-keeping and accounting package called GNUCash although I must add that this is only available for computers running Linux*. It comes with an accounts receivable, invoicing and receipt system which will help me keep on top of my cashflow.

Income Tax & National Insurance
The final thing to do was to give HM Revenue and Customs a ring to register myself as self-employed. The call lasted around 5 minutes and all that was required was for me to give them my National Insurance Number, the date I became self-employed and my personal details. I will have to pay income tax and national insurance for 2008 after my first year of trading.

Summary
I found that becoming self-employed is relatively easy to do. I must admit there are a lot of things of things that you are required by law to be aware of, however there was a lot of help at hand from goverment and commercially-run websites.

I found a lot of useful information on the Business Link website and they also provide a handy booklet entitled 'The No-Nonsense To Government Rules & Regulations for Setting Up Your Business'. Other resources of note include ByteStart and Startups.

I hope that this brief guide to setting up a business as a sole trader has been of some help to somebody out there in Internet Land. As always, feel free to make any comments below. After all that red tape, I'm off to start doing something a bit more productive...

* - GnuCash is available for Linux, MacOSX and Windows. Thanks jsled.

Update 6th Oct 2008 - Following the devastating news of IceSave's parent company, Landsbanki, being taken over by the government I have begun to make updates of the situation on my main IceSave webpage.

Following on from my previous post, Landsbanki's IceSave have recently announced their excellent Easy Access ISA. At 6.10% gross (or 5.94% if you opt for interest to be paid monthly), it is the best Mini-Cash ISA on the market. In addition, IceSave will guarantee to beat the Bank of England Base Rate by 0.30% until 31 January 2011 and at least match the Base Rate until 31 January 2013. There is no notice period or penalty for withdrawing your money or transferring it to a different provider in the future. You also have the option of transferring your previous Mini-Cash ISA's by filling in a transfer request form.

The only down-side seems to be that you need to put at least £1000 into it, whereas other products accept as little as £1. However, if you've got a grand or more, I believe that this is the one to choose.

I've been using IceSave's Easy Access Savings Account for over a year now (see my review of this account here) and I've been very impressed with the service I've received and the interest rate, so I'm planning on opening one of their ISA's in the next week or so.

I actually haven't opened an ISA this tax year (I moved house so wanted to keep the cash liquid in case it was required), so hopefully it'll be sorted before the end of March to maximise my tax-free allowance - and then I can open another one!

Once opened, I'll be sure to write a report of my experience.

UPDATE: Five minutes after writing this, I went to the IceSave website and read that because I already had a savings account with IceSave, I could apply for an ISA from their Internet Banking website. I logged on and the whole process was complete in about 2 minutes. I simply declared that I hadn't already opened an ISA this year, chose where I wanted the money to be deposited from and inputted my National Insurance number. I was informed that my ISA would be up and running in two days and I could view it from my existing Internet Banking with IceSave - if only all banks would make it this easy!

This is the tale of an affiliate marketing opportunity that came about entirely by accident.

Regular readers know that I occasionally write reviews about financial products I have used. At the beginning of last year, I wrote one such article about the IceSave Instant Access Savings Account.

A couple of months later I noticed I seemed to be getting an above average number of visitors to my site and upon investigation I discovered that I was getting a lot of visits from the Google Search Engine.

After a little more digging, I was happy to find out that the review I wrote was now ranked in the top 2 of Google's search results for the terms 'Icesave' and 'IceSave Review', second only to the IceSave website itself.

At this point, I thought it would be prudent to see if I could join an affiliate program partnered with IceSave to try and cash in on the popularity of the webpage I wrote, however my search was fruitless, so instead I added an extra Google Adsense banner. Although I got one or two extra clicks, the profits from the page were not particularly amazing.

Over the summer I experimented with quite a few different advertising options from ClickBank products to Debt Consolidation Services. All of these advertisements were related in some way to the financial theme of the website and article but none of them earned any more than a few pence. All the time, my review was getting more and more popular with people dropping off their comments at the foot of the article and it became one of the most visited pages of the website.

Fast-forward to the end of September 2007 and I received an unexpected email from an affiliate marketing network. They had recently partnered with IceSave to provide web-based leads and had discovered how highly ranked my review was in search engines for IceSave-related keywords. They wanted me to join their program and I obviously jumped at the opportunity. It was just what I had had been searching for.

I added the relevant banners to my IceSave article and awaited the results.

There were only a few days left in September, so I didn't earn anything in this month, however by the end of October, I was happy to find out that I'd earned £44. November was even better with profits of £88 and December earned me £66.

January 2008 was a fantastic month with earnings of £224 - people are more attuned to saving after Christmas, it seems.

In total I've earned £422 in 4 months. So, what have I learned from this experience?

I'd have to say that I'll never underestimate the importance of matching the right products with right people. I'm not sure what possessed me to try and sell debt consolidation loans to people who had money to save! But even similar products such as other savings accounts and money-making strategies bared no comparison to the success of the actual product I wrote about.

I've also discovered the importance of patience and tenacity in the affiliate marketing game. Although the page was successful in terms of visitors and search engine rankings early on, it didn't begin to be profitable until 9 months after it was written. Eventually, when opportunity came knocking, I was in the prime position to take advantage of it.

After a pretty successful first year of setting goals for myself in 2007, I have decided to continue with the idea and set myself some goals for 2008. At the end of the year, I hope I can say that they've all been completed.

I've set myself 10 goals for this year, however only six of them are related to the financial and business aspects of my life, so only these will be discussed here on my website.

1. Save 10% of my salary - This was one of the routines I got into when I started my financial journal nearly three years ago and also one of the best pieces of financial advice I've ever heard of. I originally read it in the book 'The Richest Man in Babylon' by George S. Clason (also the inspiration for this website) and over the years, I've built up a very nice lump of capital.
2. Review utility bills - With my wife no longer working so that she can look after our baby, we find ourselves living on just one income rather than two so things will consequently be a lot tighter this year. In order to reduce our expenditures, I plan on reviewing our utility bills to see if I can get better deals elsewhere.
3. Set up and run my own company - This was one of the goals I struggled with last year, and I contemplated giving it a miss for 2008, however after going over my original motives for setting it, I included it on the list again. I want to learn about business and I always find the best way to learn something is by doing it. I plan on working for myself in the future, so there are a lot of important skills I will have the opportunity to master by setting up my own company. I was unsuccessful last year because of my procrastination. I'm determined not to fall into the same trap this year.
4. Reduce our mortgage capital to below £60'000 - Last year we managed to overpay our mortgage by around £1500 in just 8 months, an achievement of which we are very proud. That is £1500 that we will never have to pay interest on again. Our mortgage is now around £62500 and by the end of the year, it will be reduced to around £61400 by making the standard payments. We plan to earn enough extra cash to be able to overpay at least an extra £1400 over the course of the year to get our mortgage to below £60'000.
5. Complete steps 16 to 20 of my doubling plan - I'm currently on Step 16 of my Doubling Project and plan to reach Step 20 during 2008 (to find out what 'Doubling' is, see this explanatory post). The target amount for Step 20 is £5000.
6. Donate 1% of my salary to charity - This was one of my goals for 2007 that I'm happy to say I completed. I made my donation to a charity called BDF NewLife, which helps children with birth defects and their families. I have decided to include this goal on my list again this year and each subsequent year.

So, that's my list of goals for the coming twelve months

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. For a brief outline of the strategy, take a look at this post.

I just received a monthly interest payment of £7.60 into my Doubling Pot from the Stoozing experiment I did a few months ago.

Step 16 In Progress
Cumulative Cash: £185.74

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. For a brief outline of the strategy, take a look at this post.

Despite my laziness over the last month or so, I have manged to make a couple of additions to my 'Doubling Stake'.

Firstly, I've earned £1.20 from completing free offers on RPoints. RPoints is a cashback website that gives you money for completing free offers - for a large list of similar websites, take a look at W3WAD's Cashback Website Comparison Matrix.

And secondly, over the Xmas period, I found a total of 20p on the ground whilst out walking with the kids.

In addition, I've also made nearly $50 via Clickbank from when I tested out the Bum Marketing Method. Unfortunately, I've set the payout threshold to $100 to reduce currency conversion fees, so I won't be able to add it to the Doubling Pot for a while longer.

Step 16 In Progress
Cumulative Cash: £178.14

Every year, at around the end of December and the beginning of January, I create my budget for the coming year. I use GNUCash - an Open Source book-keeping system - to keep track of my income and expense over the year. Not only does this allow me to calculate my expenditure over the twelve months, it also helps me to control my cashflow so that I know exactly how much cash I've got at any time (and ensures I don't go into the red). Additionally, I can pull off a plethora of reports to show my current financial status in terms of assets, liabilities, income and expense.

This year is going to be more difficult financially for my family. My wife's maternity leave has come to an end and she doesn't intend to go back to work for a few years until our baby is at school, so instead of two incomes, there will now be just mine. The fact that I plan to leave my job sometime soon doesn't help matters too much either

After playing around with the numbers for a while, it became apparent that although my salary would cover all the bills, there wouldn't be much left over for recreational purposes. After discussions with my wonderful wife, we decided the best thing to do would be for me to look after the household expenses, and she would control our 'fun' budget. She also plans to pick up a few odd-jobs that she can do from home while looking after our baby to ensure that we have a bit extra for entertainment. So from now on, I'll be asking the missus for money if I want to go out

We also decided that there were a few other things we would like to spend any additional income on and came up with the following plan to split any extra money that I earn.

1. 50% to be added to our recreation budget.
2. 30% on mortgage over-payments.
3. 10% to be put into our savings.
4. 10% to go into our emergency fund.

Of course, this will not affect any money I earn as part of my 'Double To A Million' project.

Every quarter, I will go back over the previous three months and divide my additional earnings accordingly.

Personally, I wanted more cash to go on overpaying the mortgage and my wife wanted more for the recreation budget, however our discussions led to an amicable compromise and we are both pleased with our financial plan for 2008.

Happy New Year everyone.

A few people have asked me to give a more detailed explanation of the 'Double Your Way To A Million' project I am working through. I thought I'd give a brief overview of the strategy and if you'd like to find out more, I recommend that you download the Free Doubling Report from 'Megastep International' in exchange for your name and email address (you can opt out again immediately and I've experienced no spam problems from them).

The basic principle behind 'Doubling Your Way To A Million' or 'Doubling' as us 'Doublers' call it is to generate a million pounds/dollars/euros starting from just a single penny/cent. The first penny must be found on the ground and once you have it, that is Step 1 of the 28-Step project complete. You now have a penny in your 'Doubling Pot' also known as your 'Stake' by many Doublers and from now on money can be earned.

To complete step 2, you must get 2p in your Doubling Pot. Again this could be found money, or you could offer to help someone with something for the token sum of a penny or perhaps even ask a friend to exchange your shiny new penny (if indeed it is shiny and new) for one of their grubby twopence pieces. How you do it doesn't really matter - the important thing is setting the goal for yourself, thinking about it and achieving it.

Having completed step 2, you now need to bump up your Doubling Pot to 4p to complete Step 3. There are an infinite number of ways you can do this and with a little thought, you'll soon be on Step 4. You now need your Doubling Pot to hit 8p and then for Step 5, you need to double again to 16p.

Each Step requires you to double your money until you complete Step 28, at which point you're Doubling Pot consists of over a million pounds and you have completed your project and are free to spend the money how you want (or perhaps even double it again). Each step also requires different strategies - for example, in the early steps you could get a part time job but as you progress, it will become harder and harder as you will need to earn more and more. There are a number of rules laid out in the Free Double Your Way To A Million Report that iron out the details of the strategy. I can't reproduce them here as it would be both illegal and unethical.

I've been Doubling for a little over a year now and am currently on Step 16 (over halfway through - woo-hoo), having earned £176.74 so far. I'm sure most other people could get to this amount a lot quicker than I have! I've found it to be a positive and thoroughly enjoyable experience. It has made me spot opportunities where I wouldn't have otherwise looked and helped me to discover a number of different methods of making money that I previously didn't know about. Plus it's made me more confident in goal-setting and attainment as well as earning me a few quid (although that's staying in my Doubling Pot for a while longer). I'd recommend to anyone that they should give it a go - maybe a future Doubling Millionaire is reading this right now

Additional Resources:
Doubling Blogroll - A list of other Doubler's blogs
The Doubler's Den - A place for Doubler's to hang out, discuss ideas, share experiences and give each other moral support.