the richest man in atherstone

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.