How I made an extra £1,232.40 in January (+ A Free Hotel Stay)
If you have been following my financial journey for a while now, you will know that transparency is key for me. In line with this, I share my full additional earnings each month from all my side hustles to show you that it is possible, how it can be done and exactly how much can be made. So without further ado, this is how I did in January.
The Bank Engine: £858.67
I will shortly be sharing my full Profit & Loss report for January 2025 on Instagram, but in January The Bank Engine made a gobsmacking £858.67 in profit down to the success of a number of contributing factors:
Demand for Trading 212 promo codes increased due to Vanguard fee hikes, and I have an active code
The Mettle refer-a-friend promotion reset and saw me max out referrals in just 10 days, with hundreds of you getting a free £50 from them
Search Engine Optimisation for the website continued to provide incredible results currently ranking on the front page of Google for:
5 x Mettle Sign Up Bonus Search Queries
6 x Lifetime ISA General Search Queries
6 x Robinhood Free Share Search Queries
100s of other search queries
I also launched The Bank Engine on TikTok in the last week of January and in just 7 days saw a reach of 20,000 new people
The weekly email reached record levels of open rates and click-through rates as well!
I always believe in full transparency and growing an online business is often dubbed to be straightforward, however there a lot of things that you may not think about and it is my mission to ensure that my journey in learning about such things, understanding them and actioning them is well documented as a helpful guide for others
Mystery Shopping: £108.45
Check out my free mystery shopping guide where I share exactly how I make £1,000s from this!
Since writing this guide I have discovered SmartSpotter (see below) which is fast becoming my favourite app and is perfect if you don't like the idea of having to interact with staff as most jobs don't require you to!
Roamler - I do have some referral links (referrer-only benefit) if you would like to help me out!
6 x Hair Care Checks: £21.00 (visit stores, take photos & answer questions)
1 x Clip Strip Check & Fix: £13.50 (visit store, find products & ask store to move)
1 x Pulses & Beans Check: £10.00 (visit store, take photos & answer questions)
1 x Grooming Care Check: £7.00 (visit store, take photos & answer questions)
1 x Pet Food Check: £4.00 (visit store, take photos, answer questions & get free pet food)
3 x M&S Shopping List Tasks: £48.00 (visit store, locate 50 items, record stock levels & take photos)
1 x Currys Mystery Shop: £7.00 (visit store, capture images, ask questions & feed back)
SmartSpotter - I do have some referral links (referrer-only benefit) if you would like to help me out!
1 x Kids Snack Check: £4.50 (visit store, take photos & answer questions)
1 x Peanut Butter Check: £4.00 (visit store, take photos & answer questions)
1 x Coconut Water Check: £4.00 (visit store, take photos & answer questions)
Costs incurred during the month were as follows:
Mileage for mystery shopping (@ 45p per mile): £12.15
Parking costs for mystery shopping: £2.40
Lifetime ISA Bonus: £83.33
I am currently saving for the deposit on my first home, along with my partner, and we both do this in our own Lifetime ISAs - a Government backed scheme that allows you to save £4,000 per tax year and receive a 25% bonus on however much you save into the account.
I pay in £333.33 per month into my Lifetime ISA to reach this maximum £4,000 per year and as such receive a bonus of £83.33 per month from the Government. I currently use Nutmeg for my Lifetime ISA which is a Stocks & Shares Lifetime ISA.
Free Hotel Stay
The TSB bank switch that I did in the Summer also contained a bonus that if you spent on the card 20+ times in December 2024 then you would get a free hotel stay in January, which I received last week
The selection of hotels seems a bit hit or miss but is a freebie regardless and I have filtered this down to a decent looking one and booked a night away with this
For reference, you can view what hotels are eligible for this offer here: https://myrewards.tsb.co.uk/hotels/
Bank Interest: £65.16
I LOVE passive income, and bank interest is the best form of passive income as its your money working for you. Alongside my current Stocks & Shares Lifetime ISA, I have a Cash Lifetime ISA with Moneybox which I paid into for a good number of years and this is where the bulk of my bank interest comes from each month.
Last month, I have transferred this Cash LISA to Tembo to ensure it is always earning the highest interest rates currently paying 4.8% on a rather chunky balance.
Cashback: £39.47
After waiting for what feels like forever since switching to TSB last Summer, I finally received the additional £30 cashback from Quidco for switching through them.
I also continued to make the majority of our purchases through the EverUp app to ensure we earned cashback on as much as possible.
I also signed up to Charles Stanley and opened an investment account through TopCashback in January which has tracked a £70 cashback bonus (I invested £50 to trigger this but unsure what the terms are as it's quite vague on the TCB site)
I have not included this in this month's earnings as I plan on including it once I receive the bonus later in the year!
Dividends: £39.01
Dividends are largely like bank interest, but you receive them for investing in the stock market. They reflect a share of the profits of companies that you have invested in and are paid semi-regularly depending on how you invest.
If you are new to investing, or just want to learn more, you can check out my free investing guide here.
This figure was inflated during January as I received £21.24 of tax-free dividends from my investments into Octopus VCTs last year which are tax-advantageous forms of investment vehicles but carry a very high level of risk.
Free Money Offer: £20.00
Towards the end of last year, Chip was offering a £20 bonus for any customers who hadn't opened an investment account with them to do so.
As I was eligible, I completed this offer which involved investing £100 into a General Investment Account or ISA and in January I received the £20 bonus and withdrew my original £100 (worth about £98 at time of withdrawal)
Market Research & Surveys: £18.31
THX: £10.00
I downloaded this app right at the start of July after reading some positive things about it online and it's actually pretty worthwhile (coming from someone who hates surveys usually).
Most surveys I received were to do with watching online ads and answering 5 or 6 multiple choice questions on it, so took less than a few minutes each time and seem worth doing in my opinion!
You can cash your points out to vouchers once you reach £5 worth but are limited to Amazon only, whereas once you reach £10 you have a lot more options including supermarkets. I cashed out £10 to Sainsbury's in January.
Angelfish: £5.00
I received £5 worth of supermarket vouchers from an online community I joined through Angelfish around a year ago, to receive these I just took part in a number of short surveys throughout the month.
Google Rewards: £3.31
I was recommended this app last year, and since then have been answering the super short surveys every time they pop up.
They are generally about shops I have visited and whether I made a purchase, but recently have started getting questions about Google searches too!
In the last few months, they have also introduced receipt scanning where they will ask you to upload receipts for stores you have visited (completely random, and some I haven't been in) paying £0.01 if you don't have a receipt/ didn't visit or up to £0.20 if you upload one.
The earnings can only be redeemed for Google Play credit on Android but still worthwhile as I use this to pay for Disney+ at £4.99 per month which this seems to cover nicely most months.