How I made an extra £19,142.16 in 2025
Throughout 2025, and for over four years beforehand, I have been sharing detailed accounts of how I have increased my income through side hustles and other means. I share this to help you in copying what I have done and to show how it can be done with little work. Please note that this has not happened overnight and is not me trying to brag about anything. If you have any questions on anything, please do message me on Instagram (@thebankengine) and I will be happy to answer any questions.
So here is how I made an extra £19,142.16 in 2025.
The Bank Engine: £6,864.58
How this page makes money - Click here
For another year, my highest additional income stream (outside my 9-5) remains this website. My content around financial education and sharing my personal finance journey has always been and will always be completely free to access which may make you wonder how I have made nearly £7k from this page during 2025. The business model for The Bank Engine is much the same as the larger personal finance sites; all of my content is free but almost all of my income comes from commissions from the services I talk about when you open an account with a cashback site, investing app, or similar.
What I enjoy the most about this business model is that most of the income I earn is a direct result of you also earning, as the sign-up offers and partnership agreements that I negotiate with companies means that we all receive something as part of the deal. I say this all the time, but only because I truly do mean it, but thank you for your continued support of The Bank Engine - I, hoped, but never really expected The Bank Engine to reach this level of profitability when I first started out.
Investment Returns: £6,798.46
Free Investing Guide - Click here
I continued to adopt the same investment strategy throughout 2025 as I have in earlier years; invest regularly in all-world index funds, small investments into individual stocks and crowdfunding rounds and contribute via salary sacrifice to my workplace pension alongside my employer.
As I have grown my overall investment portfolio my exposure to the market has also increased which led to nearly £7k in investment growth during 2025, being a mixture of realised gains (investments I have sold) and unrealised gains (investments I have not yet sold), as follows:
Vanguard portfolio: +£219.17 (realised to transfer into T212 ISA)
Freetrade portfolio: +£206.52 (realised to transfer holdings into T212 ISA)
Trading 212 portfolio (ISA): +£2,610.49 (realised and unrealised positions)
Nutmeg Lifetime ISA: +£1,582.57 (unrealised positions)
Cryptocurrency disposals: -£104.14 (realised positions to free up cash)
Crowdcube Freetrade disposal: -£868.85 (realised as part of sale to IG)
Crowdcube Project D disposal: -£48.75 (realised as part of business ceasing)
Crowdcube The Cheese Geek disposal: -£55.48 (realised as company in administration)
Crowdcube The Biscuiteers disposal: -£56.13 (realised as company entered pre-pack administration)
Crowdcube Chip: +£555.32 (unrealised value increase)
Crowdcube Moneybox: +£92.73 (unrealised value increase)
Crowdcube Octopus VCTs: -£172.13 (unrealised value decrease)
Any realised gains/ losses are not taxable as are either held inside an ISA or are covered by the tax-free Capital Gains Allowance.
The Crowdcube investments are judged against investment rounds since I invested that have revalued my holdings upwards or downwards.
Investing can be daunting when starting; I had absolutely no idea where to start or what everything meant. If 2026 is the year that you want to start investing, I have put together a free guide on understanding how investing works and everything I wish I knew back at the beginning which you can read here.
Lifetime ISA Bonus: £1,333.33
The Lifetime ISA is a savings (and or investing) account that allows you to put aside £4,000 per tax year towards your first home or retirement; the Government will then top up your account with a 25% bonus meaning that there is £1,000 of free cash available per tax year.
I am currently using Lifetime ISAs to save towards my first home which I plan to complete on later in 2026; I hold two Lifetime ISAs (1 x Cash and 1 x Stocks & Shares) and am in the process of trying to combine these into 1 x Cash Lifetime ISA as you can only draw down on one account as part of the home-buying process. This is something that came as a shock to me when I spoke with my solicitor as there is no reference to this within the Government’s product guidance, nor elsewhere online other than one small Tembo article - Tembo are currently helping me deal with this but just as a word of warning; this is a thing!
During 2025, I contributed the last 4 x £333.33 monthly payments into my account for the 2024/25 tax year and also maxed out my account for 2025/26 as I had the cash available. This netted me the full £1,000 bonus for 2025/26 and the remaining bonus for 2024/25 meaning I received a total of £1,333.33 from the Government towards my house deposit in the 2025 calendar year.
Bank Interest: £1,051.12
With lots of large costs coming up in 2026, I have started prioritising saving over investing in the short-term which has resulted in me earning more bank interest than previously; the majority of this was earned on cash held in ISAs with the rest covered by the Personal Savings Allowance meaning that none of this income is taxable.
Mystery Shopping: £970.79
Free Mystery Shopping Guide - Click here
Mystery shopping remains one of my favourite side hustles and one that I will continuously talk about and recommend for those with spare time on their hands, without commitments that mean they need to be at home more often. Mystery shopping isn’t necessarily as scary as it initially sounds as there are a variety of apps I use and, with that, a variety of ways that you can earn through it.
Some tasks are actual mystery shops where you need to perform a scenario in a store and record the interaction with staff members, whereas others (my favourites) are a case of walking into a shop, taking a photo of some shelves and answering simple questions.
I started this side hustle back in 2021 and whilst I have been less active with it this year (in 2024 I made £2k!) it is still very lucrative and a very simple way of making extra cash.
Market Research - £606.50
Free Market Research Guide - Click here
I tried to push harder on this income stream during 2025 as I find it an incredible opportunity to make money without leaving the comfort of home. I did not quite beat last year’s earnings (~£665) but my income did become considerably more consistent with paid studies each month across a variety of apps.
Market research generally consists of talking about a product, website or just general topic over a video call with representatives of a company that want customer insights, it is great because they tend to pay really well; my average hourly rate from market research studies, calls and surveys throughout 2025 was ~£40.
Dividend Income - £535.59
Alongside realised and unrealised gains on my investment portfolio, I also receive something called a dividend from a number of my investments which is a share of the profits from companies that I invest in which gets paid back to investors. During 2025, I received £535.59 of dividend income across my portfolio which is a sizeable return from a portfolio that is largely held for capital growth rather than income.
Cashback - £363.63
Throughout 2025, I was keen to ensure that I was earning cashback on as many transactions as possible. This has been done through a combination of a number of apps and websites but mostly EverUp which I use to purchase gift cards for major supermarkets and UK stores when I am shopping. Within this headline figure is also £200 worth of cashback offers where I signed up for bank accounts and investment accounts through cashback sites, notably:
Santander Stocks & Shares ISA - £75 (offer now ended)
Cahoot Savings Account - £25 (see the offer here)
TSB Current Account - £30 (combined with bank switching offer)
Charles Stanley Stocks & Shares ISA - £70 (see a similar offer here)
Free Money Offers - £327.50
Similarly to the cashback offers above, free money offers are where you can receive cash for signing up to an app, service or similar. During 2025 these are the free money offers that I took advantage of:
January - £20 from Chip for investing £100 for 30 days
February - £5 from Monzo for investing £1
April - £50 from Nationwide as part of their “Big Thank You” campaign
May - £10 from opening a Zopa current account
June - £100 from Nationwide as part of their “Fairer Share” campaign
July - £30 from Chip for investing £100 for 30 days (again!)
October - £12.50 from Suits Me for opening a current account
November - £100 from Wirex for opening an account and using my card 20+ times
All of these offers (excl. Wirex) were shared in my free emails as soon as I had tried and tested them, these emails are sent every week and have made people £100,000s! You can sign up to them here.
Matched Betting - £226.44
Free Matched Betting Guide - Click here
This was my first ever side hustle back in 2020 that kickstarted my adventures into discovering extra income, so it will always have a special place in my heart. Matched betting is a process of using bookmakers’ special offers against them by using calculations. It sounds complicated, but give yourself 30 minutes and you’ll know what you’re doing,
I have made probably ~£4k since 2020 from doing this and there are people who make £1,000s per month from doing more complicated offers. During 2025 I slowed down on this as we moved towards a position that I would be looking at applying for a mortgage as deposits into betting sites can be a bad marker when applying.
Of course, this side hustle does mean you will be using betting sites and I would never recommend it to anyone who has had gambling problems, addictive personalities or anyone who may fall into the trap of gambling. This is not gambling and requires complete removal of emotions.
Google Rewards - £64.22
The smallest income stream last year came from Google Rewards, and whilst it seems like it is minimal it is an easy income stream that covers a handful of my subscriptions month-to-month. Google Rewards is available for anyone who has a smartphone, although pays better for Android users, and offers short surveys which they pay you 8p - £1 for (each takes perhaps 5 seconds, up to 30 seconds). They also now pay for photos of receipts that you have taken for shops they think you may have visited (linked to Google Maps).
It isn’t lots but the ~£5 a month has covered two subscriptions that I pay through Google Play each month (for Android users, the rewards can only be redeemed as Google Play credit).