How I made an extra £1,064.77 in January 2026
If you are new here, I have been sharing my additional earnings for over 5 years in an ambition to show you all of the different ways that you can make money alongside a 9-5 role and to give you an idea as to what actually works! With another month complete, here is how I got on in January 2026.
Mystery Shopping: £326.25 “Profit”/ Income of £501.50 / £64.75 of Freebies
Mystery shopping is a great side hustle if you have time and don’t mind travelling around a little bit to do it, I have written a free guide on mystery shopping that you can read here.
I was expecting January to be a quiet month on the mystery shopping front. However, SmartSpotter had a surge of tasks available which I took as a golden opportunity to make a good chunk of cash over the month, here’s exactly what I did to earn a total of £495.50 from mystery shopping in January:
SmartSpotter - Message me for a referral link!
69 x Petrol Station Checks - £298.00 + £64.75 in freebies (purchases of <£1 in each station reimbursed)
4 x Protein Checks - £13.00
2 x Coffee Checks - £10.00
2 x Razor Checks - £9.50
2 x Dairy Checks - £9.00
1 x Health & Beauty Check - £4.00
1 x Bagel Check - £4.00
1 x Vinegar Check - £4.00
1 x Cat Food Check - £4.00
Roamler - Message me for a referral link!
1 x Corona Display Unit Build - £28.00
3 x Meal Deal Check & Fixes - £21.00
2 x Category Checks at Currys - £20.00
3 x Mystery Promo Check - £13.50
2 x Water Display Checks - £8.00
1 x Buy & Try Task - £2.00 + free item
Shepper
2 x M&S Customer Shopping Lists - £40.00
1 x M&S Mystery Shop - £12.00
1 x Promotional Display Check - £4.50
As I am sure you can imagine from the vast number of mystery shopping tasks I did in January, I also travelled quite far totalling 385 miles of travel to reach this level of income, the true petrol cost of this comes to just over £60 but using HMRC’s approved mileage rate that also takes into consideration wear and tear and vehicle depreciation then there is a taxable deduction of £173.25 against this income.
This month wasn’t my best from an hourly perspective as I focused on pure income over efficiencies and spent 25.65 hours (including travel time) on these tasks meaning my taxable profit per hour comes to £12.72 which is okay but considerably lower than the usual £20+ hourly rate.
The Bank Engine: £470.02
As we started a new year, I had high ambitions to push into being more active on Instagram which has fallen flat on its face as I occupied myself with other tasks (such as mystery shopping), however I have aimed to deliver stronger emails on a weekly basis which have performed well. If you haven’t signed up to my free emails, you can do so here.
Each calendar year, I am able to earn a maximum of £250 from Mettle’s referral scheme which resulted in a top-line increase of revenue for The Bank Engine which was supported by increased income from Trading 212’s referral scheme alongside more of you signing up to TopCashback to take advantage of their great savings account cashback offers (Santander & Cahoot).
As I have momentarily paused the weekly Instagram quizzes where £10 was provided as a prize, my costs have also fallen resulting in a taxable profit for The Bank Engine to a sizeable £470.02. As always, I continue to be exceptionally grateful for your support.
Bank Interest: £110.24
I continued to squirrel away cash in January as I save for a number of large milestones throughout 2026, alongside holding onto my tax savings pot until the very last minute so that I earn interest before paying it across to HMRC. As a result, the amount of interest that I earned was higher again than the previous month.
As much of this interest was earned inside ISAs, with the remainder covered by my personal savings allowance, there will not be any tax due on this amount.
Cashback Sign-up Offers: £75.00
I received the cash in January from TopCashback for offers I started towards the end of last year, being:
Cahoot cashback: £25
Santander Easy Access ISA: £25
Santander Limited Access Saver: £25
These offers are still going, at slightly lower rates, and I have referred to these earlier in this post but do check them out as it’s easy money!
Dividend Income: £61.25
Dividends are a form of profit-share that you receive for owning shares in companies. Through my five-figure investment portfolio, I earn dividends on a regular basis from a handful of the investments held within it, all dividends are re-invested to ensure that I can keep growing my portfolio over time. These are earned inside ISAs and are not taxable.
Cashback: £12.08
I always aim to save money on as much as possible, without worsening my lifestyle, and cashback is the easiest way to do this. In January I earned cashback from two sources:
EverUp - cashback on groceries of 3.5 - 4% every time - £8.45
Zopa - cashback on direct debits - £3.63 (I have only moved a few DDs so far)
Google Rewards: £6.93
Google Rewards is an app that pays you for answering short surveys on a regular basis. These typically are linked to your Google history and therefore I will receive surveys on shops I have been to and asked if I made a purchase, if the store was accessible, etc. or based on Google searches I have made recently.
From the surveys, I made £6.29 in January with an extra £0.64 from receipt photos.
You can also earn from taking photos of receipts, it will try to figure out if you visited a store based on location history and will ask you for a receipt, you will then get paid roughly 10-20p for each receipt.
If you use an Android this can only be redeemed as Google Play credit, but simply set up a subscription to be paid via this (Disney+, Netflix, etc.) or can be paid via PayPal if on iOS but you will obviously earn more if on Android.