Good morning/good afternoon/good evening (please delete as appropriate!). I hope that you all had an amazing August and managed to make the most of the recent Bank Holiday weekend. I’m repeating myself, but I can’t believe how quickly the year is going and that it’s September today. Does anyone else associate September with the end of the summer holidays and the start of a new academic year? I’m 42, but I still feel like September gives me the opportunity to make a bit of a fresh start.

I’ve not posted since I shared my July personal challenge update at the beginning of August. Apologies for the silence and for the lack of blog posts and thrilling content. After reading and reflecting on a very sensible comment on my previous post, I decided to award myself a month off from blogging. The break has worked as I’m now feeling refreshed, and my blogging MOJO has returned.

If you read the three personal challenge posts I published at the beginning of the year, you’ll be aware that I set myself some money-saving challenges for 2021.

[Source]

If you haven’t read these posts, please do check them out; Challenge 1 | Challenge 2 | Challenge 3

Challenge 1: Will I be able to get through the year without buying any new clothes and shoes?

Although, I failed this challenge in style back in May, I decided to continue to share monthly updates. I’ve always tried to be open and honest on this blog, and I have a theory that if I continue with the monthly updates, I’m more likely to avoid purchasing new clothes and shoes.

I’m a little ashamed to report that I purchased some jeans on eBay. Since I started working from home, when I haven’t been wearing activewear, I’ve worn jeans. Last month, I managed to quite literally wear out one of my favourite pairs of jeans. The jeans couldn’t be repaired, so I washed them and put them in the nearest textile recycling bank. As a result, when I spotted a brand new pair of my favourite jeans in my size on sale on eBay, I snapped them up.

Challenge 2: Can this shopaholic get through the year without entering any races and without buying any more running clothes?

This is going to sound slightly weird but being injured and unable to run has resulted in my race related #FOMO more or less completely disappearing. I think having two virtual marathons next month is also helping to keep the race related #FOMO away! I’m aiming to walk the 26.2 miles and the training is starting to take up quite a lot of my time.

Volunteering at parkrun has also helped to reduce the race related #FOMO. I managed to volunteer as a tail walker at my local parkrun in Sutton Park every Saturday in August. I love this photo from last Saturday so much I decided to include it in this post.

[Photo: Daniel Henry]

I have a feeling that my knee injury means that I’ll be volunteering for a while and that’s absolutely fine as I know that parkrun will be an option when I’m fit enough to run 5k.

For some reason, I’ve always found the second aspect of this challenge more difficult. I managed to stay away from Lululemon et al as I still have several items of running gear to test out and review. Although my knee injury is preventing me from running, I’m planning on wearing and trying out everything I was sent to review during my longer training walks. After spending the majority of my 12 mile walk on Monday feeling hungry, I purchased a selection of GU energy gels. I hope you agree that energy gels don’t really count!

Challenge 3: Can I make £2021 in 2021 through a selection of side hustles and other sources of income such as cashback websites?

And finally, how much money did I manage to make through my various side hustles and other sources of income during August? Was August as successful as July? As in previous months, I’ve listed each side-hustle and source of income separately.

Selected side hustles

• Prolific Academic surveys – £20.97
• eBay sales – £0.00
• Facebook Marketplace sales – £0.00
• Sponsored blog posts – £0.00

 Other sources of income

• Overtime at work – £0.00
• Share dividends – £0.00
• Interest from bank accounts – £59.75
• TopCashback cashback – £6.25
• Vouchers from points and gift cards – £12.50
• Competition wins – £0.00
• Freebies – £0.00
• Roadkill finds – £0.08
• Random – £5.20

August total: £104.65

Rolling 2021 total: £2453.35

August was not as successful as the previous seven months, but that’s absolutely fine. After I met my target of £2021 midway through July, I decided to set myself a new, more challenging target. I’m not going to share the updated target with you just yet as I don’t want to set myself to fail just yet.

Although my original aim was to sell 15 items on Facebook, I was finding selling online a bit of a chore and at times quite stressful. As a result, I decided to have a break from selling my unwanted running gear on Facebook. Prolific Academic was less prolific than in previous months, I’m partly blaming the lack of studies on the time of year and on this. Despite this, Prolific Academic added £20.97 to my August total.

As for my other sources of income, my share dividends added a big fat zero English pounds to my August total. I’ve no idea why. This made me realise how lucky I am to be a shareholder, and how much I would have struggled to achieve my £2021 target without my share dividends. I’m not looking forward to the day I sell my shares. One of my regular saver building accounts matured at the end of July, the interest from this and my other bank accounts contributed £59.75 to my August total. I cashed out £6.25 from my TopCashback account and redeemed some of my Nectar and Lego VIP points and saved £12.50.

And finally, what about the ‘random’ category. I’m yet to buy myself a car, so I continued with my Ocado food deliveries. This meant that I was able to return £5.20 worth of carrier bags.

Now that I’ve reviewed August, it’s time for me to look ahead to September. I’m hoping that Prolific Academic becomes slightly more prolific and have set myself a target of completing at least 20 studies in September. My motivation has returned, so I’m aiming to sell 15 items on Facebook, however, if I don’t meet this target, I won’t be too disappointed. It took me a while, but I’ve finally accepted that as my other sources of income are completely out of my control, there’s no point getting upset if these don’t contribute much to my September total.

And finally, I hope that you enjoyed reading this quick update as much as I enjoyed writing it 🙂

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