I can’t believe it’s my day off and I don’t know what to do with myself. I am supposed to be off tomorrow as well but I’m going in in the morning to do a quick stock take and then jump along to my old shop to pick up my wage slip, so it’s not really a day off. Can’t believe that I’ve been there less than a week and I’m already going in on my days off. I’m working the weekend and not looking forward to it one bit as weekends are supposed to be my time with the boyfriend.

The worst part of being off is the fact that there’s no milk in the house, and I’ve run out of cigarettes, and the weather’s horrendous so I can’t bring myself to walk up to the shops to buy them. It’s times like now that I wish that I could drive legally and had a car! I’m going to look into sitting my Theory test again next month when I get paid (I get paid tomorrow but have too much going out this month to even consider it) and then going for having my full license by New Year, just in time for finishing my MTP so that if I do get offered a mangeress’ job in a shop I can’t knock it back because I can’t get to it. Personally I can’t wait to get my own shop, because at the moment I’m hating doing everything somebody else’s way. There’s so much I want to change in my new shop but don’t feel I can do it - in my old shop I just would have done it because me and the manager got on so well and he knew I wouldn’t do anything stupid.

I’m still feeling really annoyed at moving, but I’m putting on this brave face and getting on with it. I can see myself putting in for a transfer just after New Year if I haven’t already been offered a manager’s job because it’s doing my head in a bit. Yes, it’s great experience and most of the staff are nice but it’s just not… well, my old shop with my mates and me knowing everything inside out! Can you tell I hate change?

I checked out my credit report online last week and it showed that I have an outstanding debt of £22. I couldn’t for the life of me work out where that was (as I’ve paid off all of my debts aside from around £1500 I owe my mum) but this morning I got a letter from Nationwide telling me that I hadn’t used my account in a while and there was an unathorised overdraft of £22 on it. I must have forgotten to cancel a direct debit when I switched accounts and it’s went into an overdraft. Oops. I’ll pay it off tomorrow and close my joint account, using the current account to pay my PayPal money into I think, just to keep them happy that there’s money going into it.

*sigh* I suppose I should get up and get ready to go to the shops, because I’m dying for a cigarette and coffee.

FREE MONEY!!!!, originally uploaded by MyLSD.

£10 a day. Doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but that’s exactly the cash I’m looking to make every single day in October, meaning I should have £310 more in my bank account on November 1st, just in time for Christmas.

But how am I going to do that, I hear you wonder aloud. Simply, I hope.

Of course, there’s paid blogging. I already do that and make around £50 a month from it but that’s only 5 days, what about the rest? Well the internet plays a big part in this really.

eBay - I have two boxes of things to sell on eBay sitting under my bed, mainly clothes and nicknacks which I’m sure will earn me about £60-£100 hopefully.

Survey sites, which I already do and make about £10 a month from but I don’t actually do all the surverys that are sent my way at the moment.

Quidco, which is pretty much free money especially as I’m planning a purchase from one of their sites offering high cash back and they offer silly money just to complete an auto insurance comparison on one of those websites with the annoying adverts.

And then there’s the picking up coins in the street option too.

If you can think of anyother way to ‘make’ free money, please share it with me. Or if anybody else wants to take part in this challenge, let me know.

You can also follow my progress on Twitter

I’m not exactly proud of the fact I’ve run out of money less than two weeks after I got paid. I know exactly how I’ve done it…making a big purchase on the spot and not putting money aside for it. It was worth it though, it was all the things that I needed for my bedroom from Ikea and the paint. So I have a gorgeous bedroom again and no money.

So I’m sitting here with 16 days to go until I get paid again and all I have to my name is £40 in a savings account I can’t touch, £30 in my PayPal account that’s not linked to a bank and £15 worth of stuff to be returned to the shops at the weekend because they don’t fit.

Not a happy situation to be in really, is it? I had no option but to get a loan for the first time in my life. Although since I have a really bad credit history that I’m working on correcting I don’t have a good chance of being approved for a loan over a long period of time so I decided to check out some Pay Day Loans, and ended up going with one for £150 which I’ll pay back automatically on pay day. Plus I’m only paying £25 on top of the £150 loan, and it only took 5 minutes to apply and be approved. The money’s on it’s way to my bank account right now and it’s going to pay for my transport and pay off two bills due to come out my account at the start of next week. When I get paid in a fortnight I think I will have to give the boyfriend £100 to keep a hold for me so that I don’t spend it though…

How is it that I got paid a week ago but I have no money left? I think that after I pay my bus ticket I’ll only have about £40 to last me three weeks! Plus £15 my mum owes me and £30 in my PayPal account.

Grr.. I cannot wait until I’ve paid off all of my debts. It’s really starting to get me down that I have never got any spare cash. I’m going to set up an eBay account and start selling off all this random stuff I found when I was tidying my room. Limited Edition Doctor Who Plate, anyone? Seriously. Where did that come from?

I suppose it’s a good thing that I’m not in my best friend’s situation. He’s got so much stuff to buy for the baby, and baby clothes and things aren’t exactly cheap. His family are helping them out a lot but even still - they’ve both got so much to buy for the little one, I can’t believe how expensive kids are!

Apparently I’m in for a wage rise next month, although going by my bosses it works out at around £35 per pay. Which really isn’t that much, and there’s a good chance that I’ll get less than that because I’m a supervisor and he’s a manager. Hmm, be interesting to find out how much the increase is. I doubt that it will make much difference since it’ll come off in tax and national insurance anyway. I knew I should have bargained for a wage increase when I was moving shops, but I guess I’d have been told to get lost.

Countdown to leaving my shop is 2 and a half weeks and I’m still not looking forward to it. I know that it’s a great opportunity for my career, but I still don’t want to leave my wee shop and all the awesome staff! I suppose I should stop being a spoilt brat about it all and just take this chance and go for it 200%.

I’ve just this minute found out that you’ve gotten your girlfriend pregnant.

I should be very happy for you, when in fact I’d quite like to knock your head off of something very hard, tie your hands behind your back and demand to borrow the TARDIS from The Doctor in order to go back a few months so that you never meet her.

We (me, the boyfriend and friends) have told you since day one that she was out to get everything she could from you. First it was staying in your house 24/7, even when you were at work or with us. Next it was unofficially moving in with you, then getting a key to your house when you wouldn’t even give your friends of at least 10 years one for case of emergency. Then she got kicked out of college for never showing up because hanging on to your every word was more important than her education.

Next came the jokes of how she’d deliberately fall pregnant in order to ‘keep’ you and get money from the government. Yes, even you made these jokes.

You don’t ‘do’ kids. You’ve always, always said that if you actually managed to get a girl pregnant you’d make her get rid of it (you always are a charmer that way). In fact at the moment you’re drinking yourself under the table with the boys, just to forget.

I love you as a friend, I really do. The fact that I don’t find your girlfriend very interesting has nothing to do with the fact that at the moment I think you are the biggest idiot on the planet. Because you knew what her little plan was and yet here we go, you’ve fallen for it hook, line and sinker

I really hope that this is what you want, friend. Because you’ve now got to grow up. No more drinking as much as you can every weekend, getting drunker than the weekend before. All nighters? Yes you’ll still have them but not in the way you still do. And more to the fact, somebody else will rely on you. Yes, you. The person who finds is acceptable to eat 2 days out of date meat and eggs and mix your drink and drugs. The boy who still acts 16 even though you’re 23. In around 9 months there will be a little you on this planet (god help us all), needing you to do everything for them. You can’t even phone your own taxi home most weekends.

Don’t get me wrong, we’ll all be there for you. But I think your an idiot, really I do.

I’m fed up reading about other blogger’s going on holiday or planning holidays, I’m so jealous! In the past few weeks I’ve read about Rhys’s American dream, Han going first class to Florida, Jenn & family hitting the beach, Starlet being attacked by evil seagulls in Wales, to name but a few. Lucky, lucky people - you really are. The last time I was on holiday was in 2003 and that was a weekend in Dublin with the boyfriend. Before that I think the last time I was abroad for a proper 2 weeks in the sun holiday was America when my little brother was 4 - he’s now 15!

There’s only one real place that I want to go in the whole entire world - Las Vegas, baby! I’m been fascinated by the glitz, glamour, lights and gambling of Las Vegas for a very long time which was made a hella lot more intense with by my obsession of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

It’s my dream to stay in either Circus Circus or the Luxor before I’m 30. The boyfriend agrees, he’d love to go to Vegas too. And I kind of have it on a promise that if we ever went to Vegas it’d be acceptable to get married - and that’s never, ever going to happen in Scotland!

As always, the problem with going to Vegas is the money. We’re both terrible at saving money even for nice things like holidays and things. Plus we’d need gambling money so we’d have to stay in one of the many other hotels in las vegas that aren’t as famous or expensive as the Stratosphere or the Four Queens hotel just to fund our fun!

Anybody else been to Vegas? Is it really as magical as it’s made out to be?

I have been doing a lot of thinking about my life recently; where I am, what I want from life etc. Up until now everything has just been this big game to me - I still feel like I’m 16 years old when the truth is that I’m 22. There are so many things that I should be able to do by now but because I don’t take life seriously I’ve never completed things that other people my age have. The only responsibility that I have is work - counting £1000s of pounds daily and opening or closing the shop. Not really impressive, is it?

Other people my age have been able to drive for 5 years, have their own cars and houses - heck some people I went to school with are now parents, married and in some cases, dead (ok, that’s not what I want from life but that’s where we all end up so I suppose it’s inevitable).

I can’t even manage 4 weeks worth of wages, you can guarantee that by week two I’m all out of money, granted half my wages go straight to my mum to pay back my debt to her but that still leaves me with £100 a week to myself, and it goes all too quickly. I might want to grow up and buy a car and have children (oh, and pay for everything else that goes with them..food, clothes,a crib, crib bedding, toys, pram, high chair) but if I can’t even manage to survive a month when all I have to pay is my bus ticket then what chance do I have?

So I’ve set myself a goal, after having a really long hard thing about this. I’ve managed to cut my smoking down to around 15 a day, but I want to get this down to 10 and then 5 and the none. The money that I save on cigarettes is going into my ISA. Well, most of it anyway. That means that when I pass my driving test, which should be within the next 6 months), I’ll have a bulk of money to either pay a deposit on a new car or buy an older one outright. Failing that, it’ll be used for a deposit on a flat. I’ve given up the thought of living with the boyfriend and I’ve worked out that in one years time I’ll have paid off all my debts so any money I have left I can spend on moving out or a car, or both.

I’m hoping to be living on my own again within 18 months - with or without the boyfriend living with me. I actually managed really well when I moved out of my mum’s house before until I lost my job but I have about 95% job security where I am at the moment and the only place I can go is up - and with that comes better wages.

My plan is that if I write about it here then I can’t give up saving and moving towards my goals - that is the idea anyway. I’m sure I’ll stick to it.

I wonder how easy it would be to set up my own commercial real estate website, like a comparison site or something. It’d be interesting to see how much money I could make, in such a high-income area.

Everybody who works in real estate or estate agency area seems to get paid so well, and goddamn I want to be paid better than I currently am.

I absolutely adore live music, the thrill of being in the same room as somebody famous (I’m weird like that), hearing my favourite songs live with hundreds of other fans shouting the lyrics back at the artist and experience new music through support bands that I’ve maybe never heard of before.

I’ve kept a list (and the tickets) of all of the gigs and music festivals that I’ve attended since 2003, i.e. when I began going to gigs with the boyfriend instead of the Smash Hits Tour Party with school friends (cringe).

Taproot

Taproot played the Garage on January 2003 and were supported by Pulse Ultra. It was my first date with my boyfriend, so this gig’s special to me for obvious reasons! It was also the first time I’d been to a ‘real’ gig.

Placebo

April 2003 at the infamous Glasgow Barrowlands. Placebo are probably my most favorite band in the world and this was the first time that I saw them live. They were supported by The Faint who I weren’t too keen on. Brain Molko was as sexy as ever but they didn’t play Nancy Boy - very disappointing!

Marilyn Manson

The worst gig of my entire life! Manson and co played the Braehead Arena in June 2003. Well those of the band who hadn’t fallen out with each other and decided to do a disappearing act! After a forgetful warmup by Queen Andreena and hearing the full Rammstein - Mutter album twice through MM finally graced the stage. What a shame the sound in the Braehead arena is rubbish, it ruined the night!

Muse

At the all mighty SECC in November 2003. Again, this was the first time I went to see Muse live and they didn’t disappoint me! They were supported by Elbow who made me want to fall asleep. I don’t have much luck with support bands, I usually hate them!

Franz Ferdinand

Their amazing homecoming gig at the Glasgow QMU, broadcast live on Radio 1 in April 2004. For once I enjoyed to two support bands - Sons And Daughters and The Fiery Furnaces. I was right at the barrier for the entire gig but the venue’s that small I could have been upstairs and still be as close to the boys as I was at the front. I think I may have fallen in love with Alex Kapranos during this gig.

Download Festival / Gig On The Green

June 2004. Complete waste of money. Saw Machine Head, Iggy and the Stooges and The Distillers. We left before Lost Prophets and Linkin Park played. Funnily enough I don’t think Download’s been back in Glasgow since…

T In The Park

My first year at the awesome T was July 2004. Even though we were only there for the day I managed to cram in Black Eyed Peas, Keane, Mylo, Basement Jaxx, Faithless, The Darkness, Felix da Housecat, Tiefchwarz and Muse for the headline act. This day started my obsession with TITP.

Mauro Picotto

Not strictly a gig since he’s a DJ, but this night out at The Arches was a good one - little did I know that I knew so many of his songs already!

Franz Ferdinand

Seen my boys for the second time in December 2004, this time at the SECC. They were supported by the Kaiser Chiefs (yay!) and the Fire Engines, who were weird beyond belief. It’s such a shame that there were so many idiotic neds / chavs there ruining it all - just because they like ‘Take Me Out’ and spent the rest of the gig booing and getting drunk on watered down beer. Brilliant.

Electric Six

At the Barrowlands in Febuary 2005. Awesome gig, I loved it more than I ever thought that I would. Dick Valentine is a true showman, if not completly crazy!

Nine Inch Nails

July 05. The most amazing gig, ever. Trent was great live, didn’t really interact with the crowd although the crowd were singing back to him a lot, even though he was singing at a different time. Hilight of the night was either Hurt, Head Like a Hole or The Hand That Feeds. Supported by Saul Williams, who I didn’t enjoy but each to their own…

T In The Park

July 05. The day after NIN we headed to T In The Park for a weekend camping. Excellent weekend all in, saw Mylo, The Prodigy, Haysed Dixie, The Corel, The Killers, Keane, Joss Stone, Audioslave, Queens of the Stone Age, Snoop Dogg, New Order, The Streets, Jimmy Eat World, Ada, Butch Cassidy Sound System and Drive By Arguement.

T In The Park

T In The Park 2006, crammed in the following bands at some point in the weekend, Placebo, The Who, Hard-Fi, James Holden, 2 Many DJ’s, The Zutons, Lily Allen, My Robot Friend, Magic Numbers, Franz Ferdinand

T In The Park

Again, away for weekend camping in 2007 despite the horrendous mud situation! Completly missed the Friday night (yeah, thanks CityLink I wanted to spend 14 hours on a bus for a journey that should take 2) but managed to see The Fratellis, Just Jack, The Killers, My Chemical Romance, Goo Goo Dolls, Scissor Sisters, Queens Of The Stoneage, Jet.. and spent the rest of the time in the PKR fun casino!