After all the activities during Jump Start January I noticed that some things needed to be reprised and built upon, and also that quite a lot had been missed out and needed some attention, so I’ve decided to have four more Jump Start weeks during the month of February. Here they are:

1. Fun/happy stuff week (joy! treats!) 2 – 8 Feb

2. Friends (social on a budget) 9 – 15 Feb

3. Freelancing (projects! troubleshooting!) 16 – 22 Feb

4. Fitness (like Free Fitness February last year, but more bijou and compact) 23 – 29 Feb

The more eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that this will be F-F-F-F-February, which is perfect because I’ve just seen the late night weather forecast and it’s going to be farkin’ freezing. If you’d like to join in or just see what the Dickens I’m getting up to, the Twitter hashtag will be #4FFeb.

And it’s also Day 1 of Week 1 – today I’ve been reviewing Instructions for Happiness… by Susie Pearl to get in the right mood and challenge the old grey matter. I’ll post that tomorrow, along with the plan for the rest of the week.

What are your plans for February?

Selling

I sold a few unwanted DVDs to MusicMagpie and made £5.22, and it also helped with my decluttering efforts around the house. On top of this, I made £132.21 profit after fees and tax by selling more clutter and a couple of unwanted Christmas gifts on eBay. I did the eBay photos and listings fairly quickly on the same day in one short sharp shock, and think I’ll do the same this February too, otherwise it’s a bit too time consuming.

Website

As previously mentioned, I’ve started using Skimlinks again, but am not considering actively joining any affiliate schemes as I’m worried that might compromise editorial credibility. It cleared £12.63 this month, which I’m probably going to end up putting towards site running costs.

Cashback

My cashback of £17.36 all came from TopCashBack, and I’m really pleased. It’s money for nothing!

Surveys

The survey payout was a resoundingly huge zero. Turns out that surveys don’t tend to pay very much, some take up to a month to be counted, and most sites have high payout thresholds for the amount you’re likely to earn. In addition to this it can take up to three weeks for payments/vouchers to be made to you – including instant ones like PayPal. I’ve allegedly got two payouts coming, £3 PayPal and £15 Amazon Vouchers, but am not holding my breath.

Of all of these ‘earners’ I like the surveys the least – they often expire before you can get to them to fill them in, and I’m not giving up work hours to do them since the opportunity-cost is so bad. However, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that one or two focus groups turn up over the next few months, as these can pay you some quite generous ‘expenses’. In the meantime, I’m not recommending a single survey company unless I’ve received a payout from them. Some look legit, but one or two might be a bit fly by night. We’ll see.

If you want to keep up with the tally, it’s in the Features section of the site.

Know any nice little earners yourself?

• Free £5 credit at the rather good new Card Town – this is more than enough to get you a quality personalised Valentine’s card including P&P so it’s well worth doing.
• Do this quick survey for Royal Mail and they’ll give you 12 standard and 4 large letter 1st class stamps as a thank you.
• 50ml sample of Vaseline Essential Moisture body lotion via Boots.
• Two toothpaste freebies: Sensodyne and Oral-B Pro-Expert.

Have you seen any great freebies of your own? Please share…

My original plan was to make jam roly poly, but this is traditionally suet based and I don’t eat suet. It’s also traditionally steamed in a large pan for up to two hours, and I figured most modern households probably wouldn’t have a big enough pan plus the assorted steaming cloths and other related paraphernalia required. The steaming time is on top of the other prep time and time is at a premium in most households, plus there’s the gas/electricity bill to think of. The final kicker was the waste equation: will kids seriously eat this stuff? If not, however cheap the ingredients, it’s not a good use of funds.

In the end I decided to adapt a budget friendly recipe that was still roll-y and also easier on the fuel costs, suet-free, more acceptable to a wider range of palates, and could be made without fancy equipment. Before I got started, I did a taste test of the M Savers ingredients that Morrisons sent over. I tried:

• Strawberry jam, 35p: this was a standard fruit jam made with 35g of fruit per 100g. It’s smooth, which makes it good for cake fillings, and the natural taste of the strawberries comes through strongly. Would I buy it again? Probably not, as it’s made with glucose-fructose syrup.
• UHT skimmed milk, 49p: this did not have the usual horrible strong UHT taste, and I was very impressed indeed. Would I buy it again? Definitely.
• Tinned custard, 18p: this is the sort of custard that can be made up from custard powder, but with the convenience of being ready made. The flavour seems to have a fair bit of caramel in it, and it made me think of crème brulee. I like crème brulee, so I’d perhaps buy it again.
• Self-raising flour, 52p: This performed as well as any standard SR flour, but at a fraction of the cost. I’d definitely stock up on this product.

On to the recipe, which is a roulade…

 Ingredients

• 3 medium free range eggs
• 85g caster sugar, plus extra spoonful for rolling
• 2 drops vanilla extract (optional)
• 85g self-raising flour, well sifted
• 100g strawberry jam
• 425g canned peaches in juice, well drained & chopped into tiny pieces
• Custard to serve (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C, and line a standard sized baking tray with non-stick baking parchment.

2. Whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla until very light and fluffy. An electric whisk saves time, but a hand held one is fine too.

3. Fold in the flour thoroughly using a metal spoon so you don’t knock too much of the air out, then pour onto the baking tray, smoothing the mixture evenly into the corners.

4. Bake for 12 – 15 minutes, until light golden in colour and springy to the touch, then allow to cool slightly for 2 or 3 minutes.

5. Prepare a second piece of baking parchment by laying it flat on a work surface and sprinkling with a little caster sugar (for a more fancy version use a tiny bit of icing sugar instead).

6. Gently remove the cake from the baking tray, and place upside down onto the sugared parchment. Carefully remove the first piece of paper from the underside of the cake and discard it.

7. Roll the warm cake up into a roll (short side to short side) inside the second piece of parchment, making sure the first edge of the roll is tightly curled under when you start rolling. Leave to cool completely.

8. Once cooled, unroll the cake and spread evenly and gently with strawberry jam. Top with small pieces of chopped peach, taking care to leave some space free at the end of the roll so it seals properly.

9. Roll the filled cake back up, placing the end seam underneath it to keep it closed. Warm gently in a low oven and serve with custard. Makes 8 to 10 slices.

This recipe uses about 18p of ingredients per serving, including custard, if you use the msavers products. It’s quite warming and filling so it’s a nice treat during cold weather, and it’s also a sneaky way to get certain people to eat more fruit.

If you’ve made a baked main course, you can warm this dessert using the residual heat of the oven instead of switching it on again. If peaches aren’t popular in your household you can also try thinly sliced fresh banana. In the summer this roulade can also be served cold, with a flavoured yoghurt or a little whipped cream spread over the top of the fruit before the cake is rolled up.

Full disclosure: ingredients and baking tools supplied by Morrisons. No money has changed hands, and this is not a sponsored post. All opinions, observations and comments are my own. Recipe idea my own.

Firstly, my efforts to earn a little extra money seem to have got off to a good start, so I’m definitely going ahead and carrying on with this experiment for the rest of the year. You can keep track of the running totals in the Features area of the site on the Extra, Extra 2012 page, and if I see any new nice little earners and sidelines then I’ll be sure to let you know all about them.

I’ve enjoyed the Jump Start format so much that I’ll be doing a few more Jump Start weeks throughout the year. I loved the more fun Jump Start activities the most, so there will be more of those and maybe a few less chores (although there’s a time and a place for that too). The work-life balance exercise I tried last week gave me some ideas for new topics as well.

The end of February is going to be a particularly newsworthy time for personal finance in the UK this year – more about that on another occasion – so I will probably be organising another Tenner Week in early March linked with this.

If there’s anything you’ve especially enjoyed and would like to see more of then please let me know.

Tenner Week, and Extra, extra 2012 names and concepts copyright Penny Golightly and www.pennygolightly.com

Firstly, I’ve learned that I have massive resistance to New Year resolutions: they go on forever, each one needs a whole set of habits making and time blocks carved out, and generally it’s quite overwhelming. Having a theme that lasts for just one week is much, much easier. It’s only a week, and if you don’t like it much then it’s over soon enough.

Doing a different type of task each day within that theme also prevents monotony/repetition, another aspect that puts me off resolutions. I particularly liked having something new to try each day during Tenner Week, so I could schedule in some fun stuff along with the chores. The next Tenner Week I do will have daily tasks in it, definitely.

Resolutions often run along the lines of ‘sort out my finances for good’ but again that’s daunting to the point of being terrifying. It’s been great to pick a mixture of priority tasks and a few quick wins, and during personal finance week I easily got everything done that needed to be done.

Starting just the one manageable habit – keeping a spending diary – is going to help me do my business expenses much more easily, so setting this habit up has quite obvious positive results. Otherwise, I’m glad I didn’t set up too many ongoing tasks, as once again I might have felt overwhelmed.

The mix of tasks is important. Some need to be speedy, especially best fitted into days when you know you’re going to be busy. One big lesson I’ve learned is to factor in travel times. I’ve also found out that it’s best to keep tasks that go on longer than one hour to the weekends only, when I have more free time.

Having several short tasks per week also makes it possible to pack everything into one day (or even a half day). This is ideal for me because it allows a bit of a catch-up if I get behind on anything. If I couldn’t make up the time then I might ‘fall off the wagon’ or start thinking that the whole thing was ruined so I might as well stop making an effort. Not so with a catch-up. It’s ideal if you work irregular hours, have lots of other commitments, have to travel a lot for work, or even sabotage yourself with unhelpful organisational/timekeeping behaviour. I think the flexibility to choose whether do one thing per day or to bundle the tasks is essential.

There was also a real feeling of energy and of motivation which didn’t wane half-way though the month, unlike the usual pattern with traditional resolutions. Getting a few less-than-pleasant tasks out of the way was quite empowering, and I was frequently left with a feeling of ‘that wasn’t so bad – and glad I’m not putting it off any more’.

Jump Start may not ‘fix everything’ or perfect everything within a particular topic area during a seven-day period, but it certainly helps you to get a lot done. It’s enough time to make significant inroads to something, and it makes you feel like you’ve truly achieved your short term goals and/or got a worrying situation under control. It also serves to direct your attention towards other medium- and long-term goals.

Next January will be another Jump Start, that’s for sure. The month has also given me lots of other ideas for things to continue with, but I’ll leave that until tomorrow.

If you’ve been doing your own Jump Start January, did you notice anything else I might have missed out? Please leave a comment if you have.

Personal Finance Week: I went mostly for quick wins during this week, tailored to the current state of my own finances. The whole week was a positive experience, and made me chip away at things I’d been putting off. The seven-day plan pretty much sorted out my finances to date. While it wasn’t a leisure experience at any point, I did feel I was doing something worthwhile every day and at the end of the week there was a genuine sense of achievement. I know exactly where I stand, I’ve kept up my spending diary and can email it to myself for backup, waste has been trimmed, and I realise that staying on top of my business records is very straightforward if I just plod along with them and keep them updated little and often. I’ll continue with my spending diary and my extra earnings efforts for Extra, Extra 2012 for the rest of the year.

Declutter Week: Short, sharp declutters made sorting out the house much less daunting, and less of a big chore. It also allowed me time to think about practical arrangements and even ergonomics, as well as giving me the chance to do some targeted deep cleans. It was more expensive to complete than Personal Finance Week, but it turned up a number of  items to sell on eBay so on the cash level it actually paid for itself several times over. I’m aware that there are some very big declutters still ahead of me where most of the mess was left by other people, so at some point soonish I’m going to have to tackle the shed and the attic – it still feels overwhelming to think about, and maybe I’ll try doing an hour a day on a timer for these tasks. Smaller declutters still to do include my jumper drawer and wardrobe, the massive cupboard under the sink, plus the shelves in the office – more relevant to daily life than the shed or the attic.

Tenner Week: This went pretty well, with £1.88 left over at the end. I didn’t call in any favours from people who owed me drinks or dinner this time, but still managed to have a very nice dinner and evening out for £5 which was a pleasant surprise. The hardest bit was cutting back on fancy coffees, along with spending more evenings at home than usual, but it was very easy to stay entertained without loads of TV and we ate good, tasty dinners. It’s easier to think clearly, make plans and get things done when the telly’s off, regardless of how much I’d like to kid myself. Evening classes were a good way to spend the time, absorbing and no extra expenditure on the night. I enjoyed the pampering night lots too, soooo relaxing, and the week is certainly not supposed to be about having a miserable time or beating yourself up.

Healthy Week: This week contained the one day I missed a planned activity, probably because I hadn’t figured in travel times and had therefore put two three-hour tasks down for consecutive days at a time when I was busy with work and other commitments. Well, you live and learn. Apart from that, the week had lots of variety in it, and included more than just fitness: relaxation, sleep,  healthy food and work-life balance were all important components of the whole picture of wellbeing. In particular, the work-life balance exercise completely threw me – turns out my health is pretty good in real terms, and while it could do with a little fine-tuning, there are other areas of my life that would benefit from more attention first. I’m still mulling it over…

Did you try any of these Jump Start weeks yourself? What were the best bits? What was tough?

It’s going to be a short week, so here’s the gist of it:

• Day 1: A quick look back at each week in turn
• Day 2: The most important things I’ve learned this month
• Day 3: Where next for Jump Start?

Have you tried any of the Jump Start weeks for yourself? Let me know how you got on, and which one was your favourite.

There are various ‘wheel of life’ diagrams, pie charts, mind maps etc to choose from, but for today I’m keeping it as uncomplicated as possible. I tried working it out with a couple of different iPhone apps but frankly they were a waste of time, so I’m going with a fairly fast three step process instead.

1. Pick between 4 and 10 important areas of your life.

For me at the moment I’m looking at career, money, home life, social life, health/wellbeing, learning, creative, and leisure/fun/hobbies. Other people might be more interested right now in family life, spirituality, environment, personal development, adventure – it varies according to your life stage, personality, values and so on. You don’t need to draw a pie chart or make a decision tree or anything remotely complicated here, and don’t worry too much if some areas overlap onto each other a bit.

2. Look at how happy you are with each life area.

Count your blessings, look for aspects that you want to improve, and give each area a rough mark out of 10. For example, with health I have no illnesses or obvious danger signs of such, visit the dentist regularly, don’t feel unpleasantly stressed, don’t smoke, don’t drink more than the recommended amount of alcohol, eat healthily most of the time and am not overweight. However, some illnesses run in my family and I’ve never made the effort to get screened, my level of fitness feels low, I’m overdue for an eye test, I rarely take time out to completely relax, and I often don’t get enough sleep.  On balance, I’m giving this aspect of my life seven out of ten as there is some room for improvement.

3. Look at how you currently divide time/resources between areas.

… and think about how you might gently change this to get it closer in line with your priorities. At this stage, just think about it briefly and maybe make a few notes, less than one side of A4 paper. You don’t need to head straight out and shake your entire life up all in one go: look for small regular changes you can make, tweaks, short one-off tasks you could undertake in the next few days, and so on. The marks out of ten for your different life areas should serve to help you to prioritise some changes before others.

For example, with health, this is not my most urgent area for action. However, next week I’m finally going to make that appointment to have my cholesterol levels checked, and schedule in an extra hour of aerobic exercise. Looking through my whole list, I can already see plenty of things that would lend themselves to one-off Jump Start activities.

How would you divide up your own priority areas? 

I’d forgotten how relaxing it is – it’s the sort of stuff most gym bunnies should do more of at the end of a workout, and you should always go at a slow pace. Really rather nice.

In the end I used a mixture of gym stretches and yoga poses, including a somewhat giddy backbend to finish off with. Am pleased to report that I can still touch my toes without crying with pain, although I clearly should be working on flexibility more often.

Forgot to stretch out the gluteals, comedy mileage there for sure, but managed all the other major muscle groups, holding each pose for at least one minute.

Result: My buns aren’t impressed, but the rest of me feels pretty good and it’s a great way to unwind and get ready for the weekend.