Quickest way to make £6k

[TammyTwoSwanson]

Hi!
DH and I are currently renting, and we want to buy our own house asap. Our letting agents are awful and the already extortionate rent is going up soon! We've saved up part of a deposit, but need another £6k to buy to cover fees etc.

Dh works full time, and I'm a full time (mature) student. I know that me getting a full time job is probably a pretty quick way to make up the shortfall, but I couldn't until at least January because of my uni work and the kids.

We don't have any family we can pack up and move in with to save rent, and we don't have £6k worth of stuff to sell!

So does anyone have any genius and magic ways I can make six grand in my spare time? Or is this wishful thinking?

Can you look into a co-ownership scheme in ur area? That way u won't need to come up with the full deposit?

I'm a full time student too and also work
You can pick up odd hours here and there? Nannying etc. Uni breaks are so long! What do you do during semester breaks and holidays..?

@Cailleachian

Dont put it into shares if you need the money in under a year. Those are long term investments and you could end up badly burnt.

This. People recommending Investments are either extremely naive or totally irresponsible. Yes you could make money, but you could also lose a good chunk of it.

If either of you are under 40 do you have (cash!) Lifetime ISAs? That will give you a little extra if used as part of a house deposit.

I didn't realise some courses finished in January, I thought you might be about to enter a new academic year that would run until next May at least. So probably focus on your studies and getting a good job early next year. Then you should have a huge boost to your household income and be ready to buy very soon afterwards.

Can you borrow money for fees etc from a relative and pay it back when you are working?

You should be in a much better position once you get a job and also if a mortgage ends up being cheaper than renting as it often is.

If you graduate in January, you should be looking for work now. Go to university career support services to get help with cv and cover letter writing. They’ll also help with recruitment if they are good, including helping you to find positions and preparing you for interview and assessment processes (eg aptitude tests). Your £9k a year isn’t just for the teaching - there’s a host of services provided to help you move forward in life. (source: am senior lecturer at a good student-focused university)

Regards to match betting, the searches on your credit file are soft so only visible to you not to anyone else looking at your credit history. I successfully match better for 18 months or so until offers got a bit thin on the ground and made several thousand. Problem I would foresee is lots of transactions on your bank statement to and fro betting sites. You might be able to run a basic account separately for this but still a risk.

Are you eligible to open a help to save account with .gov?

Isn't matched betting quite time consuming to make significant money? Also a bit of a steep learning curve, which the OP probably doesn't have time and headspace for right now?

Find a job as a market researcher. Depending on the job you can often get £20-30 per interview and can be done in your own time.

We have found domestic cleaners in very short supply at the moment, around here you can basically name your hours to suit you and charge £12.50 an hour. We're in a normal, small Scottish town and there is huge undersupply.

Just wait. It’s only a few months. If you’re absolutely sure you can’t work a few hours a week around your kids then I don’t see the point scraping a few quid together with any of these harebrained schemes.

Put everything into your studies and as someone else has said, start looking for graduate jobs now.

The truth is, most couples with children can’t raise a deposit on one wage.

It’s a sad state when one of the easiest ways to make money fast could be something like onlyfans or sex industry related but that’s probably the quickest way to make 6k, not that I’m advocating doing that!!
The only other way is investing…..Unless you have savings you can afford to aggressively invest but at the risk of losing it all I wouldnt advise that.

Second job or overtime. Selling things you don’t need anymore. Car boot sales. Gumtree etc. Got any old phones in draws. Sell them.

Also came to say lifetime ISAs if you’re under 40 and first time buyers. You get 25% bonus but it takes 2 months to go in. So you could each pay in 4K a year and it turns into 5k. This has massively helped us. We are getting a 95% mortgage and saving our fees as we go due to the urgency of the situation. Same boat as you OP. Good luck!

Another quick way of making a couple of hundred quid or so is to use Quidco, particularly when your utilities renew - I switch car recovery and broadband each year/end of contract and can get about £50-£100 each time. Car insurance and house insurance too, but probably only about £25-£50 for each of them. It’s a little bit of work, but well worth it.

Do you honestly have no time to take on extra work? I did a full time MA and still worked 3-4 days/week around lectures. Started as a temp and was kept on. Also did a PGCE as a single parent and was in school every day 7-5 with that for some periods. Pulled a few all nighters and got through. Not ideal but where there’s a will and all that…

If as you say youngest dc is disabled are you getting all the benefits you and them are entitled to could be worth checking.

If you do matched betting have a seperate current account and card as it is transaction heavy constantly moving money. Shouldn't affect your credit score but if you have to produce 3 months of bank statements having multiple bookmaker deposits each day might cause concern!

I would say matched betting could make £1k fairly quickly, after that it's more tick over or time dependent. This is what I recommend to mates at work who aren't overly interested but obviously would like some free money. Do the simple stuff for 2-3 months, take the easy pickings and sign up offers.

I'd also recommend matched betting. I made around £17,000 several years ago. I had a wholly separate bank account and it had no impact on my credit score. Not sure what the offers are like now - some bookies seem less generous and it may be harder to make as much money but £6k seems doable. Have a look at OddsMonkey and Team Profit.

Ironing in the evenings

@Piffpaffpoff

I’ve done matched betting with all the bookies and my credit score is still ‘excellent’ (I had to look into it for the first time ever this week). If you go onto one of the matched betting Facebook groups there’s usually a thread giving advice about mortgage applications you can read.

It isnt just that- the payments to bookmakers will show on your statements as will the money going out. 2 things you donate want- payday loans and bookmakers.

Ironing 😂😂😂

Jesus. Yeah, do 6 grands worth of ironing in a month or two. Ffs, only on MN

@AlvinSimonTheo

Ironing 😂😂😂

Jesus. Yeah, do 6 grands worth of ironing in a month or two. Ffs, only on MN

My locally cleaner is £1.50 to wash, iron and hang a shirt on a hanger 4000 shirts later.......

Any place doing clinical trials near you OP as some pay quite good money?

@Tooembarrassingtomention I can see why that might look bad! There was definitely a lot of chat on the forums about using different bank accounts and other options to negate the impact on searches but I didn’t pay much attention as it’s not really a concern for me right now. I’ve stopped now as I got ‘gubbed’ by most of the bookies but I definitely made a good few thousand quite easily.

Can you buy something a bit cheaper so you won't need so much deposit?

Focus on getting the best possible job lined up for yourself in January. There is no way to make 6k in a month or two with no free time that isn’t hugely risky if you don’t have an obvious item to sell.