Comp It Up

As always Louise over at My Journey To Eliminate Debt has once again inspired me. My last post was a whinging moaning post, much too easy to write and boring to read. So spend half an hour reading other PF blogs and I'm back up to speed.

The purpose of this post is to reveal a habit of mine which is actually healthy ! For the last 15 years, on and off, I've been comping. Mr Marbles has been comping a little longer.

Comping - what is this ? The entering of competitions. Be it a cereal box, product flash, instore leaflet, newspaper giveaway and dare I say it the telephone/TV competitions used to be the main source of our entries - last century ! However the wonders of the WWW has obviously changed the promotional activities of many a multi million pound company.

You read about people that actually make a living from comping, with toasters, TV's, holidays etc arriving by the day. We are far from that sort of success.

One of our first 'big' wins was a flight in Concorde over the British Isles coupled with a weekend at the Savoy and major theatre tickets (can't remember the show - but Sean Connery was sat two seats away from me). This was, obviously way back in the 90's. Never made it on to Concorde - I was pregnant and although I have no fear of flying, at that point I did. What a missed opportunity...did the Savoy weekend though. We won this through a major daily newspaper. Also won the aforementioned tumble dryer - instore leaflet at Macros, and way back in 2002 a superb TV. Again a major daily newspaper.

Coupled with quite a few DVD's, games, cuddly toys, hampers, signed one offs etc over the years it makes for a profitable hobby. We have a rule, don't want or need the prize, don't go for it.

There is of course a downside. Junk mail, sales calls and spam. Obviously there are ways to deal with each of these.

As the silly season steps up a gear from the beginning of next month many sites start Advent Calender competitions, win a prizes each day. If you're aleady doing daily cashback clicks add an extra 10 - 15 minutes a day for these . Most will be found on Loquax for UK competitions. It's well worth signing up to Loquax, great forum and loads of advice.

Going to add a competitions element to my blog, and post here, because it is the season, goodwill and all that etc.

So today :
Channel 4 are offering a 42" flat screen Samsung TV worth £1,000, an Xbox 360 console and a copy of the game Project Gotham Racing 4. It closes tomorrow at 10.00am. Click here to view competition.


Will post advent competitions as soon as I find them.

My friends have said to me in the past, 'I never win anything.' Well you've got to be in it to win it.