Planning Part 3: All Work and No Play makes Students Rich Enough to Go Away
Summer 2001
There's no getting away from it. To do some serious travelling,
you will need money, and as much as you can get your hands on.
Seeing as customs officials were cracking down, we had to close
down our secret, smelly, moon cheese farming and exporting
business.
But, very little can
beat the money earned from hard, honest work. I had already been
mourning the loss of my Saturdays since I started my weekend job
at Marks and Spencer. But the ultimate sacrifice was on the
cards...to get the essential money, we needed to sacrifice our
summer!
I worked countless
hours at Marks and Spencer in Fareham, and luckily, I really
enjoyed it. I think that really helps, if you enjoy your job,
its much easier to get up at 6:30 on a cold, rainy morning and
prepare for the long cycle ride with the icy wind blowing
against you no matter what direction you face.
The four of us
worked as many hours as we could through the summer in order to
bolster our cash reserves. The only things that kept us
sane were (1) the fact that the English summer consisted of 4
1/2 sunny days and lots of rain, so we didn't miss much; and (2)
our gap year pretty much guaranteed us a year long summer of
real, hot, tropical weather!
Natalie worked the hardest,
she showed it is possible to work two jobs at the same time,
averaging 60 hours a week, and still survive... just... by
becoming addicted to coffee... and turning a strange shade of
green (just kidding Nat!)
Apart from working, I also
tried out all sorts of other ways of raising money, (all legal
of course!).
I searched through all my
stuff, CDs, videos, clothes, books and magazines and put them
all on the on-line auction sites. Its amazing what you
can sell, someone paid good money for my old Spice Girls video!
The auction sites are much better than conventional car boot
sales. You don't have to get up at the same time as the Milkman
and sit in a freezing cold field all day. Also 1000s of people
can see what you are selling. Much better than the 3 grannies, 2
guys in faded heavy metal T-shirts and 1 shifty looking fellow
you get at your average car boot sale.
Although I didn't make much
money per item, it all starts to add up and I've made about £300
from Yahoo! Auctions and E-Bay!
I also made
a bunch of 'Bay House 6th Form 2001' T-shirts and tried to
sell them to my fellow students. I charged a little over the
cost price and hoped to make about £100. However, most of the
stingey students didn't want to buy one, so I ended up not
making any money, but I didn't loose any, so that's ok.
This is just a taste of the
schemes I actually carried out. I thought of many more, but
being too busy (my mum says too lazy), I didn't get round to
actually doing them. Click
here to find out more about our budget.
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