Just got really excited as I received an email with the subject line - "Daily Mail Euro Prize Giveaway - Winner".

With it being a large daily newspaper I anticipated opening the email to see I'd won 500 euros or similar. How disappointing.

Apparently I've "won" a prepaid MasterCard® loaded with 5 Euros. About £3, and no doubt there will be some sort of catch that it can't be withdrawn!

Not sure whether to claim my "prize" as I am not intending to go overseas in the near future and I don't want to end up getting caught out with the small print and find I end up out of pocket! That would be just my luck.

In any case I already have a prepaid credit card which I'm happy with so, on reflection, I'll give it a miss. It's not being added to my list of prize wins either. Thanks, but no thanks.

Fingers crossed for some better news next week on the competition front. We live in hope.

A holiday would improve my future. I was planning a big one in December for my 40th but that is pretty much on ice now due to financial constraints.

For those that want to get some winter sun my parents apartment in Spain is available to rent for only £25 per night (plus £30 laundry charge).

It sleeps up to 6 so if you had a week there it would cost you £205 total, less than £35 per person! My parents recently got flights over there for only £10 each INCLUDING taxes so it would make for a nice cheap holiday.

I've been putting the website together at www.spanishgolfapartment.co.uk and on there it tells you a bit more about the local area, beaches, eating out, days out and the golf too.

The apartment itself is on Las Ramblas golf course with swimming pools, clubhouse and other facilities. Most people who have gone over so far have been non-golfers so it is suitable for everyone.

Give it a read and if you're not interested yourself pass the website address onto someone else for a look. We may be running a comp soon for a weeks free accommodation so keep in touch.

Just arrived this morning, a DVD of "The Young Victoria" courtesy of Compton and Woodhouse. This has been added to my list of competition wins in 2009.

Not sure it's going to be my sort of thing but I will give it a look and  could be enjoyable.

My last comp win, Max Manus, was a pretty decent watch. I would probably give it 6/10.

No notifications of any more wins in the pipeline. I'm managing to enter quite a few competitions currently so hopefully this extra effort will pay off in the future with a decent holiday or some vouchers to spend.

Didn't manage to sell my hard disk system on Ebay which was a bit disappointing. If anyone is interested in buying it let me know. Email address is on the website.

It's an Imation Odyssey system with one cartridge and USB adapter. Apparently retails around £168 but only want £50 for it so I can get a couple of Wii games.

A quick update on a couple of the programs that are advertised on this site.

Hypnotic Tracks, featured on the health page, are now offering hypnotherapy tapes for sexual enhancement. This includes impotence, sexual confidence, animal magnetism, sexual energy and orgasmic pleasure!

You can find out more directly by clicking here.

Proactol, featured in the weight loss page, have contacted me to make sure I don't forget to mention all of the benefits of their fat-binding weight loss product!

These include:

It's been slow going updating the website as I've been busy with work and family commitments (this is also my main excuse for failing miserably in my weight loss endeavours!).

I should have more time soon and I hope to be focussing on the main reason why this website was set up - to help people make more money.

I want to feature a range of different ideas. Over the years I have tried many of them myself plus I have my father and sister who have also tried out different ideas themselves.

As none of us are now rich you will gather that they have not been spectactularly successful, but some of them were only to make a part-time income.

Having been through the process I can also point out some of the pitfalls, scams etc. which many people don't manage to avoid.

I will also be putting up a page about saving money. If you are currently struggling to make ends meet, as many of us are, it may be that you could save enough money to balance the books and get on top of your finances.

These pages should be up this week so keep your eyes open and keep coming back.

It was around this time I anticipated posting my first excellent news about how much weight I had lost. However.....

Things have not gone to plan and I haven't lost any weight at all so far. Only good thing is I haven't put any on either. I've bounced around within a few lbs like a yo-yo.

In Wii Fit terms I have been bouncing between the top of overweight and the bottom of obese. Whenever I hit OBESE it gives me an extra push to exercise a little more just to get back to overweight.

I could go into a number of reasons for my lack of weight loss, however I'm old enough and wise enough to realise that I would just be making excuses. I just cannot seem to get motivated enough.

In an effort to motivate myself I'm going to set myself a goal of losing three stone by the end of the year. I might even consider getting sponsored to do so to give me a little extra push.

It is ambitious, but I would rather set a hard goal than make it too easy and try to do it all at the last minute. Three stones in four months means I have to start now and start working hard straight away.

I'm going shopping later and I will take a look at the diet pills and products whilst avoiding the cake and biscuit aisles.

The lack of service from Camelot about their lottery website did get me thinking about the other companies I've received terrible service from (Lloyds TSB and Vodafone being the two worst recently).

I've just got off the phone to Virgin Money and I had to laugh about it. I've moved to a prepaid credit card and so decided it's time to cancel my card with Virgin.

So I ring the number on their website. Straight through to an automated system, but no ordinary automated system, instead of pressing buttons it uses voice recognition technology.

It asks me about my problem. I tell it that I want to cancel my credt card. It doesn't understand. I make up an answer it might understand in order to get put through to a real person. It doesn't understand. I try again, this time using cancellation instead of cancel. It understands!

Now it wants to know what I wish to cancel. My credit card or payment protection (which I don't have). Easy enough.

Now it wants to know my card number. Gets it right first time. Then my date of birth, this bit took two goes. After all of this it tells me it will connect me with someone who can help. Hooray!

Then I get another automated voice - "we cannot connect you now as no-one is here. Our normal office hours are....Saturday until 1pm"!

Another four minutes of my life wasted. Why didn't they just say the office was closed to start with?

Only consolation is that the call was freephone so Virgin were paying for it. If I was in any doubt about cancelling my card this has definitely made my mind up. Cheerio Virgin, you won't be getting my custom again.

When will companies realise that automated systems and foreign call centres don't provide the level of service that customers want. Just put me through to someone I can talk to.

Unable to access the National Lottery website at the moment and it's been the same all morning. Getting very frustrated now as my wife has given me some numbers to put on and she's not going to be very happy.

This isn't the first time I've had problems playing the lottery online. When they had the massive EuroMillions jackpot a little while ago I tried all Friday afternoon and it just came back saying it was busy. I couldn't play at all.

When I wrote to the "Customer Service Team" about the problem I got the most pathetic response I've ever had about any problem ever (which is saying something these days)! Basically they said the site was very busy because of "unforseen demand".

Unforseen? It was the biggest jackpot in EuroMillions history and THEY had been advertising it wall-to-wall on TV and radio all week! What were they expecting?

Anyway, for a few weeks after I didn't play with them in protest but the lure of the jackpot has got me again. I do still have time now to put today's numbers on in the normal manner, although that will also involve a trip to the cashpoint.

For your information my numbers today are 5, 10, 13, 22, 30, 41 / 6, 10, 13, 19, 22, 47 / 3, 13, 14, 21, 22, 32. Wish me luck.

In 2007 I re-trained as a Domestic Energy Assessor. I was lucky that I had a contact in the Estate Agency business so I got the training cheap. Unfortunately things didn't pan out as I had hoped.

Lots of other people had the same idea, so there were plenty of trained assessors, and when the housing market slumped there was little work to be fought over.

I spent a few months working as a DEA, made enough money to cover my training costs, my bills and pay for a nice holiday abroad, and got out when work started to dry up. I was lucky that I found a job fairly quickly and I'm still working there now.

Not a very good example to lead me into my training page but there were plenty of positives that came out of my training.

Firstly I had left school over 20 years before so passing the necessary DEA exams had given my confidence a boost. I now feel I could re-train myself again in pretty much anything.

I have a new skill, one that I can always go back to in the future, and I can list my qualification on my CV making me more employable.

Training, even for its own sake, can be a good thing, but if you have an unfulfilled vocation now is the time to grasp the nettle and give it a go.

We spend near enough 50 years of our life in work. Spending this time in an unfulfilling, dead-end job on low pay is not going to give you a happy future.

If you don't like the job you are in, chances are you are going to need some extra training to get started on your new career. If you study from home you can fit your training course around your existing committments or job.

It doesn't have to be expensive and once you get back into the swing of it it can be enjoyable, particularly if you are studying a subject of genuine interest to you.

Whilst my training didn't make me rich or deliver everything I wanted from it I still feel it was worthwhile and would definitely do it again in the future.

I've added a new page to the website about personal finances. It definitely pays to think about your future finances and getting them in order will lead to a happier future.

One of the things in my life I regret is getting into debt when I was younger. I spent well beyond my means, mainly on a succession of credit cards, and it was only by luck of selling my house during the housing boom that I managed to get it repaid.

Since then I vowed never to get into debt again and this is why now I am very keen on budgeting, buying bargains and getting free stuff.

Now I have a son I realise that I don't just have to worry about managing on a day-to-day basis but I very much have to plan for the future of the whole family. Not easy when your wages barely cover the bills.

However I have set up a child bond for my son, plus I pay in a small amount every month into his bank account. Although the amounts are small they should accumulate over the next 18 years into a reasonable start for him. Maybe a university fund.

I'm also considering a savings bond with a Friendly Society for us as a small part of my "retire at 50" campaign, although "semi-retire at 50" is probably nearer the mark.

To find the extra money needed to put aside I have already embarked on a series of cuts to the household budget. Not sure my wife is too happy about everything coming from charity shops, markets or car boots but she is just going to have to live with it.

The budgeting tool I'm using for our monthly shopping is a prepaid credit card. Normally these are seen as only being for people with bad credit histories who cannot get a "normal" credit card but people need to think again.

My wife recently ran up a large bill on her visa card with a number of small impulse purchases which she bought and forgot about. Her statements come every three months and when it arrived it came to £500, all in small amounts of £7 here and £12 there.

These unnecessary purchases have now been cut out! We have a monthly budget and we are going to stick to it, come hell or high water.

Loading your card up-front with a fixed amount does make you think harder about what you are buying, it really feels like you are spending REAL money rather than the normal mindset with a regular credit card of worrying about it when the bill comes.

It does involve a more hands-on approach and, if you are running a tight budget (like me), you need to keep on top of it. However the reward will hopefully be an earlier retirement so that will spur me on.

Just been notified that you can get a further 10% discount on your health products during August 2009 by using a checkout code with Health Express. Full details are on my health page.

If I receive any other discounts or freebies I will let you know via the relevant pages on the website.

Health Express specialise in treating impotence, obesity, smoking, hair loss and the flu. The medication on offer includes Viagra, Cialis, Reductil, Xenical, Propecia and Tamiflu amongst others.

They offer free online consultations before doctors diagnose and prescribe relevant medication.

I haven't used them myself so I cannot vouch for their services, however they have been around for a long while (since 2002) and they do have plenty of positive testimonials on their website.

If you have any feedback (positive or negative) on Health Express please let me know.