Dasyurus maculatus

Live in the UK

are an adult and have at minimum Indefinite Leave to Remain

Can scrape together about £1200 in one place for a few minutes (can be salary/your actual bank account, but better if not, as you’ll need to park it somewhere else for a month or so)

Can reasonably do mildly convoluted admin tasks (I.e., could you keep a spreadsheet that juggles a few things like “dates to cancel subscriptions”, and remember to cancel the subscriptions?)

Are confident, capable and able to do life paperwork such as opening bank accounts

Then you can usually farm a bit of pocket money with bank switching.

Bank switching is taking advantage of cash offers that UK banks offer to switch your current account to their bank. They often offer £150 cash for doing this. The definition of a “current account” is usually “has ~£1200 in it and two direct debits set up,” so if you’re willing to quickly set up a free throwaway bank account that meets these criteria, you can then switch that account around various banks to take advantage of incentives.

There’s some decent offers right now if you’re willing to do the homework (you could get up to £1500 at the moment if you’re eligible for everything), and people on Reddit write really careful hand-holding tutorials. https://www.reddit.com/r/beermoneyuk/s/DLrpVkmDOo

You can usually only max this out once a year, and then have to take a break (most banks have a cooldown period.) of course, if you have a partner or other family members, you can do theirs. You can pass the £1200 back and forth between you for this, and make double the amount.

If you only do £1000 a year, it’s about the limit of the admin most people want to do, and is tax-free.

You can mess it up - but rather than losing money, you’re more likely to accidentally fail to meet the criteria, or get into an admin snarl where you get querulous emails from bizarre institutions like the Ulster Bank of Lobsterworkers and Divinely Inspired Miners, telling you that they can’t close your bank account until you remove £0.37 from it. However, allowing reputable UK banks to hold your £1200 is a low-risk activity.

You must follow the instructions (and guides) attentively to receive the payouts.

Bank switching is a good, honourable and reliable way to raise a few hundred pounds to pay off large unexpected expenses. A big credit card bill, an air conditioner, an unexpected flight - I find it useful to know that a little bit of extra admin-headache can write off the whole expense.

first step is we are born and everything is 'how can i get more i gotta take care of me.' then we learn to share and learn 'gotta make sure everyones even' but DANG there is something really powerful about a third step of walkin into a room and saying 'how can i make sure everyone has more than me?'

another commission! a pair of sea otters persisting, despite the horrors

(and a slightly better view of the otter on the right)

"I had not touched a cat in 15 years when an orange kitten wandered over to sit with me in the grass one day. I was left without adequate words to describe that experience. It reminded me that I am alive. It instilled in me a raw, unbridled happiness that I had never felt before, not even as a child. 

I have spent many hours with those cats, and still I am amazed at how perfectly they reject everything it means to be in prison. They are playful and unselfconscious, curious and silly, soft and cuddly.

Sometimes it is even more interesting to watch my fellow prisoners interact with our cats. All those hard cases doing hard time melt like butter on a summer sidewalk when they visit the felines, feed them, watch them chase the birds and bees, and when they make toys to entice the cats to play with them. 

I don’t think about the past when a cat hops in my lap. I don’t think of what I should or could have done. I don’t think about courts or life sentences or parole boards. What comes to mind is peace, and a sense that everything is going to be OK. What’s in the past needs to stay there if I want to have a future, if I want to be grateful for today and for the fact that I am no longer the person I once was.