25% of you would lick the pavement for £400

Harvey Jones examines the extreme lengths some of you would go to in order to earn a bit of extra cash.

How low would you stoop to earn a bit of cash? Pretty low, it seems. One in four Brits would lick the pavement for £400, according to a vital new piece of research.

Would you? Would I? Who came up with this question anyway?

I guess £400 for licking the pavement isn’t the worst deal I’ve heard. I’ve licked for less! It would depend how much pavement I was expected to lick. And of course its condition. How dirty, etc.

But I certainly wouldn’t want to do it for a living.

Don’t be a dummy

People have wildly different attitudes to earning money. Some people will do almost anything for it. One in four said they would take part in a medical experiment, without actually being told what that experiment was, while 6% said they would volunteer to be a crash test dummy. Er, you know they don’t wear seatbelts?

Yet others won’t do anything to earn the green stuff. Four out of 10 refused to wait in a queue for four hours to bag £400. Which means they’re turning down a pay rate of £100 an hour, almost 17 times the minimum wage (£5.93 from October), just for standing about. I sit staring at my computer for eight hours a day and don’t get anything like £100 an hour, so I’d happily mill about in a queue for half that time.

One in four wouldn’t even fill out a form to enter a competition, even with a guaranteed £400 at the end of it. I hate forms, but not that much. As I said, attitudes vary. Some people won’t get out of bed for £5.93 an hour, but millions do.

Lick that!

The licking pavements research was done to promote the benefits of cashback credit cards. While one in four of us would slurp the sidewalk for £400, only a tiny proportion have applied for a cashback credit card that could also net them hundreds of pounds a year.

The American Express Platinum Cashback Card could net you £424.25 a year, although only if you spend a pretty hefty £2,500 a month - £30,000 a year! - on the card. If you spend £1,000 a month, you can get £206. Just remember, Amex isn’t accepted everywhere, although its popularity is growing.

Capital One World MasterCard offers 1% cashback on all spending, but carries an £18 annual fee. So you need to spend £1,800 a year on the card just to break even.

Quids in

Of the 6% who said they would be a crash test dummy for £400, there is a better way. Sign up to Quidco, or another cashback site, which offers cashback with over 2,300 online retailers, including big names such as Tesco, Debenhams, Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer, Apple, Argos and Vodafone. It has scores of 5% cashback offers, and many up to 20%. And you don’t have to drive into a metal spike at speed without a safety belt to qualify. Alternatively, you could check out these 40 valid discount vouchers.

Double trouble

Back to my original question. How low would you stoop to earn money? My very first ever job as a teenager was as a telephone double glazing salesman, and that felt pretty low. I cringed to pick up the phone and interrupt yet another person’s evening, and was mightily relieved when the boss sacked the lot of us on my second night for being idle. That earned me £14, my first pay cheque, but I wouldn’t do it again for £400.

(Stay calm, reputable window installation professionals! I’m not knocking the fabulous work you do in lining the nation’s homes with uPVC, I’m just not so keen on cold calls… either giving or receiving them).

Maxwell’s houses

My second job was knocking on doors in Neasden trying to get people to take out a subscription to Robert Maxwell’s ill-fated evening newspaper the London Daily News. On my second night, Maxwell fell off his yacht and drowned. I earned £30.

I’ve also swabbed floors, emptied bins, plucked the weeds off an artificial tennis court and driven a delivery van into a tree (although my boss didn’t actually want me to drive it into the tree) and consider myself pretty lucky to have got away with that. What about you?

Hundreds of thousands of disappointed A-level students may soon facing up to this uncomfortable question. I wish them luck.

Tough choices

Here’s a survey of my own. There are plenty of ways of saving hundreds of pounds, while keeping your dignity intact. To save or earn £400, would you rather:

Kiss the back end of a skunk or follow these 10 lifestyle changes?
Eat your own toenail clippings or have a posh packed lunch on a budget?
Bang on 500 doors to sell them a newspaper or apply for this week’s top credit cards?
Ring northerners during Coronation Street to sell them double glazing or avoid these five costly money mistakes?
Ring cockneys during the Eastenders Omnibus to sell them double glazing or take out one of these six top savings accounts?

Judging by the previous survey, 6% of you will choose the former options. That’s if you survived your first day working as a crash test dummy.

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