Don't let the system play you! 

If you are new to all this then chances are banks, businesses, your employer and the Government have all been doing very nicely out of you. It's time to reverse it and in doing so help yourself move up the scale:

Don't use credit because it's available. Get into debt and it's difficult to get out, because interest snowballs. Conversely if you start to put money away, it will begin to grow cumulatively and work for you. If you are heavily in debt, budget tightly, economise and be strict until you're back in the black. Use this calculator and print off the results to see clearly your current position then take action across the board. Start to grow a pot of money. Think big. There are 3 proven routes to wealth: shares, property and self-employment. The Government incentivises you on all three: take advantage. Invest the maxi-ISA each year that you can. Make a strategic move on the property ladder. Do all these things simulaneously.

Marketing is a powerful tool. Companies use marketing to make you feel dissatisfied about some aspect of yourself or your life. Understanding this can help you cut out unnessary purchases - rather than living a cycle of earn and burn, and shopping for elusive happiness. Why not use companies for your own profit? That's what they want with you! Free market competition has brought the consumer a veritable banquet of free money, free products, free services, introductory offers, incentives and loss-leaders as companies vie for your trade. The development of the internet has meant these are often just a few clicks away, whatever your circumstances. Play The System filters the best of these on PTS Daily - you're invited to check in and follow, take up and move on to the next.

Each global generation is more wealthy than the last by getting smart and squeezing more and more out of the same (or diminishing) pool of natural resources each day. Governments and businesses continually find one-off quick wins that when laid out linearly give a convincing impression of growth. If you are motivated you can do the same: use PTS Daily for quick wins and get smart about what you do with personal and financial resources - you should soon see cumulative growth in your daily position.

What's in:

• Utilise freebies, loopholes, offers and bargains
• Use switch sites for cheapest utilities, insurers and banking products
• Use free price-comparison sites for all forms of shopping
• Use e-tailers not retailers - on-line shopping rather than high street
• Link through to your on-line purchases from a cashback or rewards site, for added bonus
• Put all your daily spend through a credit card to utilise interest free period, cashback or points and free benefits such as purchase protection, fraud cover and lost luggage protection
• Make money from banking products (free gifts, current account free travel insurance, free overdrafts and claiming back bank charges)
• Ensure you are getting the maximum return from Government: Working tax credit, child tax credit, child benefit, childcare vouchers, council tax band challenging
• Use the maximum individual income tax-free allowance from employment / self-employment
• Use the maximum partner income tax-free allowance
• Use the maximum individual capital gains tax-free allowance from shares and investment funds and commodities and property funds and bond funds
• Use the maximum partner capital gains tax-free allowance
• Let a room tax-free or let your drive
• Smart gambling: tax-free gains from matched betting and casino bonus bagging
• Draw down from ISAs tax-free as required
• Pay off all debts, including mortgage
• Grind up property ladder, one property at a time, by adding value to home, so capital gains are always from principal residence and therefore tax-free without limit

What's out:

• Unmatched betting, Casinos if not bonus-bagging, National Lottery and Scratch Cards
• Get rich quick schemes such as Moneycyclers, High Yield Investment Programmes and Pyramid schemes
• New cars, flash cars, gas-guzzlers, car upgrades
• Any form of rent or hire purchases: home, car, white goods
• Any form of expensive and dead insurance payments: Income protection insurance, Motor Legal Insurance
• All forms of rolling debt - loans, charge cards, etc
• Financial advisors, as they can never be truly impartial - be your own

Beware Scams!

Scams generally can be identified by the following: They arrive via unsolicited emails, faxes, letters or telephone calls. They ask you for money before you can claim your windfall/prize/inheritance. They boast of large guaranteed returns. They don't explain precisely how these fantastic returns are created. They rely on sucking in progressively more people in order to pay out and keep going. They claim secret 'insider' knowledge (this is always the case for gambling and boiler-room scams). They promise huge rewards in a short time with little effort (particularly home-working scams).

One universal feature of home-working scams is that they all promise a high income for very little effort, usually by running a business from home. Some require that you send off a joining fee and then never hear from them again. Others promise high wages for menial work such as stuffing envelopes, but fail to pay out anything like the amounts pledged, if anything at all.

Pyramid schemes promise large rewards for recruiting more people. They work for as long as people keep signing up, but ultimately will collapse. Avoid all proposals which rely solely on recruitment to generate returns.

Avoid the scratchcards that fall out of newspapers and magazines or arrive unwanted on your doorstep. In order to claim your guaranteed 'prize', you scratch off some silver panels and then call the 090 number listed. The fiddle here is that your call will cost £1.50 a minute and last, say, six minutes, but your reward will be worth a fraction of this sum -- perhaps £1. Also avoid the lottery. Our Lotto pays out just 50p for every £1 ticket sold. Hence, your long-term expectation should be to lose half of all money staked on the lottery, but this assumes that you win some big prizes along the way. If you don't win a Jackpot or pick five numbers and the bonus ball, and chances are that you won't (1 in 14million and 1 in 2.3million respectively!) you can expect to lose four-fifths (80%) of your lifetime spend on the Lotto.

Play The System offers genuine ways to make money on the net and from home. All you need is a PC and some time. See our Make Money section.