uzubairu's Mortgage Free Journey

Floxxie

uzubairu wrote: »

I've been asked to work this evening and luckily I have nothing planned (OH is tied up with office move all weekend).

I'm just going to list a few things on eBay and take my netbook to work with me because I have some auctions finishing this evening.

I have been reading the Matched Betting thread and I think that I will need to read it a few more times before I consider taking the plunge.

Good to see you are still eBaying hard!

Re MBing; there's a few of us who MB already so feel free to PM with questions. Also Betfair have got a fab offer at the moment but it only lasts until 8th March. Details on the referral board or again feel free to PM me if you would like to use my code. MBing is quite straight forward but it's really nerve wracking placing your first bets - took me years to get there! :rotfl:

Floxxie

uzubairu

Handbag went for £8 less than I expected, but a ruck sack that I expected to get £17.50 for went for £26.00.

My old mobile broadband dongle went for £22 ( I got a free upgrade last week).
1 item didn't sell, which I have just relisted.

uzubairu

Floxxie wrote: »

Good to see you are still eBaying hard!

Re MBing; there's a few of us who MB already so feel free to PM with questions. Also Betfair have got a fab offer at the moment but it only lasts until 8th March. Details on the referral board or again feel free to PM me if you would like to use my code. MBing is quite straight forward but it's really nerve wracking placing your first bets - took me years to get there! :rotfl:

Floxxie

Thanks for the offer. Your inbox will soon be full of my questions. :rotfl:

Also received email from Quidco. £25.62 is being paid this month.
That will go straight into my cashback/eBay (10%) Virtual Sealed Pot.

Floxxie

:rotfl:And the way you go with eBay, you'll be answering a lot of questions of 'how the hell do you do it?'

Happy to answer any questions. Had offered help to MoneyQueen but she has picked it up so quickly that I shall be asking her the questions soon

Have I missed the note about your Virtual Sealed Pot? Take it you are putting 10% of everything from cashback and eBay somewhere for something? - Ooh, have just seen your signature so I guess there is a challenge somewhere....

Floxxie

uzubairu

Floxxie wrote: »

Have I missed the note about your Virtual Sealed Pot? Take it you are putting 10% of everything from cashback and eBay somewhere for something? - Ooh, have just seen your signature so I guess there is a challenge somewhere....

Floxxie

The Virtual Sealed Pot is an idea from spam.jam from DFW (Thanks), where on a designated day each week I round down the balance of my current account to the nearest £10, and sweep the difference to a separate online savings account.

e.g. balance is £126.56 (transfer £6.56) / balance £120.06 (transfer 6p).

I've already filled my cash ISA for 2008 (currently at a rubbish rate).

It's just like my penny jar that gets all change below £1 (I hate having loose change), so it is just a bit of fun with a nice surprise at the end. I also get a few extra pennies from the paltry interest on offer too.

I hope to have £300 in the account by December 2009 (which should pay for Christmas).


I also have a 2nd VSP for my cashback site payouts and 10% of the nett profits from my eBay sales each week.
In the last 2 years, I have just used Quidco (£950 in 2 years :T ), but this year I have joined 5 more cashback sites and a few survey sites.
All payouts will now go to my 2nd online VSP which I hope will go towards a holiday in early 2010.

uzubairu

OH will be giving me £100 of his weekend overtime this month when he gets paid. This will be added to this month's planned OPs.

The £500 standing order has left the bill payment account and should hit the mortgage account by Thursday.

I'll have to remind him just before his pay day, before he spends it on some c**p.

uzubairu

Both mortgage and initial monthly overpayment of £500 have hit the mortgage account.
The balance now stands at £93,706.

I am going to overpay another £300 throughout the month, so that should absorb most of the interest charged this month.

My car (Mini) was serviced yesterday and everything was fine.
I was advised to list any other niggles when I dropped the car off, so I listed 5 issues and when I received my car later in the day it was perfect (all issues resolved) and I didn't have to part with a penny (Mini TLC). :j

It's Friday, so £10.23 transferred to VSP.

setmefree2

well done on all your progress :T

Anon

uzubairu wrote: »

I am going to overpay another £300 throughout the month, so that should absorb most of the interest charged this month.

Are you just slowly increasing to see where the tipping point is, or have you discovered where that point is? I read the linked post and it mentioned that they allow overpayment up to a certain point as not worth pursuing, but the way I read it this referred to the rationale for the normal overpayments, not the additional ones that you are "sneaking" through (though not sure how sneaking works, as it is all computerised and they could set the system to kick in at £500.01 overpayment, or whatever, if they wanted to).

Good luck.

Anon

uzubairu

Anon wrote: »

Are you just slowly increasing to see where the tipping point is, or have you discovered where that point is?

As you say I'm looking for the tipping point, but haven't hit it yet.

As you can see from my End of month stats in Post #56, I've added £1405 to the Overpayment Reserve in 2 months, and I've broken down the payments so that you can see the actual overpayment figure.

I have paid in excess of £500 every month, since September last year.
At that time it was a genuine mistake, but I have managed since then to do it with success. :j

In just the last 3 months:-
December £775
January £665
February £740

I pay the £500 by standing order at the begining of the month, then the mortgage payment goes through shortly after.
A week later, I send my first additional payment and check online to see if any charges have been applied, as I was told (by Customer Services) that the charges are applied immediately and would also show online.
I then send another payment.

I'm not sure, but I do think that if I sent £500+ in one go, I would probably be charged.
My first mistaken £700 overpayment was (£450 + £250).

I'm going for £300 this month and probably £350 next month.

Once I know what the figure is, I'm going to also add our rainy day money, because we know we can get it back if we need to, but all the while we'll be paying less interest.