Suggestions on my SOA please

wigginsmum

Good grief - I've just listed £760 worth of unwanted DVDs, videos, books and CDs on Amazon, aiming to be the lowest-price seller on the vast majority of them. And there's still much much more to go - how did I end up with a house full of so much stuff?? Am I a kleptomaniac or just very sad? I thought I'd cleared out all the useful stuff on Ebay last year. I guess I'd better buy some bubble wrap and brown paper from somewhere ...

chivers1977

Hi wigginsmum, jiffy bags are 10 for £1 for CD sized ones and 8 for £1 for book/dvd sized ones at poundland. HTH Vicky Good luck by the way. I am also amazoning and can't keep checking my inbox. Sold 25 items in 3 days so I am sure you will be as lucky if you are listing as the lowest price like I did :j :j :j

black-saturn

brummiebabe wrote:

Have to disagree re: life insurance - if you've got a repayment mortgage then you NEED it to pay off the mortgage, should the worst happen! I think your mortgage provider would be very unhappy if you didn't have it!!! On the other hand, if you've got an endowment - that is your life cover, so don't need to do it seperately!

Thanks for clearing that up. Maybe thats what I had??? I have paid the mortgage up now so thankfully I dont have to worry about that anymore.

Wiggins payment still seems very high though.

wigginsmum

Yeah - I'll do some digging and shop around on it.

chivers1977

try here for life assurance. http://moneyworld-ifa.co.uk/ hope that works. I used them for PPI on the mortgage and have got 4 times the cover for the same price as I was paying with my bank. On the subject of life assurance & critical illness, I believe that it is a good idea to have it. I work for a lender in complaints and see lots of cases come through where one party has died with no cover and the other party is left to try and meet the payments. I can't imagine how stressful that would be on top of a death. I have got life and critical illness too and as a guide for you I am 29, female and £152500 non smoker, with waiver of premium is £39.50 per month. OH is around £90 per month for same cover as is smoker with asthma (stupid fool!)

peterg1965

Can I add my bit!!

Life insurance - how old are you and how much cover?? I am 40, wife 43 we have just renewed our cover (1 yr ago) and paying £43.month for £250,000 (23 years) and £21 for £100,000 over 20 years. TOTAL £64 for £350K - check out Cavendish.co.uk or lifesearch.

Cats - We have 4 and pay about £39/month to PetPlan for insurance - I empathise with you there and completely agree on the logic of having this. We feed out cats 3 times a day, mixture of cheap brand tuna flakes (29p tin) and cat food in tins + occassional cheap prawns/frozen fish - we dont pay anything like as much as you.

Mortgage - may I ask how much your mortgage is for and how much house is roughly worth? + how many years to go? I have a few ideas here which could include paying off FirstPlus loan which I assume is at much higher rate than mortgage?

NTL- what about changing to SKY they may be cheaper. Do you have phone/TV/Broadband bundled together? If so it may be worth looking at splitting them. I do not think that bundled deals offer a good deal.

House Insurance - check out the sceenscaper sites - confused.com and insuresupemarket.com Dont take out accidental damage unless you need it. I actually took up the Barclays insurance challenge, they matched the cheapest renewal quote I received and gave me £50. Dont wait until your current policy has expired before changing especially if you havent claimed for years.

Just a few thoughts!!

K9cuddles

I can't help on most the stuff.. but pet insurance I can! Have you got an online quote from M&S Finance? They are really good on dog insurance and only pay I extra £1 a month for no excess and a really good cover. Might be worth a try??

wigginsmum

I'm 38, DH is 41. Cover is I think for £190k decreasing term to pay off the mortgage. I'm definitely overpaying! I guess the house is worth roughly £210k now - we bought the place in 2000 so roughly 20 years to go. I think Firstplus is 2-3%+ higher than the Natwest mortgage but I don't think we've got enough equity to move the Firstplus loan onto the mortgage instead.

My moggies are fussy but I'll definitely shop round for cheaper brands (maybe mix them half and half for a while till they're used to it) and consider tuna etc. One hardly eats anything at all and the others would rather eat what we're eating - poppadums, naan bread, cheese and onion crisps, curry etc.

Yes we've got internet/TV/phone through NTL; I'd happily swop but DH is digging in his heels about going back to Sky for the TV. He doesn't like change, bless 'im

Thanks for the suggestions I already had a note to myself to look at Barclays for home insurance.

wigginsmum

I'll have a look at M&S for the pet insurance; several of ours are at or over 10 and I know it can be hard getting cover for older cats.

wigginsmum

Just tried M&S Finance; they quoted me £20.72/month just for the oldest cat, so no go there.