Onwards to freedom!

SuperSecretSquirrel

That's all great information, good to know thanks Ed

Seems I haven't really pushed my luck then! These three cards added pretty much the value of my post salary sacrifice annual gross salary to available borrowing, all in the space of 30 minutes. Add the cards I already hold and I'm way ahead of my pre salary sacrifice annual gross. It seems too easy to get so much credit, I can see how people can get in a mess if they're using credit the way the providers want them to, not gaming the system and stoozing for profit!

I've overestimated mule interest a little, with a bit of luck total net cost of borrowing will come in at £50 or so then. Not bad for a 15k loan over two years

You are clearly optimising not only the amount stoozed, but the returns you get on the cash too. I don't think I'll bother with p2p until I can wrap it in an ifisa, tax returns are enough of a chore already. I'm currently gleefully closing extra current and regular saver accounts as and when the regular savers mature, loving the simplification (my financial life is a tangle of DDs and SOs!). I guess I might back track on this though. I've pretty much maxed out all my no fee high interest current accounts. The laziest and simplest home for the stooze pot is PBs, it can easily accommodate the whole lot, and there's easy access to funds to make minimum repayments (and settle in full if no BTs available in two years time). Due to it being easy and lazy, it's not particularly lucrative. Well, unless I'm extremely lucky that is!! Not prepared to venture into the world of leveraged investment, I wish you lots of luck, and expect it will very likely turn out very well for you, but that's a red line I won't cross. Seems my options at the moment are PBs, more current accounts (potentially fee paying ones), more regular savers, or a mix of all of the above. I'll focus on shifting the credit card funds to PBs first, and if I stumble across a better option I can easily shift back out as and when required.

Just waiting for the cards and online credentials etc to arrive now...

edinburgher

Oh, so you never bought a house with a mortgage?

Apologies if I've overshared re. strategy SSS, I'm not trying to convert you. Leverage scares the pants off of me, which is why I am taking the risks very seriously.

SuperSecretSquirrel

Not over shared at all ed, the more info the better!

Sure, I bought a house with a mortgage, but I saw it less as a leveraged investment, and more as the only realistic method of purchasing a home at the time I also locked myself into a ten year fix (bad move) and paid it off as quickly as possible (good move). Like I say, I'm quite cautious

I expect you will do very nicely from your stoozing to invest experiment, but it's just not for me The thought of being trapped when the 0% ends, or forced to sell in a down turn, just isn't something I'd be comfortable with - even though I know the odds are stacked against that happening.

Karmacat

I love the convo between you guys, I used to stooze a bit, and definitely used to be more active in calculating what was what (though when I updated the figures to what was actually in my accounts, every few months, I was always out, sometimes by quite a bit!). But it's great to read it on here

SuperSecretSquirrel

Thanks KC

Stooze is now firmly underway. All cards received and activated, first money transfer completed, 8k of PBs bought, and two BTs progressing to pay off the mule balance. Stooze pot is now a smidge over 17k.

Once the mule card is back at zero balance - another 7k MT to do, and another 7k of PB's to purchase, then one more BT to pay off the mule balance. Will end up with a total stooze pot of around 24k in PB's.

Then it's just a matter of time before I win my million, right? :rotfl:

I've juggled finances a little and am at a point right now where the minimum repayments on the whole stooze pot can be covered from monthly current account remainder, so no need to cash in PB's each month, less manual effort involved this way as all handled by direct debit.

Hoping everything will be all done and dusted within the week as I'd like everything back on an even keel ahead of the July 1st net worth update

SuperSecretSquirrel

Just waiting for the final BT to complete (should happen later today), then that's all the stoozing stuff done for now

Filled in my 2016-2017 tax return yesterday. [STRIKE]I was surprised how low the tax demand ended up being - so much so I'm convinced there's a bug in the online calculator. All my figures are correct, but the end result spat back out is about half the amount I had expected. I'm only talking about £100-£200 here, so I think I'll just go ahead and trust the gov calculation for now, and deal with any adjustments later if required...[/STRIKE] edit: problem solved, it was my fault, I had entered my savings interest in the "net" box... Moved it to "gross" and all is well now.

Can't wait to get my hands on this month's payslip. In theory it should be my first one without a student loan deduction on there! I'm on the home straight now regards SLC, so the remaining balance is due to be collected via monthly DD. Not expecting it to go smoothly, but I prefer to live life in hopeful optimism than woeful pessimism, so I'm trying to believe they can manage it without making a mess of things!

shangaijimmy

Just joining in the stooze conversation. I had a dabble 10 years ago and as a trial/starter got £8k which i offset against our obscene mortgage rate. My intention was to revisit it once we'd remortgaged but i never did. So i'm thinking of having another bash and putting it in my funding circle that is currently yielding about 7%. My question is how on earth to you get such big amount? Do you just request that amount?

edinburgher

shangaijimmy wrote: »

Just joining in the stooze conversation. I had a dabble 10 years ago and as a trial/starter got £8k which i offset against our obscene mortgage rate. My intention was to revisit it once we'd remortgaged but i never did. So i'm thinking of having another bash and putting it in my funding circle that is currently yielding about 7%. My question is how on earth to you get such big amount? Do you just request that amount?

If you don't mind me jumping in, I'm sure you'll not struggle to obtain a decent amount of credit unless you're on very low wages. I had to open 8-9 different cards, but was able to borrow £40-50k without too much difficulty (on £30k wages, give or take).

I'd be hesitant to put all of my stooze pot in FC, even if it was a relatively small amount. I only keep 2.5% or so of my stooze there, but then again I do invest exclusively in the *very* risky 20%+ E loans

shangaijimmy

Thanks for that. I definitely need to think about it again, and just weigh up the effort to reward factor! Time may well be against me on this one for now.

SuperSecretSquirrel

Hi SJ, thanks for stopping by

Thanks to Ed for chipping in too

I was asked what credit limit I would like when opening a 0% no fee BT card back in April. I asked for double what I needed, expecting to be offered half my requested amount, but they offered me the full amount!

I don't think I specified a desired amount for any of the three cards I opened this month. They offered me a total of 25k right off the bat, and I felt that was plenty to be getting on with for now.

I currently have a total credit limit of 45k across five cards, and a current credit balance of 24k. The three 0% BT cards are all pretty much maxed out (total balance at 90% of CL). There's about 10k of slack available on my 0% spending slow stooze card. The mule card has a zero balance - it's not at 0%, so carrying a balance would be bad. There's 8.5k of available credit not being utilised on the mule - if getting further credit becomes difficult I might ask them to drop the CL a little.

I found it scarily easy to be offered these credit limits. Doing what we're doing, it's fine, but it's easy to see how people can quickly get themselves into a mess!

Of course, it's vitally important to ensure you can pay off the balances as and when required, so do consider carefully where you stash the pot. Good luck!