Onwards to freedom!

SuperSecretSquirrel

Hello tinkerbel, elantan, puregeordie, Barbeduk, and anyone else out there that might be reading this I've not been around for a few days so it was a nice surprise to see some new posts on my diary thread!

tinkerbel, I think yours sounds like a great approach. I don't think anyone wants to look back in years to come and regret living life like a monk. If you keep spending on the stuff that matters to you, don't waste on rubbish that doesn't matter, and keep an eye out for good deals etc, you'll have that deposit saved in no time and still have fun

elantan, I've not looked into matched betting again since I first mentioned it here. I did dabble a little a few years ago, but never made anywhere near that much money at the time. I keep talking myself out of it as I think I've used up the main easy starter ones now, and don't really want to get tied up in the complexity of milking the trickier ones. I'm sure I'll give it a proper go some day though. Out of interest, why did you stop - was it because you'd already got the first bet bonus from all the big names so there was nothing easy left to get?

OH contributed an extra £50 OP at the weekend (current account leftover sweep after payday). Always a nice bonus to hear the words "I have a little extra left over that can go on the mortgage"

First MFiT3 update is less than a week away. I've done some calculations and worked out at the end of the first quarter we'll be 37% of the way to our three year target! Sadly this is only due to the ISA raid in December, not something we'll be able to repeat again anytime soon, still, it's one hell of a good start!

As for the unofficial mini target for this year (trying to get as close to maxing out the 10% allowed overpayment as possible), we still have a whacking great £6,503.82 overpayment allowance remaining at the moment. Will be interesting to see how close we can get. So long as we don't reduce the monthly direct debit, we'll manage £3,236.10 from the automatic monthly overpayments. That leaves an additional £3267.72 to find. An extra £326.77 a month for the next 10 months is quite a tall order, so we probably won't max out the OP's but it'll be interesting to see how close we get.

Happy MFWing everyone!

elantan

the reason i stopped was like you i had done loads ( made a good few thousand ) but it was getting to the stage i was having to place bets of a few hundred just to make £30 or so and i had spent the couple of hundred so didnt have anything left to bet with.

the bet would have to then have been played through a few times in order to finally extract the cash, so at the end of the day i was having to bet thousands of pounds and getting about £20 for my effort, it stopped being worth it for me at that point ( and i didnt have the money anymore anyway)

if you havnt done it and you have the chance to make a good quick killing then i would recommend it, but depending on how much you did you could be at the stage i am at, i got as much as i was comfortable out of it and decided it was no longer of use, but i will always be grateful for it, my all expenses paif holiday to Thailand still holds wonderful memories for me, and it was all thanks to matched betting

now if i had used it to pay off the mortgage, i would owe much less, but then i wouldn't have had that amazing experience so i have no regrets

brenda10

Brilliant you are doing great, have read your blog from beginning ot end. I lost my job through ill health in 2005 an dhad a mortgage with my husband, he was on low pay and it was so difficult. I saved small amounts and cut back on everything, researched best value for house insurance to car insurance, food, bargains in each shop if all in same locality. I had a mortgage of 60k, I was overwhelmed but didn't look ahead. My husband was 58 and we had 7 years unti he was 65, we had a 9 year mortgage on my name because i was younger but unable to work and earn my 28k salary, his 12k, daughter to help through university away from home, she took out loans, I paid for flights and small tokens. I have managed over the past8 years to save like I never knew how ot save and have the remaining 36k saved in a 4-2% newcastle buliding society 5 yr bond , this is the money I owe on mortgage(variable at 1.5% now and I made sure when I took it out I paid a little extra so that i could pay it off completley at anytime without any extra charge. I have also managed to save 26k as well, it is also is partly in ncb sic and isas, making more in isas than clearing mortgage so will continue to do so until interest rates rise. Now i have saved a little towards my daughters lump sum and she is saving now she has a job and has learned so much from me with martins money tips, at 23 she is very money savvy, she gets food allowances, stays in hotels etc with job, has no expenses unless on personal items, her boyfriend has got a job also and althought they have approx 25k of student debt each from rent, food etc they are saving as student loans are the cheapest loans they could ever have. they are hoping to save at least 10-15%, it is hard but they have started and I will help a little to encourage them. Good Luck and it is so great to read your blog. :T You can and will do it....I am 52 now and cannot believe after years of debt I have been forced to save and am so glad I have done it, we still enjoyed life but didn't waste.

SuperSecretSquirrel

Hi elantan, I didn't make thousands from matched betting, I stopped when in the hundreds, so it seems there should be more left to milk... I have no excuse other than laziness and fear of making a costly mistake. I'll keep it in mind for the next time I have some spare time, thanks

Thanks for sharing your story brenda10. Sorry to hear about losing your job through bad health, but it sounds like you have done an amazing job taking charge and also helping your daughter with being just as switched on! OH has paid off student loan in full (not ahead of time though, just as a result of being a smallish loan and standard salary deduction payments), I still have about 8.5k remaining on mine. Every now and then I think about paying it off, but honestly it should be the last thing I do, mortgage at 5.29%, savings at 3%, why pay off such a cheap loan? I'll just let the automatic salary deductions take care of it slowly, then when it's paid off the extra income will just be a nice bonus

Just checked my balance for the MFiT3 challenge, £73,242.52 - happy with that! Full update here http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=59908109&postcount=473

tinkerbel

Keep going Squirrel!!
Need to start cracking down on my spends over here as a big credit card bill (DD set up to pay in full each month) has shocked me a lot today!!

£73k in 3 years I'm sure you can do it!!

tinkerbel

How's it going Squirrel? Any more OPs?

SuperSecretSquirrel

Hello moneysavers!

I've been awol for a few weeks, there's been nothing exciting to report really.

Since my last post we've paid the standard mortgage payment of £476.39, plus the usual £323.61 direct debit overpayment, and a further £165.72 in ad hoc overpayments (sold a few things, and swept my payday current account leftovers into mortgage). OH gets paid today too so hopefully a little extra will be swept in this evening.

I calculate the current balance to be £72,830... Really annoying that the balance has dropped by less than the standard payment amount, stupid interest :mad: Oh well, the more we overpay the less interest we pay in the long run, so we've got to keep at it

We're on course to get the daily interest below £10 by the end of this year, the monthly £800 direct debit alone will take care of that. I also want to max out the 10% overpayment allowance for the year. We currently have £5,690.88 remaining, and after the automatic direct debit overpayments are accounted for the remaining allowance for the year is £3102.00. I'm hoping to manage that without raiding savings this year, sell some more stuff, keep sweeping in payday leftovers, and make a little extra cash. There will probably be a bit of a shortfall that we'll make up from our savings, but the aim is to make as much extra as possible and minimise the shortfall.

I have an official mfit3 target for the end of 2015 - mortgage balance of 60k. My ridiculously ambitious but not impossible target for end 2015 is to be mortgage neutral. I'm not a fortune teller so don't know what the future holds, but my spreadsheets tell me that if everything goes perfectly over the next two and a half years we could achieve a 60k balance towards the end of 2014, and be under 50k by the end of 2015, by which time I hope we'll have 50k in savings. There's a lot that can change between now and then, but aiming for the stars and reaching the moon beats never getting off the ground, so where's the harm in dreaming

Hope you're all winning in the battle against the mortgage!

ShALLaX

Is it really worth keeping so much in savings? I know you may get penalised for going beyond your annual 10% overpayment limit, but would it not save you more in terms of the interest saved?

Keep enough in savings to get by for 6..12 months with no income, spend the rest on debt.

SuperSecretSquirrel

Hi ShALLaX :wave:

With an ERC of 6% payable on anything over the 10% allowance, mortgage rate of 5.29%, and savings interest of about 3% on average, I think paying over and above the 10% annual overpayment allowance would cost us more than it would save.

There's also the fact that we may well end up not paying off this mortgage with savings, rather putting down a good deposit on a BTL. The feeling of just having "money in the bank" is nice too

If we manage the full 10% allowance over the next three years, we'll then consider paying a small fee to reduce the term, which means our 10% op allowance will go a lot further in subsequent years. Then, when we near the end of the mortgage and the ERC percentage drops to a level where lost savings interest and ERC% vs rate% means it makes sense, we might pay the ERC to pay off in full, or just keep a small mortgage and invest in a BTL.

SuperSecretSquirrel

Just posted my second MFiT3 update, mortgage balance is now £71,500 exactly.

We're going to have to focus a bit more on the mortgage if we're to max out the 10% OP allowance for the year. £4,888.78 remaining, and just six and a half months to go!

Expecting payment in the next few days for some freelance work I did recently, so that should make a nice dent. My regular saver account is about to mature too, so the £100 or so interest I get from that can come off the mortgage soon as well

One potential spanner in the works is that we've been seriously discussing reducing our mortgage term recently. Having paid an automatic £800 per month for the past nine months (standard £476.39 plus £323.61 op), I am satisfied that it's the right thing for us to do. OH has agreed to go along with whatever I think is best provided there's no pressure for extra payments on top. So, when on the phone to the mortgage company earlier, I requested the term amendment forms be sent out in the post. Our standard monthly payments will soon be around the £800pm mark, overpayments over and above that will obviously be smaller. End result will be paying the morgage off sooner and cheaper with no ERCs and a reduced amount of interest paid over its lifetime It's the right move for us, but it means hitting that 10% op allowance will be pretty much impossible without another savings raid!