A cunning plan (but a humungous mortgage!)

Jevvers

Thanks Catshark, me too!

Jevvers

My strategy for "over paying" (saving in accounts which pay more than the mortgage interest after tax) is to put a lump sum into an instant access savings account - which we did last June - and then use this to dripfeed into various savings accounts.

These include the FD 8% regular saver (before it dropped to 6%) and a couple of other accounts. Altogether, they should make us £700 in interest in a year which we will add to the savings and put it all in new "savings" accounts - eg Nationwide and Santander 123.

Although saving rates are terribly low, they would have to drop to 1.2% to be lower than the mortgage. If that happens, we would pay the lump sum back in as we have a flexible mortgage so can do that without penalty.

Jevvers

Saved £5 in a discount off some clothes (local trade association) and earned 51p cashback (woo hoo!) on the Santander 123. This will go up massively - hopefully to approx £65 per month - it has just taken a while to swap the DDs across.

Courgette

Best of luck Jevvers! I bet your house is amazing btw!

Tilly's mortgage is also pretty massive, you could have a nosey on her thread too for tips

Jevvers

Thanks Courgette
I am trying to sort out what to do with our OP savings pot when the present regular savers mature in a couple of months.
We have opened three Nationwide FlexDirects @5% (one each and one joint) so we will probably stick £7.5k in there. Then the rest could go into our Santander 123 which pays 3% on credit balances. Not sure whether to bother with a FD regular saver this time.

At the same time, I want to try to get our spending down a bit. Will do the grocery challenge again. Also the water bill is pretty high at £53 per month so we have started bathing the kids every other evening rather than daily:eek:. (They do get a hills and hollows wash, I should point out!!:rotfl:)

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Courgette wrote: »

Best of luck Jevvers! I bet your house is amazing btw!

Tilly's mortgage is also pretty massive, you could have a nosey on her thread too for tips

Hi Jevvers, our mortgage was around £387k ish and is now down to £219k ish, soon to be under £200k. It's a hard slog but what an amazing feeling to know it is going down :T

Good luck, Tilly

Jevvers

Thanks Tilly, really appreciate it. You've done amazingly! I really hope we can knock chunks off ours like you have done.

I have today applied for a Santander 123 Major ISA at 3% which I will stick some of our savings pot in. It means locking it away for two years but there is no way we are touching anyway it except for in the most extreme of emergencies.

Looked further into the water bills today, seems we are paying waaay over the average for a metered home. Those grubby kids (and their clothes) take a lot of washing!!

Jevvers

On a roll!
The Nationwide card reader thingy has come through so that's the first Flex Direct account fully functioning. And I've just applied for a Santander credit card because it's free for the first year if you have a 123 acc (which I do) and it pays 3% cashback on train travel and I commute.

Also have done a massive Tesco shop and saved £10.40 in offers and vouchers which I have TRANSFERRED TO THE OP ACCOUNT!! This is the missing link as for ages when I have made savings I have failed to actually do the final bit and transfer it across.

That is part of the point of this diary to make myself do it. Working so far, hurrah!

catshark88

Jevvers, I am convinced that your Tesco OP is exactly the right way to tackle a big mortgage.

We are paying a lump sum off each month, but I'm constantly moving a couple of quid here, or the odd tenner there off as OPs too. As well as adding up in a scary fashion, they also make me think before I spend even similar small amounts. It is like frittering, but in reverse!

Onwards and downwards,

Jevvers

Thanks, I really hope so. I feel very positive that we are doing something about this. DH glazes over at the first hint of talk about all this stuff so I'm ploughing on by myself (which suits my geek side). He's supportive, he just can't get into the minutiae.

I like "onwards and downwards"