A cunning plan (but a humungous mortgage!)

Jevvers

Bah, screened out of almost all my surveys, made just 50p. But I have got the FlexDirect fully funded at last despite it being a bit of a PITA to log in and out of the various accounts.

Pressing ahead with my Ebay trading idea and have got a new user name, set up a Twitter account and researched the tax situ. Love a project

Jevvers

Two lots of cashback have tracked: £35.35 for the AA and £11.95 for airparks. Not bad for 5 mins work

Jevvers

Went through our shrapnel tins and found 12.99 euros (£11.08) which we can use for our holidays :T .Not much else to report, tried some charity shops but didn't find anything.

Jevvers

My ISA matured today with £78.11 interest. I'm pretty pleased with that as I had to build it up over the year. It's going straight into the Santander 123 ISA fixed for 2 years @3%.

We also got the first decent cashback from the 123: £15, which I'm about to squirrel away in the OP account.

Meanwhile I'm going to spend this evening trying to work if Fidelity is right for our S&S ISA as it has got excellent cashback of £100 but I don't want to base our decision only on that.

Jevvers

£7.50 in Nectar points from booking a holiday. And just found out that my ISA has transferred successfully in just one day! Well done Santander and Principality :T

Jevvers

Now then, time to try to transfer some DDs to my other Halifax account in an effort to keep the £5 pm reward. I should have done it by Sunday but it seems that under the Ts&Cs I could get away with it.

In other news, am already planning a grocery shop and drying washing outside tomorrow - Spring at last!

Jevvers

Found a fantastic charity shop today which is exactly the sort I was after - old school, well stocked and with lots of nick nacks, books and postcards. Not bought anything yet as I was with DD who does not tolerate intense CS browsing!

Also spent the £7.50 nectar points and sorted the two direct debits. And have downloaded the Kindle version of Tim Hale's investment book. And dried the washing in the sun

Jevvers

£6.70 from Quidco and free lunch and coffee at work.

Getting closer to sorting out what to do about the Fidelity ISA. Currently think that I will go for the Quidco cashback (invest £5k to get £100 cashback = 2% bonus up front) and then when that has tracked move over the money we have invested with L&G which carries a sweetener of 0.75%.
No exit fee from L&G although we would want to switch funds which will charge 0.25%. Still end up 0.5% up.

Jevvers

So it's a year since we stoozed our mortgage (took out money at the 0.99% rate and put it in higher paying savings accounts.)
Interest so far:
Santander = £173
Monmouth = £331
First Direct = £124
HSBC = approx £75
Estimated net interest £703

Jevvers

Just updated signature now that we know what interest we have managed to accrue over the past year. Pretty pleased with the result - we have managed to save £1300 on top of the £700 interest so that's £2k off the mortgage in a year, without taking into account the overpayments we are also making.

This year has also refocussed us on the repayment vehicle and we are now basically doing a belt and braces approach of investing the appropriate amount AND saving in cash ISAs each - so that's almost £1k each per month. Even with these very low rates, if we each do that then we will have enough to pay off the I/O mortgage in 2026. Would rather cover it with the investment alone but that's not guaranteed!

I am going part time for a few weeks in July and August and we are also going on holiday so it's back to the £10 per day challenge for me. Now hoping Quidco doesn't pay out until next week ;-)