Serious_saver's mortgage free dream

Stressfree_WB

linz wrote: »

Hi SS,

One thing ive recently started doing is overpaying little things like and payments from Topcashback (do you use TCB?) any leftover from the monthly food budget, loose change etc. Plus if I get a £x off a £xx spend supermarket coupon ill overpay the saving if you see what I mean. We budget £120 a month for food (2 adults and a dog) and overpay whatevers in the tin at the end of the month. !

Great advice. I'd never thought of doing this. I usually rolled over any extra money. Thanks.

Muser1

Hi welcome and good luck with your journey. With regards to boiler cover I recently took out a policy with n power. It covers the boiler and any radiator problems. It also includes an annual service. It costs £11 per month and I'm waiting on £40 tcb to clear. So I'm very happy with it.

Muser. X

Muser1

Sorry it also is unlimited call outs and no extra charge for parts and labour.

serious_saver

I have spent the last few weeks trying to convince Mr Serious_Saver of the merit of overpaying more on our mortgage.

Before Christmas I persuaded him that we should increase our repayments from £430.31 to £475. I want to get this up to £500.

Unfortunately I'm still hunting for that new job but even without me earning I am confident we can do this if we are reasonably sensible.

This will mean Mr Serious_Saver (or rather - Mr slightly useless at saving) increasing the amount he pays. At the moment we pay equal shares but, as I put down 75% of the deposit, I think it is reasonably fair to ask him to pay a little more.

So, in my attempt to find good solid figures to back me up, I have been tinkering with a few mortgage overpayment calculators. My personal favourite is the HSBC one as it's very easy to use.

Mr Serious_Saver is not very good at thinking long term but having put our details into the overpayment calculator (all be it slightly roughly) I have discovered that by overpaying an extra £1 per month we will save £25 at the end of one year. Ok, there are 12 months in the year but that still means we save £2.08 for every £1 we spend.

I'm pretty convinced, hopefully he will be too!

serious_saver

It's been a little while since I posted last and a few things have happened.

• Although I don't have a full-time / permanent job yet but I have been offer some regular freelance work for a couple of days each week. this means I'll be bringing home about £600 per month. It's not perfect but it's certainly better than nothing.
• We've decided that we can afford to pay £550 each month, that's an over payment of around £120 per month.
• I have decided that I will not be buying anything new during 2014 (with the exception of food, perishables and underwear). I inadvertently did it through out January and now it's become an accidental new year's resolution. So far it has saved me quite a bit of money, if I can keep it going then 2014 is going to be a very cheap year!

serious_saver

This week I have properly discovered Topcashback and what a revelation it has been.

I have been booking travel and accommodation for a big conference at work. Since they don't have their own system for collecting cashback, my boss has said it's ok for me to use my Topcashback account. In the last two days I have already managed to collect £30 and I still have around 20 delegates to buy national express tickets for (5.25% cashback).

It's good to be back at work!

EDIT

I've had a change of heart with TCB. I'm actually going to convert the cashback into Tesco clubcard points. Then I'm going to use clubcard boost to get 3x value at goldsmiths. That should save a big chunk on my OH's wedding ring.

I already have £10 worth of clubcard points so with the £50 I have on TCB, I can get £180 towards the wedding ring.

Since we would be buying a wedding ring anyway, I think it's a better use of our money and we will pay the equivalent off our mortgage.

norfolkdream

Thats great that you can use TCB for that!
Those little OPs soon mount up. Upping the payments can get addictive, and looking at those mortgage calculators is a good incentive to what could be.
I started with MPs of £550 and now pay £878!!