I've Done It!! I'm Finally Mortgage-free

barnishroader

Martinslovechild wrote: »

OK - you have to view your mortgage overpayment fund as an extra money pot.

Here's an example:-

Let's assume you have £50,000 'borrowed' from 0% credit cards - this cash is safely sitting in your mortgage overpayment pot.

A month from now, the 0% offer on one of the cards (with a £10,000 limit) is going to expire, so you decide to apply for a new card.

Your application for the new card is successful, however they've only offered you a £7,000 credit limit.

• At this point, you wouldn't actually still owe £10,000 on the original card as you've paid 9 or 12 months' minimum payments (you'd have repaid £2,394 after 9 months assuming a 3% min payment).
• Secondly, even if you did still owe £10K, you'd simply drawdown £3K of your overpayments fund, pay this to the original card and BT the remainder (£7K) from your original card to the new card. Your overpayment fund will reduce slightly, but the bulk of it is still at the 0% rate.

Hopefully, because your mortgage balance is reducing pretty quickly, it won't matter too much if there's a small shortfall as you won't need access to quite so much credit 9 or 12 months on as you'll have paid off a fair chunk of capital.

Right...so now i have my egg card and am looking for a 0% deal on a new card.

As i have currently:
Halifax
Alliance & Leicester
HSBC

what cards are there that are not run by the same organisations as run these ones?

i assume i would get a better limit this way as each company would rate me at a certain level.

as far as i know A&L are owned by MBNA so that rules Virgin and other cards out but i am not sure of other cards that are affected by MBNA, HSBC and Halifax.

cmrule

The post office have 0% on balance transfers for the first 10months


EDIT: I've just noticed this "
**For 5 months on new balance transfers made in the anniversary month of the month you opened the account"
I've no idea what this means tho :mad:

EDIT 2: Oh and you get £20.50 cash back through quidco.

barnishroader

cmrule wrote: »

The post office have 0% on balance transfers for the first 10months


EDIT: I've just noticed this "
**For 5 months on new balance transfers made in the anniversary month of the month you opened the account"
I've no idea what this means tho :mad:

EDIT 2: Oh and you get £20.50 cash back through quidco.

i've noticed barclaycard are offering 14months on their platinum card but not sure if i am eligible or id they fall into any of the other groups of cards.

not sure what that 5months thing means either!!!

Martinslovechild

barryheffron wrote: »

Right...so now i have my egg card and am looking for a 0% deal on a new card.

Can you confirm that you've got the Egg Money Card? That's the one you need (if you have the standard Egg Card, it's not going to do the trick).

barryheffron wrote: »

As i have currently:
Halifax
Alliance & Leicester
HSBC

what cards are there that are not run by the same organisations as run these ones?

i assume i would get a better limit this way as each company would rate me at a certain level.

as far as i know A&L are owned by MBNA so that rules Virgin and other cards out but i am not sure of other cards that are affected by MBNA, HSBC and Halifax.

Hiya Barry.

Yes - the A&L card is administered by MBNA. Halifax is owned by HBOS (Halifax Bank of Scotland), not to be confused with Royal Bank of Scotland (who incidentally own NatWest). Confused?

I took out a Post Office credit card myself - there's a 2.75% fee for the BT, but as cmrule above points out, it's 10 months at 0% which isn't bad. The card is also useful abroad once you've paid it off in 10 months time as they don't charge the standard 2.75% foreign transaction charge that just about everybody else levys.

For lots more information on 0% cards, check out the stoozing website at http://www.stoozing.com.

barryheffron wrote: »

i've noticed barclaycard are offering 14months on their platinum card but not sure if i am eligible or id they fall into any of the other groups of cards.

Give it a go - if you don't fit their 'Platinum' criteria, you may get offered a standard Barclaycard (or a Barclaycard Football Card) offering 0% for 12 months, which is still a good deal after the 3% fee.

barryheffron wrote: »

Not sure what that 5 months thing means either!!!

The note above about 5 months simply refers to the fact that you get offered 0% again on balance transfers on your anniversary in both 2008 and 2009, but the anniversary deal is only for 5 months at 0% (you'd have to pay another 2.75% fee so it's extremely unlikely to be worth it unless interest rates spiral).

Cheers.

barnishroader

Martinslovechild wrote: »

Can you confirm that you've got the Egg Money Card? That's the one you need (if you have the standard Egg Card, it's not going to do the trick).



Hiya Barry.

Yes - the A&L card is administered by MBNA. Halifax is owned by HBOS (Halifax Bank of Scotland), not to be confused with Royal Bank of Scotland (who incidentally own NatWest). Confused?

As I took out a Post Office credit card - there's a 2.75% fee for the BT, but as cmrule above points out, it's 10 months at 0% which isn't bad. The card is also useful abroad once you've paid it off in 10 months time as they don't charge the standard 2.75% foreign transaction charge that just about everybody else levys.

For lots more information on 0% cards, check out the stoozing website at http://www.stoozing.com.



Give it a go - if you don't fit their 'Platinum' criteria, you may get offered a standard Barclaycard (or a Barclaycard Footbal Card) offering 0% for 12 months, which is still a good deal after the 3% fee.



The note above about 5 months simply refers to the fact that you get offered 0% again on balance transfers on your anniversary in both 2008 and 2009, but the anniversary deal is only for 5 months at 0% (you'd have to pay another 2.75% fee so it's extremely unlikely to be worth it unless interest rates spiral).

Cheers.

Yet again you come to the rescue mlc....you are a star!!!

Should have been clearer that i did get the egg money card.

Thanks to a link from Yorkshireboy in another thread i posted http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=546622 i saw that a lot of cards fell into the same groups as ones i had.
Just submitted application for the platinum barclaycard as i met criteria, so waiting on result.

MoneyMac

Sorry to sound a bit silly, but referring to Martinslovechild's post, how do you borrow from a 0% credit card to overpay on your mortgage. Am i missing something here? :rolleyes:

[Deleted User]

Yes your missing reading about it, from this and martins articles, its all explained.

MushyPeas

Gosh MartinsLoveChild, it's very impressive the way you calculate credit cards interest and stuff. Are there any websites you know of where you can enter % details and it works out how much you would earn? Or is there a clever maths bit involved?

Cheers

You are inspirational!

MPxx

JillD_2

Hi MLC,
I've just read this entire thread, many many congrats in becoming mortgage free :T what a great feeling that must be.

With 2 kids and a 3rd due next week :eek: spare money is in short supply for us at present and stoozing seems like the answer to a big scary mortgage unfortunately time is in short supply at the moment as well, so I think I will leave it til next year to consider embarking on stoozing.

We are off to a good start though having remortgaged in April to a 2 year fixed rate at 4.99%, and reduced our term by 2 years whilst only paying an extra tennera month. Our initial plan was to reduce the term by a further 2 years each time we remortgage and thus be mortgage free in 2018 (before we hit 50). I am now hoping stoozing will help bring this in further. Thanks for all your excelloent illustrations of how the process worked for you.

On the downside I only last month closed an Egg Money account as I just wasn't using it :mad: and can't reaply for 12 months. stoozing.com recommends the MBNA card as an alternative so maybe that will be the way to go for me.

Hope you enjoy spending your new found wealth
Jill

Martinslovechild

MushyPeas wrote: »

Gosh MartinsLoveChild, it's very impressive the way you calculate credit cards interest and stuff. Are there any websites you know of where you can enter % details and it works out how much you would earn? Or is there a clever maths bit involved?You are inspirational!

MPxx

Hiya MushyPeas.

I generally use WhatsTheCost website (http://www.whatsthecost.com/stoozing.aspx) - it's excellent for calculating those pesky figures fast.

MushyPeas wrote: »

You are inspirational!

MPxx

You've got me blushing again

JillD wrote: »

Many many congrats in becoming mortgage free :T what a great feeling that must be.

I can promise you that it certainly is!!

JillD wrote: »

We are off to a good start though having remortgaged in April to a 2 year fixed rate at 4.99%, and reduced our term by 2 years whilst only paying an extra tennera month. Our initial plan was to reduce the term by a further 2 years each time we remortgage and thus be mortgage free in 2018 (before we hit 50). I am now hoping stoozing will help bring this in further. Thanks for all your excelloent illustrations of how the process worked for you.

On the downside I only last month closed an Egg Money account as I just wasn't using it :mad: and can't reaply for 12 months. stoozing.com recommends the MBNA card as an alternative so maybe that will be the way to go for me.

Assuming you're married, why not consider opening an Egg Money account in your husband's name? Credit Card Companies are more than happy to BT from cards not in your name, bearing in mind that the debt becomes effectively 'owned' by the cardholder owning the card which the debt is being transferred to.

JillD wrote: »

Hope you enjoy spending your new found wealth

I already am making excellent progress on this one - my social calendar has never been so full!!