The "Mortgage-free in 2025-30" club!

pinkteapot

Busy few days and I've fallen behind on the thread!

choccielover, Brokeattheminute, audigex and NorthernMonkey1 – I’ve added you. Let me know if you want any details amending (or didn’t want to be listed!). audigex and NorthernMonkey1 – I used your realistic minimum dates.

I did my first craft fair at the weekend, selling cards I've been making. It was good overall. Quite a quiet fair so none of the stalls did brilliantly, but that wasn't so bad for my first one as I was getting the hang of it. I covered all my costs plus a few quid so not a waste of time, and I met some lovely fellow crafters who gave me some good tips about other fairs which are good. They all said that Saturday's fair wasn't great so I shouldn't give up based on that one. I'm booking a couple more and I'll see how they go.

choccielover

Thanks pinkteapot.

Glad the craft fair was at least slightly money making, at least you didn't lose anything and sounds like you got lots of fab market info for going forwards. Sounds like a resounding success to me

Chocs

choccielover

Ok so I have a Santander plan....need a sense check for feasibility and sensibility please.

I have the CC with around a £6k limit. I can quickly fill this with paying for my holiday and transferring my weekly spend in here which clearly benefits me in terms of cashback on petrol and shopping. I also think I can save 2% on my holiday if buying debenhams gift vouchers attracts the 2% cashback also. £90 so not to be sniffed at!!
My question is this. I think it's worth my while monthly paying off some of the cc balance then immediately building it back up with supermarket and fuel spend. If I'm honest we are creatures of habit and tend to fill the cars up on a Friday and shop at the supermarket on a Saturday. So I could clear an amount leaving a small balance unspent until I "topped it up" in fuel and food spent that weekend. Advantage being I would continually benefit from the cashback.

Does that make sense to anyone??
Is this possible? A terrible idea??
I know I would have to keep a close eye on the limits but my daily midweek routine is a balance of my bank accounts first thing in the morning so I have no worries about going over limits I don't think.....

Edited to add obviously the cash I would have spent on all these purchases will be put into an I terest bearing account (prob a Santander 123) gaining 3% never to be touched until the end of the 0% interest deal when I will pay it all off in one lump.

Chocs

choccielover

Oh blummin heck...just realised I missed out of £50 cashback from. It going through topcashback for opening the Santander accounts...

Though I may not have been seen as a new customer as I already had a savings account with them.......

Feel slightly better I suppose. Hate missing out on free cash

pinkteapot

If you max out the card and then need to buy some petrol, you either need to take the money out of savings to pay for the petrol, or clear that much off the credit card bill using savings and then use the credit card to pay for the petrol.

Either way, your savings go down by the cost of the petrol, but if you use the cashback card you get cashback. So you do clear some off and then use it again.

Unless my logic is flawed somewhere??

choccielover

Yep that's kindnof where I was heading, that I need to pay for the petrol clearly, but to pay for it on the credit card gets me 3% cashback so its worth it to do this I think. Then immediately replace the money I have taken from the savings to make room on the credit card for the new petrol spend with the money I would have spent on the petrol had I not used the credit card...

Make sense???

pinkteapot

Ooh, yes, if you have money elsewhere to refill savings, you should then pay as much as poss off the credit card each time and always use it to pay for spending.

That's assuming it's not one of those savings accounts that penalises you for withdrawals.

We have Amex cashback credit cards - we pay them off in full each month and put all our spending on them (well, as much as we can - not all shops take Amex). With a cashback card you want to spend as much on it as you can. If you just max it out and then let it sit there, you won't earn more cashback.

choccielover

Sorry just realised I missed one important detail off the credit card...its 0% on purchases for 23 months. Hence wanting to keep it at its max level as much as possible and the cash to pay it off in savings. These would be in the Santander 123 account so very easy access

pinkteapot

I understood that. So it makes sense to leave the money in savings rather than pay it off - absolutely.

But, if you then need to buy more stuff, I'm pretty sure it still makes sense to pay off some of the balance and buy using the credit card, then leave it again...

choccielover

Yep, thought so. Nice to have my thoughts confirmed though.

Appreciate your help

Chocs