FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

financialbliss

Effy wrote: »

Thanks Fb & QB off to research this credit card cashback malarkey and investigate quidco...

Effy,
QuidCo is one of those things, where once you've discovered it, you wonder why you weren't doing this years ago.

Say you want to buy a specific Disney Pixar "3" DVD and you do some browsing on the internet and find it at a certain "Every little helps..." retailer for £9.97. Log in, add to basket and confirm order. Job done.

But, what if you discover a website where you can do essentially the same, except instead of going to retailer site directly, you go via the third party website. Enter QuidCo...

Register with QuidCo (for free). The first £5 of every year's worth of earnings are kept as payment - all earnings above that are past back on to you via payment runs which they're now doing twice a month. Well, that's about it in a nutshell, except that different retailers offer different amounts of cash back.

"Every little helps..." retailer offering 9% cash back on entertainment sales, so that's £0.89 cash back on the £9.97 transaction. So effectively the purchase is £9.08 once you take the cash back into consideration.

Hope that helps,
FB

PS - I can be specific with the cash back amounts, as I've had an email confirmation for the purchase I made yesterday although I've probably done a poor job at hiding the retailer and the DVD purchased!

Queen-Bee_2

Hi Effy, I'd back everything FB says, but the cashback site I use is called Topcashback and it doesn't deduct £5 from your annual savings QB

financialbliss

Queen-Bee wrote: »

Hi Effy, I'd back everything FB says, but the cashback site I use is called Topcashback and it doesn't deduct £5 from your annual savings QB

QB,
Topcashback are popular too, but QuidCo gets a fair few mentions from the MSE forum members. I'm sure I read somewhere, that QuidCo tend to pay more out on a like-for-like basis, despite the annual £5 account charge. Could be wrong though.

The important thing Effy, is that if you're going to order something on-line, rather than just go straight to the retailer site, check to see if you can also save a little by initiating the transaction via a cash back site.

You can save a further few pennies by using a cash back credit card too!

FB.

financialbliss

Nationwide current account. Got in from work yesterday to a paper current account statement from Nationwide. Alarm bells immediately went off as I don’t get paper based statements. On the last page was a £15 charge for being overdrawn on 18th November. :eek:

Logging into the internet banking, I’d made a transfer from e-savings to the current account on the 17th November and made an American Express credit card payment on the 18th November. The on-line transactions showed that the e-savings to current account transfer as occurring on 18th November with a comment that it was credited on the 17th. But, with the AmEx payment coming off the account first on the 18th followed by the credit from e-savings, it showed the account as being overdrawn.

So in the knowledge that I knew I’d made the transfer before initiating the payment and being prepared to close all accounts with Nationwide as there was not a cat in hells chance that I would be paying the £15 charge, I initiated a phone call to them on Friday evening, calm but prepared for a fight.

After the usual security hoops and a few further transfer questions and being put on hold while the girl spoke to a supervisor, the £15 charge is being removed. :T

Apparently there’s been quite a few of these in the last few weeks and it’s some sort of internet banking glitch on their part.

It couldn’t have been handled better and I lost count of how many times I got a sorry for the inconvenience / having to call us. Much better than the Nationwide of late who have been removing credit interest from current accounts and dropping rates on savings accounts.

Asda credit card. Still on the subject of accounts, we’ve not used this CC account in a while. Originally taken up to get the 2p reduction on fuel, which recently was halved to a 1p fuel reduction, we’ve stopped using this card in preference to the American Express card where we get a 1.25% reduction on spending. Card has had a zero balance since August, so this evening I initiated a close request via their secure messaging service. Will be interesting to see how long this takes to be actioned, as I’ve found the service to be poor since the running of the account was taken over by Santander.

FB.

gallygirl

financialbliss wrote: »

After the usual security hoops and a few further transfer questions and being put on hold while the girl spoke to a supervisor, the £15 charge is being removed. :T

Apparently there’s been quite a few of these in the last few weeks and it’s some sort of internet banking glitch on their part.

It couldn’t have been handled better and I lost count of how many times I got a sorry for the inconvenience / having to call us.

Hate to disagree FB - but they COULD have handled it better - by automatically refunding the charge to everyone. They make a 'glitch', they make a refund when you notice & complain, they keep the £15 from everyone who thinks it was probably something they did so don't complain. :mad:. Nice little earner for them, in addition to all the charges they now make for withdrawing cash overseas, having spent years boasting that they didn't charge you a 'tip' to access your own money. :mad:.

OK, am far too wound up on a Sunday morning now :rotfl:.

On a happier, quidco, note, I spoke to a friend last night I hadn't spoken to for months. First thing she said was thanks for telling her about it, she's earned loads and has got everyone at work on it too :T.

Not looking forward to update FB, am still behind

financialbliss

gallygirl wrote: »

Hate to disagree FB - but they COULD have handled it better - by automatically refunding the charge to everyone...

Fair point gallygirl. I got the impression that the issue wasn't across the board - quite the opposite, as the girl mentioned they "had a few in the last week". What exactly a few means in call centre terms, I'm not sure, but I think my enthusiastic reply was due to not having to pay the £15 charge.

In all honestly, Nationwide have gone down in my estimates - no where near the building society they once were - they act more like a PLC now.

Fixed rate mortgage ends with them in March - just 3 more payments and depending on what offers / deals are on the table at Nationwide / elsewhere, I may be tempted to move lock, stock and barrel elsewhere.

Possibly Halifax rewards current account - a fiver each month for £1k credit, but I guess the big banks are as bad as each other and all have their own set of issues.

FB.

Queen-Bee_2

financialbliss wrote: »

In all honestly, Nationwide have gone down in my estimates - no where near the building society they once were - they act more like a PLC now.

Agreed - I am a former Portman customer, and they were much more efficient and much nicer to deal with. It might sound silly, but the service really did seem more personal back then.
QB

financialbliss

As we are 1 year into the MFiT-T2 challenge, thought I would do a little analysis on my own situation.

For each of the MFiT-T2 charts, I’ve been in the yellow zone, which if you’ve not looked any the charts, means I’m not quite on schedule, but not falling far enough behind that I’m in the red zone.

MFiT-T2 challenge here:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/1402631

See post 5 – section link to previously published charts to see charts 01 to 04 if you’re interested.

Chart / Shortfall / Difference
01. 271 / N/A
02. 542 / 271
03. 762 / 220
04. 928 / 166

So, at the end of year one, I’m £928 behind where I need to be to completely clear the mortgage by 12/12/12.

But, the difference in shortfall was reducing during year one, ie difference between Chart 02 and Chart 03 shortfall was £271, while the difference between Chart 03 and Chart 04 shortfall was less at £166. Not too bad - could be worse I guess!

Year two is going to be interesting, as I’ll not be feeding as much to the mortgage and I could slip into the red zone.

More number crunching and information for 2011 later, as I’ve joined the 2011 MFW and I need to formulate an overpayment plan / goal for that, which I'm finding a little hard to pin down.

FB.

JonnyBravo

Queen-Bee wrote: »

Agreed - I am a former Portman customer, and they were much more efficient and much nicer to deal with. It might sound silly, but the service really did seem more personal back then.
QB

Couldnt agree more.
I moved to FD and have been much more impressed with FD.
So long Nationwide with your shifting sands and zero flexibility on rule breaking.

financialbliss

financialbliss wrote: »

Asda credit card. Still on the subject of accounts, we’ve not used this CC account in a while. Originally taken up to get the 2p reduction on fuel, which recently was halved to a 1p fuel reduction, we’ve stopped using this card in preference to the American Express card where we get a 1.25% reduction on spending. Card has had a zero balance since August, so this evening I initiated a close request via their secure messaging service. Will be interesting to see how long this takes to be actioned, as I’ve found the service to be poor since the running of the account was taken over by Santander.

Hi all,
Belated Christmas wishes to all who read this diary. I'm struggling with time management at present and just haven't spent much time on the PC. Christmas went well, although probably overspent a little.

With the end of the year upon us and the new year just around the corner, I really need to get myself into gear and take stock of where I am, where I wanted to be and any big plans for 2011.

First thing is the ASDA credit card. Quoted above from 4th December, I'd heard nothing from them until I prompted them on Tuesday 28th December. Despite this being a bank holiday, got an email a few hours later advising they have sent me a secure message and that I should log into my credit card account to read it.

On attempting to do so, I got an error message advising that I was not registered for credit card services. I suspect I need to interpret that as them having closed the account, although I'm tempted to call them to confirm the account has been closed...

Now off for a belated attempt to get my financial house in order before the end of the year.

Wish me luck - going to need it.

FB.