Busy Mee's Last Leg

savingholmes

Glad the switching worked so well. I wanted to do one but it wanted to auto transfer salaries to new account to so I abandoned it...

Busy_Mee

We have never switched the accounts our salary/pension go into SH. I keep those static. I opened a couple of donor accounts that I use for switching and they have literally just been switched from bank to bank. Depending on the requirements for the switch, I set them up with a couple of DDs and swish the minimum feed requirement through them by SO. It goes in one day and out the next.

When we have landed with a bank that we want to stick with because they have a good regular saver, I have just started again and opened another donor account.

We currently have the following current accounts
Barclays - My salary goes in here and includes mortgage offset and doubled up Blue rewards of 2 x £12 per Month.

M&S - Mr Mee's pension goes in here. Regular saver of £250 per month @2.75%

HSBC - 2 x regular savers of £250 per month @ 2.75%

First Direct - 2 x regular savers of £300 per month @ 2.75 %

Halifax - 2 x £5000 = 2 x £5 per month rewards

Lloyd's - 2 x Free films + free magazine. Potential for 1.5 % on balances up to £5000. 

Santander - Bills account. Earns rewards of around £5 a month

TSB - Mr Mee only. Ready for switching if another offer comes up

Principality - not a current account but a regular saver of £125 per month @ 2.75 %

In addition we have a number of ISA and pension accounts.  

You can probably see why Mr Mee moans when I open new accounts. He is worried that something will happen to me and he will be left untangling it all.  I would like to start consolidating but tbh, I am also keen to get as much interest out of the funds earmarked for the mortgage. If the regular savers reduce their interest any further, I will probably dump them at that point. 

However I reckon that I have earned nearly £2000 in switch bonuses  . TBh that feel like a good return on the effort required.

Moneyfordreams

That's impressive Busymee 

Busy_Mee

Haha......I think people in the real world would consider it mad 

beanielou

That is indeed impressive.

teapot2

Well done, thats an excellent return on all your switching and money tetris

Cornish_mum

So brilliant on the switches, I would like to start doing them again. MrCM won’t let me use his name alas.

savingholmes

Very impressive - thanks for the explanation - I may try again. I tried HSBC but it seemed to be trying to force me to switch both our pay which I didn't want to do so I crashed out of it instead. I have two accounts I set up ready to switch from - just not done so in practice... 

Busy_Mee

Morning everyone. I can't quite believe we are now in October. This year is going so fast. Mind you the weather has definitely turned Autumnal, it is very grey and wet this morning.
So the financial round up is as follows:
September Update
Repayment Mortgage.        £41,563.21
IO Mortgage.                     £159,000.00
Total Mortgage.                  £200,563.21  
Reduction in Mortgage.         £1,949.21

Ring fenced Savings            £213,000.00  
Added to savings.                      0.00 
Savings minus Mortgage.       £12,436.79 ( towards forever fund )   

Odds and sods account.      £372.47
Principality BS                      £1375.00

Paid off Mortgage.               £1500.00
Total O&S.                            £3247.47

In summary, it has been a bit of a steady month. We have paid off another £1000 off the IO mortgage, in addition to the regular mortgage payment. We have now paid £10k off the IO mortgage since Mr Mee retired  I am really pleased with this ( although obviously helped by Covid ).

 Next month I am on track to pay another £1500 off the IO mortgage, because I will have another £500 in the O&S account. The O&S savings are building really well. I round my current account to the nearest £10 every day and this is supplemented by TopCashback and any other bits and pieces. This month we had switch rewards from Lloyd's Bank. 

This really has to be the most painless way of saving money 

Suffolk Lass pointed out the very untidy Repayment Mortgage balance last month and said she would need to round it down. The untidy figure does really upset me but I am trying not to touch the repayment mortgage, because any extra payment would reduce the regular mortgage payment. We pay a regular amount each month for the repayment mortgage , plus an irregular amount for the interest on the IO mortgage. The repayment mortgage effectively sorts itself out and by the end of the mortgage term will be gone  I need to concentrate on the IO and the more I can pay off this, the more will be left in the ring fenced savings at the end of the mortgage term.

The plan is to keep chipping away at the IO mortgage, then when I retire pay a chunk (around £30 k) off the repayment Mortgage. This will leave around £4K on the repayment Mortgage, but substantially reduce the monthly mortgage payment from £980  to £140 per month.  This will allow both parts of the mortgage to keep running until the end of term ( my 60th Birthday ) At that point the repayment mortgage will have gone and I hope that the interest only mortgage will be down to £150 k) This should leave £60-70 k in the ring fenced savings towards the forever fund ( along with my pension lump sum). And that is the cunning plan. Simples  

savingholmes

Great planning and execution