The first hurdle - Nichelette v the huge mortgage

Nichelette

It has been a while! Very quick post but I have been paying off more odd amounts from cashback and matched betting. The football season has started tonight and the first full fixture list is tomorrow. I've really missed the football!

888 kindly gave me a £25 free bet which I've made £17 from, and I will be doing some more tomorrow. I really forgot how much I was actually making from it. As before not all winnings will be overpayments as some will be kept in my exchange for future matched betting but anything that wins in the bookmakers I will most likely overpay.

I will be at £5 in prolific once a couple of surveys have been validated, and I've done a £4 survey on pinecone which I'll get cash for once it has gone through their system.

I need to update forecast 2026 for last month which I'll probably do tomorrow, and I will one day write a proper post about the bits I do to get extra cash in case it might help anyone .

savingholmes

Hi Nichelette - any chance you could pm me re matched betting please - it is something I really want to look into after next pay day... Thanks SH.

BachSoon

That's great progress nichelette! Shall look forward to your next post.

P.s. do you receipthog? It's only pennies per receipt so it's a slow burn, but I'm getting close to a £20 pay out.

Nichelette

Hi Saving, I don't have the time right now and typing on my kindle is hard lol, but I will write a more detailed post about matched betting when I get the time to sit down properly and you are welcome to pm me if you need any help . I'm the meantime have a look at this as it's how I learnt and I think they explain it pretty well:https://www.teamprofit.com/welcome-offers-list

Thanks Bach. I do, but it is incredibly slow! I also do Huyu & Shoppix which I find are much better.

I still haven't updated my spreadsheet. Slacking!

Made about £200 from matched betting bits which I was really happy with . Money is all over the place so not sure what sort of overpayment that translates to.

C- for effort at the moment :rotfl:

savingholmes

Thanks for the link

StripeyTightsSpottySocks

Hi Nichelette

You seem to be doing really well with Matched Betting :T

When you get the chance to post it would be great to hear about any other bits you do to get extra cash - messed up on quoting the post you mention this in

and :rotfl: to the squirrel eating your blueberries - so cute

Nichelette

Sorry it has taken me a while, but better late than never!

So this is my best explanation of matched betting...

Before I start, I cannot stress enough, DO NOT DO THIS IF YOU ARE LIKELY TO BE DRAWN INTO GAMBLING OR DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT PROPERLY, BECAUSE YOU ARE VERY LIKELY TO LOSE YOUR MONEY.

And now that is done...

I started matched betting last November. I did have a tracker but it was on my husbands work laptop and I got bored of waiting for him to upload the info all the time so I gave up tracking at 6 weeks when I had made £1300. I have made far more than this now, though I don't actually know how much, and do curse my impatience as I'd love to know the actual figure :rotfl:.

I taught myself using the info on this page: https://www.teamprofit.com/

There are a series of very good videos here which you should watch before starting: https://www.teamprofit.com/matched-betting-guide

Once you have watched the videos, there is a list of welcome offers to work through here: https://www.teamprofit.com/welcome-offers-list

Always check cashback sites as often you can get cashback for signing up too.

So you can start with any amount, but the more you start with the quicker you can work through the offers.

Step by step, here is how it works:

1 - You register with the bookmaker.

2 - You register with an exchange

When you match a bet, you are betting for an outcome with the bookmaker, and against the same outcome in an exchange, so one bet will win, and the other will lose. You will need enough cash in your exchange to meet the liability of the bet if the one you make in the exchange loses. This does not mean betting on the home team in one bookmaker, and the away team in an exchange, as it may be a draw and then both bets are lost.

3 - You put on what we call a 'trigger bet' with the bookmaker in line with the conditions of their welcome offer, for example, the Coral who I think is the first offer in the list requires you to place a £5 bet at minimum odds of 1.5 (you always set the odds to decimals, not fractional) to get 4 x £5 free bets. The free bets are where you make the money.

4 - The trigger bet that you will put on will have a small loss. This is referred to as a 'QL'. It should be a case of pence, and you will make it back from the free bets once they are credited.

5 - Worked example of a trigger bet:

Arsenal (my team ) are playing Newcastle today. The odds on Coral for Arsenal to win are 2.2.

This option isn't actually the best as ideally you want odds as close to 1.5 as possible to have the lowest possible QL, but I'll go with it to illustrate.

So odds at Coral 2.2. Odds on Betfair (the exchange) are currently 2.3. The lay odds are always in the pink boxes on Betfair, NEVER SELECT THE OPTION IN THE BLUE BOX AS THIS IS BACKING THE SAME OUTCOME TWICE AND YOU MAY LOSE BOTH BETS.

So I stick this into the calculator:

https://www.teamprofit.com/calculator

Leave the setting as 'normal' and in simple mode.

Enter a back stake of £5, at odds of 2.2. Back commission is always 0%.

Enter lay odds of 2.3 and lay commission of 0% - this is a Betfair welcome offer, I use Smarkets as an exchange which has commission of 2%, so that's what I put when I am doing my own bets.

Hit calculate, and this shows that once I have placed the £5 bet in Coral, I need to lay the bet in the exchange by placing a bet of £4.78. This has a liability of £6.21. The liability is the amount of money I need in the exchange to put the bet on, as if the exchange bet loses I lose that money in the exchange, but win in the bookmaker.

Using that example, I make a loss of 22p.

However, we are not down in the long run as we now have the 4 x £5 free bets credited to our account.

Depending on the bookmaker you will either get the free bets straight away, or you may need to wait for your trigger bet to settle first.

6 - Where we make the money...

So now, we have these lovely free bets that we're going to profit from.

We do exactly the same as before, but we are looking for the highest possible odds.

So you switch the calculator to bet type 'Free (SNR)', and repeat the steps we did before.

You aim for odds within 10% of each other. Again, remember to select the pink boxes on the exchange, not the blue.

As an example, I put on a bet of £5 with odds of 6 at the bookmaker, and 6.6 in the exchange. Once the bet is settled I end up with a profit of £3.78 on that bet, but in this case you can do that 4x over ending up with about £15 profit.

In that case, the liability in the exchange for your £5 bet will be £21.22 (sometimes the calc is a couple of pence out, but no more than that, so if yours is you have done something wrong). The liability increases with the odds, but the profit is also greater.

If I did the same with back odds of 6 and lay odds of 8, my profit reduces to £3.09. This is why the back and lay need to have odds as close as possible.

Run a few variables through the calculator yourself to see if you understand and how the odds affect the returns and liability.

This process can be repeated for each of the bookmakers in the list I linked to above. Bet365 have a fantastic bet £100 offer for £100 free bet which you make about £75 from, but don't do this first as you need to have a decent amount in your exchange to meet the liability.

Once you have completed the welcome offers, there are what we call reload offers. These are offers sent to lure people in, so it may be bet £10, get a £20 free bet, and so on. We always want the free bet offers as these are how we make money by repeating the process above with a trigger bet, and then using the resulting free bet(s).

There are also some other more complex bets, but I won't go into all that now!

Hopefully that makes sense! I have been pretty busy lately but I will try to answer any questions when I can. Anyway, I'm off, Arsenal kick off in 5 .

savingholmes

Thanks Nichelette so much for your time.

I think I will copy your post into word and save it. I want to give it a go after payday. I used to do bingo sites using cashback sites - ie if I won it was gravy as I was really doing the joining offer when they used to offer £20 for a £10 spend or even £10 for a £10 spend. I once won £55 by what felt like pure accident on a £10 matched betting type thing. Occasionally I won at the bingo. I know I am not a gambler in that sense so am confident I wouldn't be sucked in. Plus OH can see everything I do on the bank account so no where to hide so I have an accountability partner built in. I have personal spends of around £52 of this new pay day (after I dock 48 already accounted for) so will start small.

Nichelette

You're welcome saving . I've done the bingo ones too. There are others similar to that (casino ones) and gamesys sites. Will find link when not on kindle but they are pretty lucrative too, and some of them offer cashback .

Nichelette

It has been a while since I posted again. I do continue with the overpayments when I'm not posting though. I make my overpayment of £1000 on payday and little bits of extra income throughout the month.

I've just cashed in £5 on Pinecone and another £5.50 on prolific (keep being sent bonus money lately, not sure why but I'm not complaining) which will be overpayments when I receive them. This is the current state of affairs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZDOFRp0d8_cc9tSAUlPUolGiF0gwIbE_JlDubrOsw3w/edit#gid=0

Husband went to Scotland this morning which is adding a lot to our outgoings. He has been very sad lately about his mum which is understandable and also his job. He loves the job but the people in charge are terrible people managers so I can see why he hates it (I'm a team leader and I'd never behave the way these people do.. ) so he has applied for another job. I've told him to just try and get away from it. He's a very happy go lucky person usually so it's out of character for him to be so sad .

It was our anniversary earlier this week so we went to dinner in Brighton as it's where we got married. It was nice but then husband began to think about the fact that his mum was well then it all went a bit downhill. I find it so hard that I can't do anything to make it better for him. He's in limbo at the moment just waiting to lose her. It's really hard as he can't grieve whilst he's stuck in this position. He hates leaving me here and hates leaving her there which makes it even harder on him. Anyway, enough doom and gloom...

I've decided to put 5k of our emergency fund into premium bonds. I live in hope :rotfl:. I was getting very little in interest on it as it was sitting in a low interest ISA so I thought I might as well give it a go. We won quite regularly when I put our house deposit in them, though obviously that was a far bigger amount.

I have the credit card if I need quick access to money. Speaking of the credit card, I have been putting the flights on it which means the balance is a bit higher than the money in the regular saver will cover as that was only for the kitchen. It's 0% for 22 months I think, so I will probably pay it off slightly after the regular saver has matured. I figure it makes more sense for now to plough the money into overpayments as they are saving us interest.

The mortgage is on an introductory rate for 2 years. We are currently 7 months in, but I've seen that it's possible to look at new deals 3-6 months before your existing deal expires. I am hoping to get to a minimum LTV of 80% (need to get the mortgage down to £256,000) with a stretch target of 75%, though I think this may be a bit too far at £240,000. That's assuming the house doesn't decrease in value. I actually have nothing against it decreasing in principle, aside from it possibly reducing our LTV.

I am quite concerned about what will happen with interest rates which is another reason I'm trying to get the mortgage down as quickly as possible. I have thought that if it reduces our LTV enough we could possible pay our emergency fund off the mortgage and then build it up again post remortgage, but we will see. My plan is to get a 5 year fix. I would have preferred this at the outset but the default on husbands credit file means we're paying a higher rate than otherwise which would have continued for another 3 years if we had fixed for the 5 originally.

At 7 months in we have reduced from the 289's to the 275's in a couple of days when the regular monthly payment goes. I feel like that is quite a milestone and I'm really proud of how much we've managed to pay down so far. It isn't easy but I know how much better I'll feel when it's a more manageable size and we're not sailing so close to the wind if rates rise.