Hi All! is it possible?

lfckerry

Thanks! i have an isa at the moment so will find out what the interest rate is on that!
So can you change your gas and electricity supplier at any time or are you tied in? i currently pay £47 per month for both, does that sound good??

KiKi

Hey Kerry

I have a 2-bed house and I pay £32 a month for gas / elec. If I were you I'd go to uswitch.com and test your payments with your current supplier against other suppliers. Martin's article here: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/you-switch-gas-electricity

Generally, you're not tied in. However, as consumers have become more savvy about moving between suppliers, there has been talk of introducing some tie-ins (don't know if it's happened with any suppliers, yet). So check, just in case.

Once you've checked out which supplier is cheapest for you, check which site will make you money - I switched through moneysupermarket.com and got £30 for the privilege of switching!

To look at where to save money to go towards the mortgage, I went to the home page of this site, and went through each and every area (utilities, insurance, holidays, groceries, banking, travel etc) and made savings in every area. Those savings go towards my mortgage.

But don't be in too much of a panic. You have lots of time, yet. And I hope you enjoy your new home; it's a great feeling, isn't it?!


KiKi

tsharp

lfckerry wrote: »

Thanks! i have an isa at the moment so will find out what the interest rate is on that!
So can you change your gas and electricity supplier at any time or are you tied in? i currently pay £47 per month for both, does that sound good??

That's exaclty what we pay, are you with E-on/Powergen? I checked uswitch etc and didn't really get much of a difference.

bunking_off

KiKi wrote: »

Generally, you're not tied in. However, as consumers have become more savvy about moving between suppliers, there has been talk of introducing some tie-ins (don't know if it's happened with any suppliers, yet). So check, just in case.

You're not generally tied in, but read the smallprint. Quite often the savings quoted on comparison sites are based on receiving a dual-fuel discount, which in turn is quite often paid only after a year.

lfckerry

We are with Npower and they were the provider for the house before we bought it so we just stayed with the same for ease.
i will check the small print on the docs about being tied in. What is annoying is when you first start things like tv licence and water they make you pay your first year in bigger chunks over a shorter term! I had a row with the TV licence people because you pay for your first year over 6 months and then start your 2nd yrs payments straight away so you are always 6 months in credit, which you get back if you cancel-which is really likely(not!)

Kaz2904

Bit of a stitch up isn't it. Probably the only time you would claim it back is in the estate of a deceased person but who would think to claim back 6 months TV licence?

bunking_off

Actually, I did for my brother-in-law...got ninety quid back - all goes towards the cost of a nice headstone.

(Edit...apologies if this has gone a bit morbid by wandering off target!! My b-in-l would definitely have been pleased for me to get everything he deserved back...)

belfastgirl23

Thanks everyone for the ISA vs mortgage debate, it was really useful for me cos it's something I have been wondering about myself. I didn't think about the tax thing with the savings calc (bet it says on it too and I didn't notice). Cheers

esthomizzy

Hi Ifckerry

Welcome to being a MFW. It's great you are looking at how to reduce your mortgage so early on, many people never even think of this until many years after they could have done and waste loads in the process.

Your term at 30 years does seem a very long time and it is worth you looking at how much interest this is monthly so you are continually motivated to shorten the term. As you are just managing to live comfortably I doubt you'd be able to exceed the 10%pa limit on overpayments anyway. If you take a look at www.whatsthecost.com and stick in your figures you can see how much the interest payments will be at different terms and this might motivate you to see how much you can decrease your term by finding an extra few hundred a month (in my case I managed to knock nearly 6 years off for 200pcm, (from 25 to 19) it is a great struggle for me at the moment but I'm confident it will get easier). If you cannot belt tighten at the moment you could think about when either of you next get a payrise as you can often assign all of that money from a set date to the mortgage plan pool. I am in a fix for 25 years but I just ring up my mortgage company once a month and tell them I want to make a 200pcm overpayment.

Good luck with it
Esthomizzy