Mortgage Free by 55

VDOT47 · 22 November 2017 at 3:11PM

Shopping for the week has come in quite low so far, but we are meeting friends on Sunday afternoon which will probably involve some spending at the pub on food/drink, so maybe we won't save as much this week as I had hoped.

Changes in the Budget to personal allowance and income tax thresholds will make a small difference from April, and anything extra in my wages as a result of that can be siphoned straight into overpayments.

OH is also amazingly ahead of herself with Christmas shopping etc too, so hopefully we won't have a massive bill in December for presents, food etc.

greent · 23 November 2017 at 9:13AM

Can't answer your query about Santander OPs, sorry - I had my first mortgage briefly with Abbey National (showing my age!) but only for about 6 months - and long before online banking!

Am sure if you phone them they could answer the question - and hopefully then allocate it properly whilst on the phone. Worth phoning to check what you need to do to make sure it doesn't happen again?

VDOT47 · 23 November 2017 at 1:53PM

Thanks GreenT - will do.

Just spoken with the surveyor who visited this morning and apparently we will be eligible for free cavity wall insulation, so hopefully that will save us some money on energy bills over the years :-)

louloubelle79 · 23 November 2017 at 3:04PM

Just found your diary, good luck with you journey.

VDOT47 · 23 November 2017 at 4:36PM

Thank you - I think it will be pretty slow progress initially, but every little helps.

greent · 23 November 2017 at 6:44PM

We had most of the cost of our cavity wall insulation covered by a gov grant and it did make a noticeable difference to how the house felt after

VDOT47 · 24 November 2017 at 9:55AM

Right, I have the answer.

I got home last night to a letter from Santander saying that they had applied £10 as an overpayment and recalculated our monthly payment to take this into account. It said that, if this wasn't how we wanted the overpayments to be treated then we should call them, so I did.

It is now set up that all overpayments will go towards reducing the term instead.

Annoyingly, the girl on the phone said that after each overpayment I would get a letter confirming the reduction in the term! I asked if this was really necessary, and not just a waste of paper, but she said that was how their system worked. So I think, to avoid being bombarded by letters, I will just made one overpayment each month rather than ad hoc ones as and when.

Also upped our DD to £1200 pcm from December, so we will be making a small overpayment each month just through that, regardless of other amounts.

VDOT47 · 24 November 2017 at 10:57AM

Been considering opening some new current accounts to take advantage of the various offers - we have c£7000 in an easy-access savings account earning the square root of nothing each year, so I think I am going to open some Tesco and Nationwide current accounts and transfer some of the savings into each in order to earn 3% and 5% interest respectively. Also would get us access to Nationwide's 5% regular saver, which is better than the 4% one I have access to with Halifax.

VDOT47 · 27 November 2017 at 10:49AM

Morning all,

Two good pieces of moneysaving news:

1) Nationwide FlexDirect account applied for, and I have persuaded OH to open one too, so that can be a harbour for a further £2500 of savings. So between them that should earn us £250 of interest over the next year (rather than the £10 or so it would earn where it is currently sitting). The only catch is that OH says I have to be the one to spend the time doing the transfers in and out every month to satisfy the account conditions.
2) Pay rise, expected from next month, has actually taken effect from this payday!

So, should be able to make a good overpayment this month after all :-)

VDOT47 · 27 November 2017 at 10:50AM

Oh, and when OH opens the Nationwide account I should get £100 cashback from referring ' a friend' :-)

Mortgage Free by 55

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