I have not used my Quidco account yet because of the £5 fee, though I am ruthless about culling cookies and then turning off my cookie manager during such purchases. So I have had few missed deals.

I've just been doing the maths.
When I remortgage next year, If I pay £100 extra a month (coupled with the lower interest rates available for fixed mortgages compared to the one have now), I can knock five years off my mortgage.
Even after the extra payments, thats £16k saving in interest over the lifetime of the mortgage!

Always made overpayment on my mortgage since day 1 – generally about 10% of the monthly payment

Not sure how much this will save us but I do know that each year when they review our mortgage they drop the standard payment – so we increase thje over paymen t to keep the same amount going out

We've made ad-hoc overpayments, but always to reduce our monthly payments. Now we're looking at trying to pay it off asap. Based on the above plan we'll pay it off in 2027.

Overpaying is always the best way to reduce your mortgage. My cousin put money into a PEP and that was enough to clear his mortgage seven years early.

Top Cash back are now doing cash back in Tesco Clubcard points and you get another 5% bonus for doing that way. You get a point per penny cash back, so you can accumulate points faster than through normal spending.

“These three 'safe-havens' look ready to crumble”

£1bn asset manager Tim Price reveals three assets he believes you need to dump ASAP

http://pro.fleetstreetpublications.co.u ... g=0&h=true

He's obviously selling his services, but see what you make of it if you take an interest in such matters.

I watched that video. It seems sensible in part. Though you can see he is a monetarist.

He is right about the eurozone banking crisis, but forgets that the UK banks whom might have recapitalized and so by his measure be safe ignores the fact that they have huge loans across Europe. RBS has €46 billion outstanding in Ireland alone. If the Irish collapse then RBS will collapse as that €46 billion is much larger than all the new shares that all the banks have issued. Also Barclays is amongst the most levered of the UK banks.

As to the currency collapse, that is almost government policy to boost exports and reduce imports. Though if it does collapse then we are all in the same boat together.

As for the UK Gilts that is already well known and many have been getting out of bonds of all sorts anyway.

The comments about hyper inflation are based on the expansion of the money supply. The real problem that the Bank of England is facing is deflation, not inflation. He showed the similarity with Japan and yet few are talking about a collapse of property on the scale of Japan. That is what we are really facing.

The real issue is that these threats are already well known and the smart money have been exiting them for months anyway.

The video's definitely slightly dated, but then I spose that shows you how quickly things can happen.

Yes and no. It could happen very rapidly when something big enough to trigger the collapse. All the time bombs he mentioned were known about years ago. I said to my dad five years ago French banks were a significant problem. They still are. They are linked so a collapse of banks will create concern about government bonds and the currency. No one can tell when they will happen.

The best current accounts to suit you


I discovered my bank offers a better interest rate option so have upgraded the account.

Be wary of telcos when switching, Orange failed to transfer a DD within 21 days (instead of 7) and I nearly got caught out from them when they received instruction to move the DD but failed to do anything about it, tried to stick me with a fine until I told them the bank were already sending me all the DDI forms to prove they are at fault. It never showed on an ADDACS orr ARUDDS report as they never even tried to take the payment for it

That said the bank I switched to were really on the ball, even when I called them at 11pm last week (got the paper copy of the report today in the post), the £125 for switching was a nice bonus

I need to check what my energy company are doing about my dd as last time I checked nothing had been debited since I returned back to them.