How we’re overpaying our mortgage EVERY month without paying anything….

Did I mention that we moved house? 😁😁😁

And as much as we were excited to move, it’s never fun to think about taking on the commitment of a whole new mortgage. 

We want to pay our mortgage off as soon as we can so we’re doing a few things to make sure that there are regular over-payments to reduce the balance because every over-payment that we make not only reduces the mortgage by that amount, it also reduces the amount of interest that you pay overall and will ultimately reduce the term of the mortgage. 

I’m going to tell you about one of the things that we’re doing to overpay and reduce our mortgage term today but bear in mind that it’s just one of the things that we’re doing so whilst it might feel like a small impact, it’s really not and it’s part of what we hope will help us shave years off our mortgage term.

We’ve been using an app called Sprive which, if you watch Dragons Den, you might already know about. 

Sprive is kind of like a cashback app except all of the cashback goes into a pot that you can pay off your mortgage. 

The way you earn cashback is a teeny bit faffy in that when you’re spending at one of the companies who are signed up to Sprive, you need to buy a gift card for that company via Sprive and use that to pay the company which I wasn’t a fan of at first but now I’m an expert and can do it in seconds at the till. 

Basically, you open the app and click on shop, choose the company you want to spend with and buy a voucher for the amount you need. You can take a guess and buy in advance with any leftover staying on the gift card for next time or any shortfall being paid as you’d normally pay or you can do what we do and just take 10 seconds when you have the total amount and buy the specific amount. 

There are loads of retailers on there including Asda, Tesco, Morrisons, B&M, AirBnb, Toby Carvery, Butlins and Jet 2 to name just a few and they all offer varying amounts of cashback. 

We had to go to B&M last night for a few things that we needed for the house so I thought I’d use that as an example of how it works.

We got £2 cashback which, when paid off our mortgage saved £2.19 in interest meaning that we reduced our mortgage overall by £4,19 which is not a huge amount overall in the grand scheme of things but it took 20 seconds to do and we actually added up our trolley in the queue and bought the gift voucher while we were waiting which made it even easier. 

If we hit £15 cashback each month that will reduce our mortgage by 8 months which is a significant amount of time and I know future us will be grateful that we’re doing this now. 

To give you an idea of how you could make Sprive work for you with no inconvenience or hassle… If you do a £75 food shop at one of the big supermarkets who are partnering with Sprive (Asda, Morrisons, Tesco) then that would save you SIX months off your mortgage term. for less than a minute’s worth of effort each week! 

Is that not a complete no-brainer?

We’re not dedicated enough to do it for the smaller amounts but I’d say for anything £15 or over, if the company is listed on Sprive then we’re going to do it if we can and I will say that we’ve started to use self serve queues more and more as that’s the easiest way for us as we can grab the voucher for the exact amount without delaying anyone even for a few seconds. 

I’m so grateful that B&Q and Dunelm are on there as they’ve been our biggest earners this last couple of weeks as we’ve been buying house things. 😁

Sprive works with most major lenders – Nationwide, First Direct, HSBC, Lloyds, Barclays, Santander, RBS, Virgin Money, Halifax, Natwest, Yorkshire Building Society, and TSB Bank – and it takes about 30 seconds to link your account so you can do the overpayments. 

We’ve been transferring over between £5 and £10 a week from Sprive to our mortgage account since we signed up and I am hoping that we can do at least £5 a week going forward. 

It’s not one of those too good to be true things as Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden and Toukah Suleyman all loved the idea of Sprive and invested in the business on Dragons Den and since then, I’ve heard more people talking about it so I thought it was worth a share with you all just in case you fancy giving it a go.

I’d be very grateful if you used my refer a friend code AQJOGSTL when signing up if you decide to save money on your mortgage with Sprive. 

I’d love you follow me on Twitter and it would be amazing to see you over on my Facebook page and on Instagram. If you’re interested, you can find out more about me here and while I’ve got your attention, if you’re wondering why some of my posts lately are a little bit less frugal then have a read of this post. 😉

Do your future self a favour – Pin this post for later.