To not have many options re mortgage

Don't be scared about paying more for your mortgage next year then. Learn how interest is calculated and applied to a loan and start shopping around six months before your current deal ends. It's only money, you've got plenty of it.

Hey deep breaths OP.
i work in mortgages so this is my bread and butter.

i will not lie to you swaps right now are high but they are not Liz truss high, they also came down a bit today (last few days were scary) but your mortgage doesn’t expire for another year, and no one has a crystal ball, you have no idea what swaps will look like then. So I’d play it by ear. You know your monthly repayment will go up, that is a known known at this point, it is just the quantum of how much.

there are many options available to you

1. unless you need to borrow more money you do not need to remortgage, you can product transfer which means affordability will not be reassessed
2. if we persist in a rate up environment a tracker is your best bet as they are going to be cheaper than the fixed (you’ll see it atm)
3. you can talk to your lender about switching to interest only for a while if you think you really struggle
4. can you pay down any capital balance

A lot of people work hard. What you earn has no correlation on how hard you work.

If you have enough intelligence that both of you can get postgraduate degrees, you can find and use an online mortgage calculator. You can also know that your household income is significantly above most households from a very simple Google. You aren’t earning that much if you can’t use Google.

If tomorrow is not guaranteed, why are you even worrying about what the interest rate will be next year?

Just accept you need to learn how to budget. It’s quite normal as you climb the career ladder for your lifestyle to creep. It’s not a moral failure that you have to recheck yourself sometimes and reign your spending in. It is a moral failure to pretend you can’t pay the mortgage when you bring home at least £9K per month and your partner is pulling mortgage repayment figures out of his arse (and you’re getting worked up about them).

From someone with a postgrad, by the way.

Where on earth are you getting these repayment figures from?

We have a £620k mortgage on a £900k house and currently pay £2.9k a month. Renew in May 2027. Current mortgage rates look to be about just over £3k.

Where do you get £4-5k from?

I also have a postgraduate degree and have attended endless courses subsequently. What's your point?
Well, you lived your life because tomorrow is not guaranteed. Now you arrived at the point where your mortgage rate is no longer guaranteed which, I am sure, figured in your thoughts when you were making the decision to "live for today".

If you genuinely are both that educated take an hour and read up on mortgages.
Take an hour to look at your finances.

This isn't hard. You can do it while living for today.

Financial planning is key BECAUSE tomorrow is not guaranteed

Sounds like he's thought that if the interest rate doubles then the payment doubles, which is not true.

Don’t be daft. Most people work hard.

I agree, it's baffling. There is a common view that poor people are poor because they can't manage their money, yet it seems that it's the high earners who are completely clueless when it comes to budgeting while every single mother on UC can figure out how to feed a family on her last £10. I suppose, if you never had to then you wouldn't know what to do.
My mortgage is nearly 4 times my salary and I am on track to pay it off within 15 years instead of 25 and this is including (the unlikely) 7,5% variable which starts in 4 years. And I earn nowhere near what the OP's family have at their disposal. With 200k income and a mortgage of less that 3 times combined salary, the OP and her husband could have easily paid half of that in the 10 years they've had it and would be in a much stronger position to remortgage. So unless they have massive pension pots and multiple investments they've been squirreling away, I don't really understand why this hasn't occurred to them or reasons for complete lack of financial planning.
Or, indeed, why they couldn't splash out on a financial advisor or a mortgage broker to explain to them how remortgaging works.

Assuming 550k left over 25 years wouldn’t repayments be about £3k a month at 4.5%? What % assumption was your partner making to get to 4-5k a month? Were they talking about worst case rather than a most likely scenario?

OP, and anybody else in this situation, if you want to become a bit more savvy about mortgages look on the MSE mortgage forum. The mortgage-free wannabe forum is quite interesting too. Play around with figures on the MSE mortgage calculators, especially the overpayment calculator. Look at how much compound interest you pay and how much you can save. It's eye opening.

Make sure that you have your own log in details for your mortgage account as it's surprising how many people don't.

And make sure you understand better than your husband.

I never used this as I only heard about it after I'd paid mine off, but check out Sprive.

I don't think his calculations are correct either.

Current fixes are around 5% , my son has just locked a rate in 6 months ahead of his current fixed rate ending and rates have gone up since he did that.

You are looking at doubling your repayments if rates stay where they are at the moment, more if they go up, which is likely.

It’s always £200K with these threads isn’t it? Nobody is ever trying to work out how to pay their mortgage on a combined income of £42K. Absolutely baffling the fact that all these high earners can’t do basic maths, basic budgeting or factcheck things for themselves. Yet obviously it’s not a stealth brag. It does explain why the country is up shit creek without a paddle though.

You might have 3 kids but you’d have already said if they all were in nursery. But let’s assume they are. I’ve assumed one is earning £80K and one is earning £120K so you’ve lost out with tax, tax free and funded childcare. I’ve also assumed you have a student loan and contributing 5% to both your pensions. The £80K salary is bringing in over £4K net and the £120k salary is bringing in almost £5.5K. So a total of £9.5K. Even if we look at £40K and £160K it’s an income of £9.1K per month.

Even if interest rates rise (and it would need to be over 7.5% for you to be repaying £4k per month), you’d still have £5K per month. Let’s assume £1K per child for childcare, that’s £3K. Commuting costs of £500 per month. You would still have £1.5K left for all other bills and extras. If childcare or commuting is more than that, you’ll have to do what everyone else does and cut back. You’ll have to shop at Aldi, maybe not go on holiday. Take up running and cancel the gym, cancel Netflix and buy from Vinted. Talking of interest only and extending the length of term rather than just learning how to budget.

As to your comment that you haven’t always earned this much. Do you think most households are above this threshold and you’re somehow behind the curve?

You earn £10K a month
Your currently mortgage is £2.5K a month

You are in a ridiculously lucky position and can afford an increase even if it means cutting short some of your many holidays. You also have 10 months to save money for a cushion and overpay.

Jesus op. Your joint salary is £200k!

Even with 4 kids and a mortgage of £2500 a month you could knock £100k off your mortgage in the next 12 months unless you've got top-tier private school fees to pay too.

You're in an exceptionally wealthy position compared to the majority of the UK population. You should pay for some advice because your DH has no idea about mortgages or how they work but even then nobody can accurately predict the future.

Is only having £5 or £6k a month left, after mortgage, really 'freaking out' territory op?

The biggest problem you have is lack of perspective - i'd work on that first.

At the moment, the best rate is around 4.5%. Bank of England unlikely to put interest rates down in near future due to inflation.

But even if things improve a bit, I can’t see anyone getting a better rate than 4% next year. That’s best case and assuming banks will give you the best rate. This will depend on your LTV. You could be closer to 6%. What is your house value?

Are you able to make a huge overpayment to bring that large balance down? Or even overpay a lot every month now to bring it down?

Wasn't trying to be rude by saying your advice would be better re overpayments- the principle isn't wrong, it's just wrong for this set of facts.

I would start overpaying this month whatever you can afford. It will reduce the capital amount and the increased payments will be less of a shock. I took 4 years off my initial term making regular overpayments if that money had been in my current account I would have wasted it every month

Paying half your income on mortgage is fairly normal these days for a lot of people op

we pay 2k at the moment w month

it used to be more

get a mortgage broker and go from there .. how is guessing helping anyone - get real information before you start worrying

Please do, but I won’t hold my breath! On a serious note, there is help available for anxiety and sometimes it’s good to take a break from the news and social media. It can all seem like the world is ending sometimes.