Do you over pay your mortgage ?

[Lardlizard]

We have Done at times but I honestly somethings think should we be less sensible

No can’t see the point. Cheapest way to use someone else’s money to buy a house. I save and put extra into my pension and have fun. I have a friend who has over paid for years, constantly moaned about not having any money, no holidays etc etc and basically has been miserable.

No because the interest rate is so low. It's a very cheap debt. However I'm afraid we don't spend the surplus on being less sensible, we fill up our annual stocks and shares ISA allowances, which generally gives us a good return ( which we reinvest).

Yes. And we have done our whole working lives (except when we had two preschool children) as it seems the most effective way to save mortgage rates being higher than interest rates.

yes.
work bonus (which we won't miss from the daily outgoings) goes towards it.

Absolutely, I retire in 9 years so I have to.

No, but I have a lot of equity in my property and my mortgage is only 37% LTV. It's our forever home so I don't feel the need to make overpayments. Especially not until DC2 is at school anyway, my childcare costs will be much higher than my mortgage when my mat leave runs out.

Yes. When we were on a fixed rate it was £1300 p/m. It fell to £900 when we switched to the SVR and we continued to pay £1300. Mortgage was paid off £11 years early but that was more because we paid a lump sum. The overpaying would have reduced it by about 5 years.

I did 25 year mortgage finished in 12. But...the first few years I didn’t at all, it was a small mortgage and I was getting annual pay rises that I used to fund the overpayments.

Yes, we always have. Overpaying on our flat meant we had a health deposit and could move to our next house in a good school catchment etc. Overpaying on that meant we could buy a bigger house. I’m hoping we will overpay on this but we’ve only been in 4 months and we are renovating so we actually took extra money this time for that. I’d like to at least pay that back before we renew this mortgage. The overpayments are capital repayment so if you can do it it brings the overall term down, and it has something of a snowball effect; done regularly and over time you see a much larger effect. We tend to save, and then at the end of the mortgage year (fixed term deal) make a decision about putting it into the house. There are a few things to consider: how secure is your income being one. I wouldn’t do this at times of insecurity (contract work, bad business year) as I would keep the savings as a buffer against future payment. Also a decent standard of living. It’s no use making massive overpayments if you’re living a rubbish life. And it has also pushed us towards the bigger house because we had almost paid off the old one (relative to the value) and it made sense to extend ourselves again at this time. I hope it works out for us, but now we are in those first few years of massive mortgage.

No. We could pay it off completely if we liked, but the interest rate on it is so low that the money is better invested and makes more for us that way.
Not only that, but inflation eats away at the value of a mortgage, too: paying £50K in 20 years time is much cheaper than £50K now.

Yes, we do. Our mortgage is projected to finish 5 years early and save us a £thousands in interest.

We overpay by standing order, and the occasional lump sum if we get a work bonus, we also have savings and fun money.

We were older when we met but both had properties, so have combined our assets and bought our 'forever home'. Despite living in SE, We are able to have a relatively small mortgage, although our house is far smaller than many of our friends, we only have one child though, so it's the right size for us. When we took out our mortgage it was due to end around the same time as retirement. We're looking forward to being able to pay it off while still having a work income.

No. Never have. Wished we had.

Not yet. I'm paying off a credit card and a car loan for the next 3 years, once those are done then I probably will put the extra towards the mortgage and pension contributions each month.

Yes, by just over 100%. Our 18 yr mortgage will be paid off in 7/8 yrs at this rate but will have to slow down as were limited to overpaying 10% of balance each year.

Yes, we have 12 years left, aiming to have it paid off in 7.

Yes,because we had an offset mortgage. Paid off in about 12 years.

We had a mortgage that you could overpay as much as you wanted without penalty. We would pay off chunks and when we had a bumper year with our investments and we paid off the whole mortgage so was only six years in total. This was around 15 years ago. DH did some high risk investing, at this point I never did high risk. His cousin encouraged him. It could have been dreadful and it has been sometimes, he lost 20k one day. No more high risk stuff for years now but changed our lives hugely. We did both have really decent salaries but that period was life changing,

Not any more. We did before we had kids and it made a big difference to the term and equity in our property which helped to buy the next one.

Now we have a 5 year plan. At this time it would only make our lives harder to overpay and we need the money for our outgoings. Once kids are in school we will look to start to over paying again at whatever rate we deem to be manageable.

When the kids are grown no doubt we will have even more disposable income and can pay a lot more!

We just round up our figure - so the mortgage is £622/month. We pay £700 on the DD, budget is for a £700 mortgage. By doing this the MSE calculator says we will pay off 5.5 years early and save 11k in interest - makes sense to me.

Yep, as much as we can afford to every month – got a bit obsessed looking at the overpayment calculator and seeing how much an extra £50 here and there will save us in the long run. We’re really lucky to be able to do this and still live a little, and we just skip months where we’ve got other stuff we want to do.

Yes, but it was a balancing act: we had a smart mortgage, I wonder whether I should have put more into my pension instead.

Yes, we pay around 110% a month.

We didn't overpay as such but took out the mortgage over a shorter term (20 years rather than 25) to pay it off sooner.

In our previous house we used to try to overpay the mortgage monthly but every time the interest rate changed, they'd change the payment (and reduced it) and I got fed up with having to contact them every time to get them to change it back, so just left it. It's easier when you can pay by SO rather than DD, but I don't think any lenders accept that anymore.

Always have, only stopped while i was on statutory maternity pay, went back back up when i returned to work.

No. Though when we are next due to re-mortgage I may try to cut the term by a year or two of we can manage the slightly higher repayments.