Do you off set your mortgage?

[NorthernGirlie]

We've only got £49k left to pay on our mortgage. DH has been looking at offset mortgages. It would mean putting all of our savings (£20k) away I think

Just wondering if there are any pitfalls from experience?

Yes we have always offset our mortgage and got to the point where we pay no interest at all and have saved £35k interest and have reduced our mortgage terms by 4 years by doing so.

Yes, we did and saved loads like the previous poster.

When you say put all the savings 'away' what's that mean? Ours were in easy access accounts linked to the mortgage- we could use if we wanted to but just paid a bit more interest, nothing was locked away.

Yes, we've always done it, it has saved us years off the mortgage, the savings are in an easy access account linked to the mortgage but you can take money out whenever you like. The only downside I can see is that the rates tend to be a smidge higher than a normal deal (0.1-0.2%), but if you've got a decent amount of savings it's still worth doing.

Ah - I've not really looked into it, dh has. He's not explained it very well to me! I assumed we needed to put our savings away with the provider for the term of the mortgage!

You do save with the provider but we used instant access accounts linked- the amount offset is the amount in the account at the time.

It really helped us save as we were really incentivised by paying less interest!

No, not at all, you just use it like a normal saving account and they work out day to day how much interest you're saving.