DH keeps making mortgage overpyamentd ton reduce the term

[Redratefree]

We have a take home of £4k and a £1.9k mortgage. DH keeps making overpayments to the term of the mortgage, it was 27 years but it's been reduced to 25.25 years due to overpayments. However, I want him to reduce our monthly payments as this will give us more breathing space. He disagrees and wants to continue to reduce the term because it offers more flexibility when remortgaging. I received 2 emails from the bank this weekend for 2 overpayments of £500 and then one for £50, as soon as he gets paid he'll make an overpayment.

If you can still manage day to day expenses while making overpayments I’d definitely recommend it. We paid ours off in 10/11 years by doing that

Sorry but I'm with your husband . Sensible .

I’m with your husband too.

Has he worked out what overpayments you’re allowed to make over a year? It’s usually a set % that you’ve able to overpay, you can’t just keep overpaying whatever you feel like without a penalty.

If you've got enough extra money to make overpayments, why do you feel you need breathing space?

This. Are the overpayments making you short each month? From your figures above, there doesn’t seem much wiggle room. Is it affecting any future plans? Children etc? Is he being financially controlling ?

He’s very sensible. What would you prefer to spend the money on? We’ve been absolutely fucked by interest rate rises as our 5 year fixed ended two years ago but we’ve adjusted to the extra costs so we’re planning to overpay by the difference now the monthly payments on our tracker have gone down a bit.

Ignore me

You've already reduced the term on your mortgage by two years - that's great! We always overpaid ours in one lump sum at the end of the year. But can you afford it? Are you missing out on things because of the over payments? Some middle ground is definitely required.

Overpay as much as you can while you can!

It's making things tight. We haven't had to dip into our overdraft and we have savings but I'd rather see the monthly payments go down.

I’m not with your husband on this - life is for living and your mortgage is already nearly half your take home. For me it’s about balance - nice holidays while reducing mortgage. Spending all your spare money on holidays is reckless but spending it all on reducing the mortgage by a few years means you’re not fully “living” now. What if you get cancer or a disability in 10 years and can’t enjoy the life you’re working towards? Maybe I’ve had too many tragic deaths in 40s-50s in my family so my perspective is different but getting to 50 and being mortgage free is lovely but not at the expense of the life you could have had if the mortgage went on another 5 years.

Is your concern that he's using money for the overpayments that you need for other essentials such as food/travel/other bills? If so, you need to discuss that with him.

However if he's using money that would otherwise be "unused" (and unneeded for unexpected bills) then what he's doing is sensible unless he can get a better rate sticking the income elsewhere. Eg: when our mortgage rate was fixed at 1.87% then it didn't make sense to put all of our spare cash into the overpayments if we could get a better rate elsewhere. When we went onto a higher rate, it then made more sense to overpay more into the mortgage and put less in savings. But ultimately you need to have a frank discussion about what to do with your collective money, and how any longer term plans (house moves, school fees, more kids, retirement etc) factor into play.

We can overpay 20% each year.

Why? What do you want to spend the money on instead?

Depending on your rate he could be losing money...
Our rate is 1.2% so we put any spare cash into a high interest savings account that pays 6%
We may then put that chunk off the mortgage once the fixed term ends

If I could afford it I would do the same. You save so much in interest, look on the Martin Lewis site to see how much he is saving you overall.

My mortgage was around a 1/4 of the amount of yours and I worked out I was paying almost £200 a month in interest. I don't have the capability to work out how much your interest component is (crap at maths!) but it's safe to assume it's at least double what mine was. So £400 a month in interest (please anyone, correct me if my maths is inevitably flawed!).

So based on my totally dodgy figures, by paying off 1 3/4 years (21 months) early, he's saved you around £8,500 in interest already. Why would you not be on board with that?

You still have over £2,000 a month left. Isn't that enough to live and save on?

We did similar, as interest rates were falling but we kept the repayments at previous levels. All extra payments end up coming straight off the capital, whereas regular monthly payments that bank schedules cover both interest (mostly) and some capital. We paid off the mortgage almost 5 years early, despite having remortgaged to cover an extension during that period also.

We nice to spend money on some nicer things,,, a nicer car, nicer clothes.

I too am with DH here. We did this in a previous property when rates were crazy low which not only reduced our mortgage by nine years, gave us significantly more equity which then allowed us to buy our current house. This is our forever home.

With £4k income and almost £1.9k mortgage we have about £2k left and honestly it's a struggle.
Council tax is £200 a month, then you have bills, car expenses. We have very, very little left each month.

Why? Surely you take out life/ serious illness insurance to pay off the mortgage in the event of your death anyway. There is a balance to be struck between managing payments and quality of life. At the very least there should be a conversation and financial advice.

Your DH is doing the right thing here. Spare money should be spent on reducing the mortgage, not on "stuff".

Possibly then you need to sit down and look hard at your income and expenditure.

Do you pay school fees? I appreciate that would eat up a huge chunk. But other than that, there is over spending somewhere.