How much do you over pay on your mortgage

[Metoodear]

We managed to scrape together some money and move not to for form London were we used to live

Our house was 190
We borrowed 160
It worth 280 now

We pay 800pm
we have been overpaying only £30 a month due to me not working but I have just got a pt job with nominal childcare costs so will bump the payments up to £130

Aibu to think anyovwpayment is better than none

There are people talking about overpaying £10 and £60 a month. If we're unhappy about showing off, this thread is well back in the queue of ones to complain about.

Also, I sometimes find useful information in the finance threads. It was actually on here, pre-mortgage, that I found out it was possible to overpay at all. If it's not useful to you, that's fine, but for some of us they are of value.

Good and careful money management doesn’t mean people shackled about money

It sets you free it helps you life a worry free life

We spend what we have budgeted for knowing we are never in debt

We don't over pay but we have massively reduced the term and we reduce it now every time we remortgage.
Im a bit sketchy on figures but I think if we'd stuck with the 25 years parents would be 550 a month. We put the term as 15 years and last time down to 11... We pay 999 a month. So I guess overpaying 450? I aim to go to 7 years or less next time

We only overpay 50 a month at the moment but hoping to raise it once eldest starts school. I'd rather overpay mortgage than save a lot at the moment with low interest rates in savings

We overpay by 400 a month ie 1300 vs 900 as at one point our required payment was 1300 when the interest rate was around 4%. We’ve been on the SVR for quite a few years now (1.39). Have about 75k left to pay on a 220k mortgage for London 250k house bought 13 yrs ago.
Think we have around 5 yrs left so overpayments have reduced term by about 7 yrs. We are thinking about whether to pay off the lump sum in one go.

We bought a house with a 95% mortgage on a 30 year term 12 years ago. When we both had pay raises a little while after, we put our repayments up 25%. Then the crash happened, our fixed rate ended up being transferred to the bank base rate, and we were lucky enough to keep the same level of repayment up. Were we not about to move we would have paid of our mortgage in half the term. It’s definitely worth it if you can afford it - it’s made a huge amount of difference to the deposit for our next house.

People on here saying that they overpay by hundreds every month, this is definitely not the norm.

Most people can only afford their standard mortgage repayment and many more still struggling to scrape together a deposit to get on the property ladder.

threads like this are full of people bragging (and well done to them, doing so fantastically financially with hundreds spare each month) but it's really hard to read for those who are less well off.

I'm not bragging... We live up north. We don't have holidays abroad or new cars etc. We steadfastly avoid debt so live within our means. We just want rid of our mortgage as fast as possible so prioritise reducing the term and we will be mortgaged free before we are 50 all going well. I also want rid of the debt as interest rates arte amazing just now... who knows what they'll be in 10 or 15 years.

Oh and we pay another 1000 a month on childcare which leaves us with very little in the grand scheme of things. Certainly not bragging.

About £100 a month.

I overpay by an additional third of my mortgage payment. As a LP I know I'm heading towards a point where a big chunk of my household income will stop and I don't want to be left with mortgage payments as I simply won't be able to afford to. We don't go without particularly but we could have a much fancier lifestyle if I didn't make overpayments. But then I'd have to sell up with my dcs reach 18. No brainer for me, not bragging, necessity.

I think my DSis was over paying by £1k a month. It's put them in such a great position. I have never overpaid (couldn't afford it)

We never overpaid our modest mortgage monthly but did regularly. Over the years we had a misold endowment policy claim £6k, couple of small inheritances £15k, a PPI claim £10k, a redundancy payment £15k, 25 year endowment maturing £15k which we either drip fed in at the allowed £500 a month or once we came out of our mortgage fixed deals paid in large chunks.

We didn't have enough to comfortablly over pay every month but tried to have regular savings and if they grew to a certain amount without needing them for the car, home improvement, bigger bills/purchases etc we'd put £500 into the mortgage once or twice a year. Sometimes we would put a couple of hundred from my annual bonus in. Some years were too tight and we would overpay nothing. We prioritised paying off the mortgage over luxuries.

We were very happily mortgage free after 17 years at age 46, we paid the bare minimum for the first 5 years in a small flat, but did live very frugally for the last 12 years after buying our home to make up for it.

I hate these kinds of threads. What does it matter how you or strangers on the internet manage their finances? It’s just another way for some to show off and others to feel, at best like shit and at worst a sense of worry and dread, at their own financial situation

Yep

In Oz here...interest rates are a bit higher...around 4% for average mortgage.

It's said you should aim to be able to pay the mortgage if your interest rate went up 2%. In oz, with average variable rates at 4%, that's about a 50% increase.

If you can afford to pay extra it's a good place to put spare cash as you pay mortgage in post tax dollars on your own home, so you would need investments at a pretax mortage rate (so double, for those on top tax bracket) to be in the same position with extra $ going to savings. Also means if interest rates go up, you aren't scrounging to meet repayments, you've already budgeted for them.

We put payment + 50% into the offset account, so not overpaying, as mortgage payment comes out of that, but effectively reducing interest as if we were overpaying 50% of the mortgage payment each month.

Any spare cash/bonus etc goes in too. However, we do take the odd break or withdrawal to fund a big family holiday etc. just try not to do it much and like seeing our savings go up and the loan balance come down....

We've always "rounded it" up and used overpayments to reduce the term. So if the payment was £719, we'd pay £800. Over the years we've also made lump sum payments if we had extra money - it really does make a huge difference to the amount you pay overall.

To those that say it is bragging. When I took out my first mortgage I didn't realise you could remortgage later and save money. I certainly didn't realise you could overpay even a small amount and save thousands on interest. If only I had come across information like this in my 20s I would have saved myself a lot of cash.

Why shouldn't people be able to discuss this kind of thing? People are more fortunate than I am financially but I don't begrudge them anything and if I can learn how to better manage my money from discussions on forums then I think that's a good thing.

When I got my mortgage of £80k I had to take it out over 30 years due to affordability. However I knew that (post divorce) my circumstances would change.

I increased my hours at work as the kids got older and I now pay less childcare so I overpay by 50% each month (still less than I used to pay in rent but affordability dictated much lower payments). I know that when kids get to 18 my circumstances will change again so need to be flexible with the mortgage term and keeping the payments low.

I know that I can cancel the overpayments if I need to but so far I'm looking at reducing my mortgage term by 12 years.

There's a real drive on this site towards paying down and off the mortgage ASAP. It's not actually always the best financial sense. Obviously if you're writhing in bed thinking about your mortgage debt and consumed by anxiety, then it pay it off.
If I had paid off my first mortgage, I'd now be sitting in a house fully paid off but worth 250k. My house is now worth a million with 7/10 equity. So if you keep trading up, getting bigger mortgages etc as your salary increases, you can have a house of greater value which will give you greater security in the future.
I'm aware you can criticise that approach but it's served me well for 20 years and offers an alternative to constant obsessive paying down debt.

I think that will have worked over the past 20 years for sure, but properties aren't increasing in value as much as they were.
The house I bought was valued at 100k over its current value when it was last sold - since then, the population of the town has increased which means demand is still there, but this is mostly being met by cheap new builds thrown up rapidly to make property developers money. Home-owners haven't seen any increase in property value and in most cases, it's gone down. It's a nice town and there's good schools and low crime so I think this might reverse and I might see an increased notional value of my own individual house, but it'll never rise to 100k above what I paid for it, I don't think.

Obsessive paying down debt is my MO because, like for most people, my financial decisions are driven by emotions. I don't like to owe money in case I can't pay it back due to a change in circumstances.

I would like my mortgage to be a lower LTV when I come to remortgage as I will get a better rate.

I make decisions as I do because I'm on a low income but I want to own a house outright before I retire. I pay as much as I can into a pension too. It's not boasting - I'm a lone parent of 3 children working part-time and this is how I choose to spend the small income I have.

Simply, we don't. We focus on other debts that have a higher interest rate. The mortgage will be paid by the time we're 57 - a good 10 years probably before retirement.

If we got a lump sum of money then yes, we'd pay some towards the mortgage but for us, it simply doesn't save anything in the short/medium term.

@SuperLoudPoppingAction

As I said it's not a criticism, just an alternative view. Some people pay off the mortgage and then save £100k over the next 10 years. That could be worth so much more in a house and allow you to live in a better area with a nicer house. It's horses fir courses.

Our mortgage company lets us pay fortnightly, as that is how DH gets paid. Therefore we make 1 extra mortgage payment a year

When I read about people living frugally to pay it off, I think why? You're spending the best years of your life living hand to mouth so you can spend the next 20 clapping yourself on the back.

Due to aforementioned plummeting house values, afaics this is our 'forever' house - it's massive with a lovely garden and great views and super convenient for all services.

I'm not remotely offended. I am a worrywort with money. I was massively overspending as a coping mechanism and a way of shifting that was to save obsessively instead. Due to that, I saved up a deposit even on a v low income. I think in some ways that being single helps too - kids don't mind if most of our meals are from the 10p asda fridge and the rest are value rice and dahl. And I prefer day trips to the park to holidays.

I paid off my student loan too, though, before my attitude to money changed. I inherited money that would have made a great deposit but used it for that instead. I don't regret it as I see it as my great-aunt paying for my degree. She was a teacher and would have liked that. That's a truly nonsensical financial decision, but emotionally it felt right to me.