Does this financially ring true?

[ManyBooksLittleTime]

We bought our house nearly 20 years ago for 245k. Now, 19 years later, we still have 203k left on the mortgage. I know the first years is basically paying interest , but only 42k in 19 years??? We have had good interest rates too.Also, my husband reckons it will go down to 181k by August next year. Please can soneone more astute with finance let me know if these numbers can be right?

That was someone correcting her own post.

We’ve had our £245k mortgage a year and are £10k down already in a year, something is wrong here!!!

Whenever we've remortgaged or added borrowing, we've had appointments where they've explained it in excruciating, repetitive detail to both me and DH, checking we completely understand the terms and amounts.

No way could one or the other of us have got away with borrowing more with the other not realising.

Gambling, probably. Good luck, OP.

This doesn't sound right at all. We took out a £375K mortgage in 2019 and we owe £335K now.

Any update?

I would be checking with the mortgage provider that there isn't a charge on the property.

Your dh sounds like he could be financially quite reckless, it could be a bigger mess than you envisage.

My father did the same, the first my dm knew about it was when it was at the point of repossession.

I've unfortunately quite a bit of experience of this, and that was my first thought too. If it is gambling OP, be prepared that your DH will likely concoct a very elaborate story to try and explain all this, that will just confuse you even further (gamblers are expert liars). Good luck, it's a rubbish situation, even if it's not gambling, your DH has been doing something very very dodgy. Tbh, I'd see a solicitor to get advice, so you can best protect yourself financially.

Great post @Jobear2797

I know a lot of people seem to think a mortgage provider will talk to both parties, but that didn't happen in my case. DH applied for a re-mortgage at the beginning of the year online, he filled in all of the paperwork online and it was approved pretty soon after - they did however email me and I have access to the details in my app - my husband could easily access this email should he wish to be nefarious!

Slightly scarier (and its on me) I stood over hubby as he applied for a credit card in my name and set up the DD from my bank. Each time we have discussed this as mature adults and we trust each other implicitly, however I was alarmed how easy it can be.

I feel for you. Something is definitely amiss. We have always used the same bank for our mortgage. We have borrowed more but it's a separate mortgage. So we borrowed 595 and our mortgage after 13yrs is now at just over 300K and our additional mortgage is sitting at 22K as we borrowed another 30 a few years ago. You are likely going to find out your DH is not to be trusted and I would be getting onto a credit agency like experian and pretending to be your DH and see what debts he is sitting on. You will be able to see loans etc- (i know many would say that is wrong but so is lying to your wife for years)

There’s an overepayment calculator on the money saving expert website which is really useful. It shows what the balance would be each year if you didn’t overpay too. After 19 years you should be down to £93k approximately. That’s a lot of extra borrowing or a long time on interest only that is.

Sorry I didn’t explain properly there, I said it was at 3.5% as you were probably on average around that over 19 years? So the 93k isn’t an exact figure but it shows 💯 you should have a lower balance

Are you both contributing financially to the marriage and the mortgage or is all the financial pressure on your husband?

If you have borrowed a bit more every 2-5 years when you remortgage then you have probably been resetting the clock back to 25 years every time too. What have you spent the "bit more" on? If you have been spending it on basic living costs rather than home improvements to increase the value of the property, then you are effectively living beyond your means and will not have a paid off your mortgage by the time you would like to retire (meaning you may not be able to retire)

You only pay the mortgage off if you don't increase the borrowing when you rearrange it.

We have been paying our mortgage for 10 years, rearranging every two years without borrowing any more, and overpaying as much as possible, and our amount owed has gone down from circa £165k to circa £90k over that time.

Okay - I don’t have a great head for figures… But could there have been more added to the mortgage than you thought?

Hope you get this sorted, looking at the figures you've given it doesn't seem right at all.

Thinking of you @ManyBooksLittleTime I really hope you've had a good talk to your DH and there is a perfectly good explanation.
Take care.

Probably depends on the lender, it happened to a friends brother, his (now ex) wife remortgaged their house repeatedly, taking the money to pay off credit card debits she was running up into the thousands.

He trusted her and signed the paperwork without checking it properly, which was very naive but ultimately she was out to rip him off.

This.

Hi guys ,
Thank you for all you help, advice, trackers and explanations.

I have been v stupid, but not in the way I first thought. My mind swam when I saw the 203k and stopped me thinking clearly as this is nothing to have paid off in 19 years of having a mortgage. I also saw the 8 yrs left and kept thinking of 19 yrs...

However, mistake 1. We have had a mortgage for 19 yrs but moved again13 yrs ago. I remember being pissed off that we had to take the mortgage back to 27 yrs to afford to move

Mistake 2 we borrowed a lot the first time we changed mortgage provider. This explains the 53k difference in where we should be as outlined on your trackers. I did originally both know and sign. The amounts set out on mortgage offer exactly match amounts DH wrote down for me. I obviously wiped that neatly from my memory.

To try to balance borrowing DH reduced term and upped payments amount

We are now alnost down to 8 years.

DH and I financially struggled to make ends meet for a v long time. Hence all the debt. Fortunately, we have been earning decent salaries in the last few years.

A major high street bank has offered a mortgage of over 5 per cent interest.( We are not taking this up yet) . 96 payments of 2551 would clear the mortgage in 8 years. Difficult, but just about doable.

We did use the mortgage as a credit card. DH wasn't scamming me though

Sorry to be such a twat and thanks for all the advice. Xx

The good thing is you know what's gone on and it wasn't anything dodgy by your DH.

I get the desire to pay off asap but if 2.5k per month will mean you have to turn to cc to fund everyday life / emergencies then I'd reduce it a little so you have an emergency fund.

Well that's a better outcome than some of the scenarios!

Does it have to be done in 8 years? I wonder whether it's better to keep to the longest term possible and not max out payments each month, then save the difference separately with the view to pay off earlier? But have that money in your hands in case something does happen?

I know that will cost more in interest, but with the way the economy is going, it might be slightly risky to commit to such a high payment each month.

If someone is more savvy on this please do jump in.

You don't say whether you have children OP.
We have no DC at home now and plan to downsize in the next 3 or 4 years. That will enable us to pay off the mortgage in full. There is life insurance in place to cover the outstanding mortgage if the worst happens. The DC know where to find all the paperwork and are named as executors etc. We are in our 60s, so we made it a priority to get everything organised while we still have functioning brain cells. POA is also sorted. Everyone should make sure everything is clear and accessible to whoever would need to sort it all out if anything happened.

I am glad you got all the information so you know where you are.

OP I would seriously advise against committing to £2500 per month for the next 8 years unless you can comfortably afford this.

I mean this kindly, but finances don’t seem to be your forte if you’d forgot the history of how you ended up here.

You would be better keeping the current term and setting aside anything you can save in addition to those payments, then making annual overpayments (this can usually be 10% of the outstanding balance) at the end of each year, once you know you’ve got the money and don’t need it for anything else.