Pay towards mortgage or not

[bloodyhousesaremoneypits]

We need some work done in the house before a leak causes a huge problem. The quote with materials is about 6k.
We have about 1k saved in joint account. DH has no savings and I have a little bit. He’s a spender.
So DM is giving me 5k
We were going to use money I save for DD to pay for the work rather than get a loan and pay that money back as it’s interest free.

Are we better off putting the 5k on the mortgage or using us to fund repairs?
The account I save in doesn’t pay a lot of interest and it annoys me when the mortgage statement comes in that not much has been paid off the capital.

I haven’t made anything up, you’re said he hasn’t saved any money and is a spender. That’s not really an option as a home owner, how would he be contributing towards the repairs if you hadn’t received the 5k?

Whose house is it is it both of yours ? Unless it’s only your house and he has no claim to it why are you putting all the money in for the repairs and paying down the mortgage while he spends his money on god knows what? You might keep finances separate but if he own half the house then he needs to contribute half.
And if the money is your inheritance then it’s not a gift from your mum for both of you ??

I’m not paying all the mortgage we share all the bills and mortgage.

The overpayment of that size won’t make much of a difference to your interest unless you’ve got a tiny mortgage. Repairs may turn out to be problematic and you don’t want too much money locked away with no other savings in case you have another problem later down the line- you can’t get the overpayment back.

However, definitely find a better account with higher interest for DDs savings. Then consider a small monthly overpayment, even £50 if you want to start chipping away at it. I did that when I was really skint as it really made me disciplined with spending and I wanted the pride of being able to overpay my mortgage by the tiniest amount. Possibly not the smartest financial choice, but made a difference psychologically. £50 not £5k though!

Guys please. I don’t need advice on my DH.
We pay equally towards the household and keep the rest of our salary’s. I just to prefer to save. My savings don’t benefit him so I’m not subsidising him at all. He pays for meals out and concert tickets etc. The money from my mum is not my inheritance she just wanted to gift some money from my dad.

Seems paying from that money is the way to go so we’ll do that.

Thank you.

There’s about 70k left on mortgage I think. I was just wondering if paying 5k off was sensible.

paying the mortgage would probably technically be more sensible than saving in an account which gives low interest but my concern if I was you would be how / when you’d recoup it? Especially given your comment about your DH. Can you get a higher interest account for your DD’s money? Is it in an ISA? If it’s to be used a reasonable way into the future you should really consider investing it.

I get that, you have an arrangement which suits you both. However your savings do benefit him because you are paying from those savings to do work on your home because he has no money. He spent all his money on himself (or whatever he spent it on) and your money is covering his house repairs.

You need to add an additional amount from DH's payment to the joint account. Then you can move it to a savings account. After that he can spend what is left.
He's being irresponsible if he doesn't realise that you need a contingency pot to cover things like repairs to the house or the occasional new washing machine.

Just do the repairs and move the savings to better interest rate if it's under 4%.
I am not seeing much logic in putting money into mortgage and using dd's savings instead maimly because it doesn't sound you could easily replace them.

Thank you for your response.
I wouldn’t use my savings for it. It would come from us both. I’ll put the cash from DM into joint account and use that.
If I used the money I put in my other account for DD then we would both repay that as if it was a bank loan. I’m not going to anyway if there’s little point putting the 5k on mortgage.

Id overpay the mortgage if the interest rate is higher than savings. Plus I am the one advocating to not overpay the mortgage in my household, because our saving/investment is higher rate and I'd like to do some work on the house my husband thinks unnecessary. I've recently opened put savings for my son in an investment account. Also I'd advise you and your husband budget and amount to go in the joint account, just after payday, then spends the leftovers, rather than leftovers going in there.

It’s cleaner to just use your dad’s money to pay for the repairs I think. It might be an idea for to both contribute to a sinking fund for house repairs going forward though.