50k inheritance - how best to spend?

[25BeautifulGnomes]

I am in the fortunate (or not so fortunate, depending on how you look at it) position of having 50k that I was not expecting. Our mortgage is 200k and we are on a bad rate for 2 more years. Would it make sense to pay a large chunk off the mortgage to get our monthly repayments down and free up some disposable income?

We want to be sensible but also would quite like to do some work on the house. We have some small debts which will be paid off first.

Thanks for any advice. I posted about this in investments but no resposes so trying here.

Financial

Thanks all for some v helpful advice/suggestions, I really appreciate it.

I woke up thinking about your dilemma this morning (much more pleasant than thinking about all of my problems believe me!)

One thing you must check before you pay off any extra on your mortgage is if your mortgage company calculate your interest monthly or annually. If monthly you are ok to pay off at any time as your mortgage company will take this overpayment into account straight away and it will bring down what you owe. If it is annually then you need to check when this is as otherwise you could put in the extra now and it not make any impact until the end of the year.

I would look at overpaying if you can - whatever the interest rate it is better to reduce this debt but just make sure it is at the right time. Also agree with others who say you need a good pot of saving too for back up.

Thanks trying