Banks/Building Societys

[The_Rev]

Have you considered renting?  You could let your place out to others and rent a house in the catchment area of whatever school you want to get into. 

[villarule123]

Never been keen on renting to be honest, it just seems like you'd be sinking your money into something and never getting anything back from it.

 

I think this is the best thing to do, providing there aren't any catches. We have the cash now to end the mortgage, and the £200 a month or so we'd save on the new rate for 2 years would save us money compared to current rate.

[Anthony]

It's also possible that you could move house, but keep the mortgage. Might be worth enquiring. Bear in mind though that they will almost certainly try and sell you something (even a new mortgage)

 

You'd probably have to pay a small admin fee, and they'd need to survey the new property to make sure it's worth enough & not about to fall down or be bulldozed, but you two are already underwritten, so that's a whole bunch of admin that you shouldn't have to pay for. Sod's law you'll have to speak to a few 'computer says no' or 'not our policy, have a new mortgage' morons before you actually find out whether you can or not.

 

As for savings, have a look at ISAs. tax free growth, and if you are higher rate taxpayers, that's not to be sniffed at.

[villarule123]

I have a meeting with my bank on Monday to change my mortgage rate, I have 2 years of a fixed mortgage left and they say it will be a £3500 fine to end it early. In the long term it will save me money.

Is there anyway I can haggle with them and get them to waive the fine? I'm staying with the bank, if I say I will go elsewhere maybe they could do something.. I guess there isn't much of a chance though

[tonyh29]

I have a meeting with my bank on Monday to change my mortgage rate, I have 2 years of a fixed mortgage left and they say it will be a £3500 fine to end it early. In the long term it will save me money.

Is there anyway I can haggle with them and get them to waive the fine? I'm staying with the bank, if I say I will go elsewhere maybe they could do something.. I guess there isn't much of a chance though

You can try but I think you'll be wasting your time... When I moved house a few years back I wanted to pay off the mortgage at the same time ... I had 1 month left of the fixed rate and they still wanted to charge me thousands on penalties for early redemption ... In the end it was cheaper to have surveyors and what not and move the mortgage to the new house ... And by the time all that was finished I had 4 days left to run and then could pay the mortgage off without penalty

Completely bonkers and a complete waste of everyone's time

[mockingbird_franklin]

Use the mattress your money is safer

actually, considering any money you put in a bank, legally is treated as the banks and you become a creditor of the bank, that's probably true, luckily though we the tax payers get to foot the bill if a bank goes, well bankrupt up to £85,000. I guess it would be even better if it's real money you are storing or something physical of real intrinsic value and not that paper stuff the bank of England produces on behalf of the Government, those paper notes whose value is constantly being whittled away by the inflation created by this magic like invention of all this new electronic money to service all those mortgages and loans. unfortunately due to the way even high street banks create this electronic money, even the paper stuff is in pretty short supply, only about 3% of all money is physical paper notes, 97% is purely electronic digits on a computer and as such is pretty hard to store anywhere but in a bank. Effectively you have no choice but to use banks which puts us exactly where banks want us. There is a reason people used to distrust banks and would prefer to shove their money under the mattress, we've just forgotten it.