Help needed with the 'oneaccount.com'

ClareLou82

I am looking for a new mortgage and are considering the one account.com for my mortgage and current account.
I am hoping that someone will be able to offer me a little bit of advice, here is my situation:

Mortgage Value 80,000
House Value 190,000
Term Left 18 Yrs
Savings 15,000

I have been told that my payments would be £420 p/mth (We are currently paying £550) This seems too good to be true, as we have also been told that we could pay off our mortgage in just over 15 Yrs.
Would this be suitable to us with having 18 Yrs left?
Is there different ways you should finance things due to having this account, i.e paying for bills annualy instead of monthly to keep your overall balance high, or does this make no difference?
Thanking you in advance

rinkydinkpanther

Every penny you keep in the account is a penny you aren't paying interest on, so if you can pay bills annually, or make full use of credit card interest-free periods then it all adds up.

Be careful with your sums - you say you have 15k in savings and an 80k mortgage. Their calculator will be quoting your monthly payments on an overall 65k debt - you won't pay those payments and still have 15k left at the end.

I love the account though - having all my money as one big overdraft has really focussed me on everything, and I'm now addicted to paying off as much as possible and watching my graph of debt going down and down.

PM me if you decide to go ahead with the account - we can both get £125 out of a referral !

VfM4meplse

The reason more people don't have offset mortgages in my opinion is because they do not believe the mortgage shrinkers.

Believe me these accounts do work and from what I received in todays post my (now redundant) One account is now passing on interest rate cuts. I have no complaints about the service I received, almost as good as FD.

rinkydinkpanther - what a smarty pants and all credit for beating me to it!!!

Saran_2

I have had a One Account since 2000 and would offer a word of caution before taking one out. There is a huge thread (over 100,000 views and 1000 posts) from dissatisfied OA customers. The cause of most of the upset is the failure of OA to pass on the recent interest rate cuts.

OK so that doesn't affect you directly, but OA have increased their margin over base from a long term rate of +1.1% to an uncompetitive 3.15% (for 50% ltv or less).

More worringly, they have shown they are willing to upset their customer base to increase the profits they make. So what will happen when the rates start to rise again? There are other offsets such as First Direct that are more competitive and much more trustworthy.

Just over a year ago I would have strongly recommended them, but the product and the values of OA have changed beyond recognition.

getmore4less

Don't be fooled by the calculator it does nothing special that you cannot do with other mortgages, the main advantage of any offset is you have easy access to the money.

Look for one of the other offsets that are much better than the OA.

Start with a look at Barclays and First Direct.

Any money you can delay paying out can help but the effect of delaying payments for normal monthly spends is small compared to just not spending.

You can also get free money on CC still with interest free purchases that can help as well it is called stoozing.

Giblets

I have a one account, and despite the slightly higher interest rates (and to think this it is run by RBS...i.e owned by us!), I do like the account. I was always useless at getting round to moving round my savings etc to better accounts, so having everything offset my mortgage is great. And remember you are not taxed on it unlike savings,

One added aspect is that your income will offset the mortgage whilst it is in your account. Even if you spend your entire monthly income over the month, the % of it left in the account over the month will also be offseting your mortgage before you spend it.

ClareLou82

Thank you for all your advice it is greatly appreciated.
Note to rinkydinkpanther: if we do take out the one account - I'll be in touch for your details for the referal money!