2007 - Decision time! - Can I have opinions please!

wymondham

Hi Miss Penny Pincher!

Here goes!

I've had this account for two months now, and been very impressed with the ultimate financial flexibility of it - you can do pretty much anything you want to with it, without going cap in hand and asking each time. OneAccount don't mind how you pay your mortgage as long as you do it within the term, so you can overpay/underpay or not pay at all if going through a rough patch - in fact you automatically overpay each month if you earn more than your 'standard' mortgage payment would be! You pay for the mortgage by leaving the amount in your account each month - OneAccount only take out the Interest payment - this way you pay off the capital at a vast rate of knots, but you can still get at the money you've paid off if needed (again, without asking!)

It's good for lazy people like me who can't be bothered to move money around and keep tabs on it - I've got better things to do! (can't be doing with all those savings/offset accounts) - it's all in one place reducing the interest payment. The rate is higher than others, but if your mortgage is lowish, or you have savings and can overpay then i think it can make a big difference to the way you view your finances overall - it's very much a personal choice.

You need to be disciplined as in theory you could write a cheque out for nearly the value of your house and blow it all on cars and holidays, but if you're old enough to have a mortgage, then you should be able to manage your finances!

I've got tierd of renewing my mortgage every so often, hunting around, paying fees to mortgage companies for that .0025 extra i can squeeze out of my next mortgage - this way i avoid these fees, and also the setup fee (I paid about £200 total for this mortgage to be setup!)

The One Account, and I would imagine other current account mortgages are the same is very much a self-service type, whereby you're told the rules, and how you do it is up to you. It's quite sobering when you get a balance from the hole in the wall and you see your mortgage debt!

There are people who love and hate this account - Guess it just works for me!
Their customer support is UK based and excellent, and their website has more analystic tools than you can shake a stick at - best one I've used.

I don't work for this company by the way (!!), but having had years with Abbey inflexibility and Barclays low interest for my mortgage/current account I feel liberated and in control at last! - no looking back - best financial move I ever made (alongside getting rid of my endowment!!)

bunking_off

I'd echo everything Wymondham says. I love the one account, but it isn't right for everyone. You can secure a better result via other avenues, but it needs more discipline to sweep money into the correct offsetting / savings account. With the One Account, the approach is that anything you don't spend you automatically knock off your debt - with no action required.

The flexibility is ultimate as well. Best example I can give on this is that my wife wanted a new car and we got a deal from the manufacturer at 0% over 3 years. Fine, apart from she really wanted to pay over 5 years, paying a bit less a month. With the One Account we can do this...it's all in one physical pot, but virtually (aka my spreadsheet!), we treated it as a separate loan that gradually grows for the first 3 years (increasing each month by the difference between what she has to pay Peugeot and amount she really wanted to pay), then pays this off over the last couple of years. So, she has a loan that starts at £0 then goes up by difference between £250 she wanted to spend and £360 repayment on the 0% deal (ie £110/month) for the first 3 years, then pays off this loan over years 4 and 5. You can do this sort of thing without having to involve the bank...so long as you're within your facility that's fine by them.

As I've said in previous posts, I also think there's a good psychological aspect to the "all in one account" approach. It focusses the mind to remember that a mortgage is debt, even if the more acceptable face of debt, when you go to the cashpoint, get a balance of account and it tells you you're £50k overdrawn. Was that new watch/PC/suit etc really necessary? Just put the "in credit" day back by a month...

The other aspect that isn't mentioned much is customer service. I've been with the One Account for 7 years now, and it really is second to none. Phones are answered quickly, by a UK call centre and the staff are always pleasant. The online service is rarely down, and works very well.

I'm going to have paid my mortgage off in approx 9 years rather than 25...that's good enough for me.

Miss_Penny_Pincher_2

Thank you very much wymondham and bunking_off - I will look into this - will probably be getting a mortgage of around £60k but savings of only about £5k so not sure whether that would be optimum?

Mr Pincher works for the company that owns One Account and I know he can get a little discount on their other mortgages - they were still high interest rates so didn't seem worthwhile. The literature didn't mention One Account so I will try to get him to find out if he is able to get a discount or not although one thing that I'm unsure about is whether employer mortgages tie the employee in to the company for the duration?

wymondham

60k is not that big these days (I started around this figure), but it's a personal choice - it all depends on how much you want the flexibility side of things, and if you think the One Account is worth that bit extra or not ... good luck with your choice!

Martinslovechild

To add my ten-percent to this discussion, I recommend the Co-Operative Bank Flexible Tracker Mortgage, which i've been using for the past 5 years.

Although not as completely integrated as the One Account or IF.com offerings, it allows overpayments, underpayments, payment holidays & payment drawdowns. I can also recommend their customer service which has certainly been impressive. Where it falls down - it's not linked to your current account (or indeed any other accounts) so you'll need to phone them to make money transfers etc.

However - they currently charge Base Rate + 0.55% (currently 6.05%), which is a fair bit cheaper than The One Account. Details available here.

I don't work for The Co-Op just in case anybody's wondering!! Just feel pleased with this mortgage product.

chickadee

I have a One Account too and I LOVE it. Yes the rate is a little higher than other mortgages but it works for me. I don't have anything more to say than the other posters but by pure coincidence I found out that no less than four of my colleagues also have One Accounts. We are all either Finance Directors, Managing Directors or Finance Managers and all qualified accountants. I'm not saying that makes us special, but we can all do sums! None of us had discussed it with each other and had all changed to the One Account independently at different times.

For me the flexibility is by far the best thing. I can't imagine now what it would be like having a separate current account. Basically the One Account is like running a very large overdraft. Once you get that into your head its simple.

Having said that you do need some discipline. If at the end of the term you still have a balance, that's your problem. Nobody will come chasing you every month for your mortgage payment.

HTH

wymondham

chickadee wrote: »

I have a One Account too and I LOVE it. Yes the rate is a little higher than other mortgages but it works for me. I don't have anything more to say than the other posters but by pure coincidence I found out that no less than four of my colleagues also have One Accounts. We are all either Finance Directors, Managing Directors or Finance Managers and all qualified accountants. I'm not saying that makes us special, but we can all do sums! None of us had discussed it with each other and had all changed to the One Account independently at different times.

For me the flexibility is by far the best thing. I can't imagine now what it would be like having a separate current account. Basically the One Account is like running a very large overdraft. Once you get that into your head its simple.

Having said that you do need some discipline. If at the end of the term you still have a balance, that's your problem. Nobody will come chasing you every month for your mortgage payment.

HTH

glad I'm making financial decisions that people who know what they are doing are also making!

hosebergine

We have the One Account flexible mortgage option, not the current account option. We got it because we were considering an extension but hadn't finalised plans/costs when our previous mortgage came off the fixed rate.

As well as overpaying and underpaying, we have a huge draw-down facility where we can borrow extra money without re-negotiating with them. This was exactly what we wanted to pay for our extension.

Interestingly, when we opened the account I shovelled all of our worldly savings into it to save on interest over the term. As a result, we've saved over £40k over the lifetime of the mortgage and we can still get our savings back if we need them.

However, now that we're in the overpay mindset we're probably not going to extend, we're going to pay it off pronto tonto. We've just had our first quarterly statement and you can see you're making a difference.

I firmly believe you can't run a company without good management information. The One Account gives me the necessary MI to run our mortgage. It is great for those of us who are very disciplined and want to do things on our own terms. Yes, the rate isn't great but we're very happy to pay a bit extra in interest because we know we can overpay way in excess of the 10% that many lenders insist on. Therefore, we won't have a mortgage for the full term.

Hooray for The One Account - I've got a bit of control over my mortgage and it is good :-)

pania

Hi guys, try the coventry building societies offset, much lower rates than the one account and lower fees to. Not to sure of the exact website address but i know they have a site, try googling it. Have done loads of these for clients and they are really very quick. especially with remortgages, usually offered between 2-3 weeks. May be worth investigating.
Kind regards
P

wymondham

Hi Pania, thanks for the response... The coventry Building societies offset account is not the same sort of account as the one account from what i can see, hence not as flexible for the reasons stated previously... What are the setup fee's as mine was only £175 for a survey.