Paying off chunk of mortgage - advice please.

Dave_Walker

First post here so please bear with me.

We have a capital repayment mortgage with First Active with a current interest rate or 1.6% which we realise is very good and do not want to change anything that might affect the rate.

My wife has been made redundant, and because of a long term illness, we are not sure that she'll be able to easily get another job. So therefore we are looking to cut our outgoings.

We are quite frugal anyway and there isn't much left that we can save on, so we are thinking that we may have no choice but to sell the property and use the capital to rent until we can afford to buy once again. There is a plan in place that my father in law will buy a property that we will renovate for him, and once done, we will swap and move into the larger property that he has, to help avoid inheritance tax etc.

Anyway, to help us out, my father in law has offered to give us money to cover a year's mortgage repayment, so we don't have to worry about that, and we can cover the other bills with my wage.

What would be the best way to do this? Should we just send the mortgage company a cheque and ask them not to take the direct debit for 12 months? Or should we put the money into a dedicated account and just pay the mortgage from that? Will the mortgage company actually accept a bulk 12 month payment like that?

Any advice would be gratefully received.