The One Account?

Lennys_Shinpad

Hi all,

My first post on Mortgage-Free Wannabe.

Me and my partner are looking at mortgages at the moment and the One Account has been getting good reviews. We are pretty good at LBYM, managing our finances and want to pay off our mortgage as early as possible.

I would like to know how we would go about managing our finances individually. If it is One Account with everything lumped in, wouldn't things get awfully complicated? Not only between my money and that of my OH but if I wanted to stooze into my One Account.

Would we have separate cash cards and separate accounts within the one account?

Please help, I'm confused.

Thanks,

Lenny.

wymondham

Salty69
If you go for the One Account you need to make full use of it for it to be effective, so really you don't save money elsewhere in accounts etc as it should all go into the 'pot' for maximum benefit to you. If you're thinking along these lines then you maybe better off with a standard mortgage product.

We closed down all our other accounts when we took on the One Account - it's now the only one we use, but will again save elsewhere when we go into credit ...

wymondham

Lennys_Shinpad wrote: »

Hi all,

My first post on Mortgage-Free Wannabe.

Me and my partner are looking at mortgages at the moment and the One Account has been getting good reviews. We are pretty good at LBYM, managing our finances and want to pay off our mortgage as early as possible.

I would like to know how we would go about managing our finances individually. If it is One Account with everything lumped in, wouldn't things get awfully complicated? Not only between my money and that of my OH but if I wanted to stooze into my One Account.

Would we have separate cash cards and separate accounts within the one account?

Please help, I'm confused.

Thanks,

Lenny.

Hi Lenny

Whilst you can configure the account to 'appear' to split up funds, it is basically a single account as it's linked to your house. You do get seperate cards for you and OH though (both debit and Visa cards, although the Visa card is not a credit card in the standard sense...) but you'd really be sharing the account.

SALTY69

wymondham wrote: »

Salty69
If you go for the One Account you need to make full use of it for it to be effective, so really you don't save money elsewhere in accounts etc as it should all go into the 'pot' for maximum benefit to you. If you're thinking along these lines then you maybe better off with a standard mortgage product.

We closed down all our other accounts when we took on the One Account - it's now the only one we use, but will again save elsewhere when we go into credit ...

Yet again , many thanks i will be opening one tomorrow i think, It looks like what we have been after and we only will have the one account until we are Mortgage free hopefully within 5years when i retire. many thanks to you all who have been so helpful.

Cheers Salty69 :beer:

wymondham

SALTY69 wrote: »

Yet again , many thanks i will be opening one tomorrow i think, It looks like what we have been after and we only will have the one account until we are Mortgage free hopefully within 5years when i retire. many thanks to you all who have been so helpful.

Cheers Salty69 :beer:

hi salty! are you happy with the way the account works and how to get the most from it?

SALTY69

Yea Wymondham, I will go over everything again with the guy at the bank and get everything straight i have written loads of questions for him mainly which have been brought up on this board.

Will no doubt speak later regarding this.

Salty

skim

SALTY69 wrote: »

Yea Wymondham, I will go over everything again with the guy at the bank and get everything straight i have written loads of questions for him mainly which have been brought up on this board.

Will no doubt speak later regarding this.

Salty

If you go for it - then I'd just sign up on line & get someone in this post that has one to refer you - both you & the referrer get £150 each for doing this.

The mortgage I took out in Jan 2007 was £119k, we put all our savings in which brought it down to £70k - now end of Oct we're at £46k outstanding so as you can see it really focuses you into paying it off.

Before this I had a £43k 25yr mortgage & it ran 12 years with still £29k outstanding at the end.

SALTY69

skim wrote: »

If you go for it - then I'd just sign up on line & get someone in this post that has one to refer you - both you & the referrer get £150 each for doing this.

The mortgage I took out in Jan 2007 was £119k, we put all our savings in which brought it down to £70k - now end of Oct we're at £46k outstanding so as you can see it really focuses you into paying it off.

Before this I had a £43k 25yr mortgage & it ran 12 years with still £29k outstanding at the end.

Thanks Skim, I am doing it at my local branch, I am only taking out a £40000 Mortgage over 10 years with overpayment's of £400 per month. The Calculater advices that with the overpayment's it will knock 5year 6months off the Mortgage, It will be paid in 4years 6months, obviously this does not take into count the times where it may be that i have to take money out in emergency's "Car Repairs" etc. But in 5 years i get a lump some of around £25000 from my pension, even so i would not want to hit that to hard it will be available in 5 years if things don,t quite go to plan.
Salty69

hosebergine

We moved to a One Account Mortgage a year ago - this is not the same as a combined current account / savings account / mortgage. We still have our own current account etc.

We chose it because we wanted to have more control over our mortgage, get greater flexibility from our money and we were considering an extension and didn't want to rearrange our mortgage again given that fees are now pretty high. The One Account gives us a borrowing facility up to 80%LTV without the need for approval (we had quite a bit of equity in the house) - this is why you HAVE to be disciplined (we have £130k at our disposal- YIKES!).

We have taken all our savings and 'stored' them in our One Account Mortgage. This has reduced our balance by £25k so is saving us a good chunk of interest. The great thing is we have instant access to that money just in case the car blows etc.

We love the One Account but we are very disciplined. We have a young daughter so I only work occassionally (max one day a week). I can put lump sums to the mortgage and we top up with the leftovers in our current account. The great thing is that because we have overpaid and put in our savings, all of the BOE interest rate changes have not had any effect on our current payment levels and therefore our monthly budgeting. In fact with our minimum monthly fee we are still in effect overpaying.

Basically, we like being in control. However, I can't imagine it would suit everyone. Very much a niche product

Lennys_Shinpad

Wymonhen and Hosebergine,

Thanks a lot for your info. It looks like a great product to focus your energies on paying off your mortgage. It's good too know that myself and my OH could still work with our own accounts (sort of). The only problem I can see is that for our level of LTV (95%) the rate (7.7%) would make it too expensive compared to a standard fixed rate, even once fees are considered. I'll do the sums but I think this could be a product for us to consider once we've built up a good chunk of equity.

Whichever mortgage we choose we'll be chipping away at it from day one until we have our freedom!

Thanks,

Lenny.