offset mortgage

silvercar

If I pay off the mortgage amount I can't get the money back, if I pay into the offset savings I can take it out when I want.

still unsure....no point asking the building society, if they went bust their opinion wouldn't count its the FOS/ FSCS that would rule or possibly the insolvency rules. There is a thread on the savings board titled "Are your savings safe?" or similar that discusses this, but recent posts make it unclear.

silvercar

link here:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=806373&page=6

see post #111 in particular.

Lunar_Eclipse

silvercar wrote: »

If I pay off the mortgage amount I can't get the money back,

Are you sure? The way they usually work is you have a maximum 'loan' amount which is often, but not always, your starting mortgage amount. Then you put deposits into it (ie paying bits off) but are usually able to pull them back again. I find it odd that you could not to that, but maybe mine is like that because it is with an online bank. In fact that possibly is the reason in a nutshell since my mortgage account runs alongside my other accounts that I manage online. Thus I have a current account, savings account, mortgage account & VISA account with my one lender. All the accounts are offset accounts except for the credit card. The mortgage account is in deficit as one would expect.

Lunar_Eclipse

silvercar wrote: »

link here:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=806373&page=6

see post #111 in particular.

That's scary as that is not what FD told me when I asked.

However, it clarifies to me that the only way one can definitely control any potential monetary loss is to reduce ones' mortgage if savings total more than £35k with that lender. Not necessarily ideal but a good safeguard IMO.

Apart from planned expenditure (house extension for instance), why would someone have a 100k mortgage totally offset anyway? Any ideas? It would be a rather large rainy day fund. :j

JonnyBravo

Lunar_Eclipse wrote: »

Apart from planned expenditure (house extension for instance), why would someone have a 100k mortgage totally offset anyway? Any ideas? It would be a rather large rainy day fund. :j

Fast car?
Faster [STRIKE]woman[/STRIKE] women?
Perhaps it rains lots round their house?

Martinslovechild

Lunar_Eclipse wrote: »

Apart from planned expenditure (house extension for instance), why would someone have a 100k mortgage totally offset anyway? Any ideas? It would be a rather large rainy day fund. :j

That's exactly what I did - with £107K. However, the £107K in question was not my money - it was stoozed cash which I had borrowed at 0%, thereby reducing my mortgage interest costs to (almost) nil over the last 4 years of my mortgage.

JonnyBravo wrote: »

Fast car?
Faster [strike]woman[/strike] women?

Now there's a thought