The Lemon Fool

I can’t remember exactly when my First Direct offset mortgage became fully offset but it has to be 13 years ago, 15 maybe. I took it out about 20 years ago after reading about these wonderful products on the motley fool, I was earning good money at the time and I threw every penny at the savings part of the account plus the 0% cash I was stoozing from credit card companies, I was astonished that in only a few years it was fully offset, in all that time First Direct have earned not one penny of interest out of me. I was surprised when they agreed to let me transfer it over when I moved house in 2013 but they did. What a great bank.

I could have paid off the mortgage with the money in the linked savings account at any point but thought I might as well just leave it where it is in case I ever needed it for some property related venture such as a holiday home or something, but I never have. If I was ever going to do that it would have been during the 0% interest years and they’re gone now. It’s still got a few years to run but I’ve decided to redeem a few years early, one less account, one less lot of statements.

It was one of the best bits of advice I ever took. Thanks Motley Fool.

Very similar to our story. We took out a current account mortgage (effectively the same as offset but works as a bank account with attached huge overdraft secured on the property) with Virgin One Account around 20 years ago. Managed to offset it within 3 years and then took out a much larger one in 2012 when we moved house and couldn't sell our old one. In the end we got an offer on the old house just before we completed on the new one and fully offset the new mortgage within a couple of months - that one ended up being a very cheap bridging loan!

Definitely a great bit of advice from Motley Fool.

I had one of these years ago with Intelligent Finance (remember them?)
Am considering getting another when my current fixed rate runs out, because circumstances mean I'd like to hold a reasonable amount of cash savings. Does anyone know if there are still any offset mortgages still around, with competitive interest rates? I'd be looking at about 60% LTV which would hopefully then be offset a further 10-20% by savings.

SebsCat wrote: - that one ended up being a very cheap bridging loan!

Yes if I was to use it for anything it would have been something like a bridging loan but I can't envisage it being needed now.

Does anyone know if there are still any offset mortgages still around, with competitive interest rates? I'd be looking at about 60% LTV which would hopefully then be offset a further 10-20% by savings.

I don't know about competitive but Barclays do it seems, and if they do others will no doubt.

Thanks Fluke, wasn't aware that Barclays did them.
Current rates for offset are around 5.22% vs typical fixed rates around 4.3%-4.5%, so it's borderline whether offsetting would really be worthwhile, for me at least.
I'm lucky enough to be on a 1.79% fix for another couple of years, so I guess it will be a case of re-doing the sums when that runs out.
But if anyone knows of another unmissable Offset provider, please shout up!