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13/10/2026

It’s not the nicest thing to think about, is it? I think that’s probably one of the reasons life insurance is so easy to put off. Nobody particularly wants to sit down and imagine what life might look like for their family if they weren’t around.
But it’s worth asking yourself a few questions. If your income disappeared tomorrow, would your partner be able to manage the mortgage and household bills alone? Would they need to change their working hours or arrange childcare? Would there be enough money available to give them some breathing space while they worked out what came next?
Life insurance can’t make any of that easier emotionally, but having the right cover in place could make an enormous difference financially.

30/09/2026

I think most of us have an idea in our heads of what a ‘normal month’ costs. We know roughly what’s coming in, we know the regular bills going out and we probably have a fairly good idea of what we’ll spend on food, petrol and everything else.

The problem is, I’m not sure how often a genuinely normal month actually happens?

Isn’t there always something? A birthday, a wedding, a school trip, the MOT is due, you’ve got a weekend away booked, Christmas is creeping up... none of that is particularly unusual, it just doesn’t fit neatly into the monthly budget we’ve got in our heads.

I think that’s worth remembering when you’re deciding what feels comfortable to commit to for a mortgage. I’m far less interested in whether the numbers work perfectly in a month where nothing else happens, because over the next 20 or 30 years, you’re going to have an awful lot of months where something else does.

29/09/2026

This is one of those questions where I’d normally need quite a bit more information before I gave you an answer, but let’s use the example in the video to explain why.

You’re buying a £300,000 property with a £30,000 deposit, so you’d be borrowing £270,000 at a 90% loan-to-value. You’ve got another £10,000 available and you’re trying to decide whether to increase your deposit or pay off some existing debt.

If you add the extra £10,000 to the deposit, you reduce the mortgage to £260,000 and your loan-to-value would come down to around 86.7%. That’s obviously less money to borrow, which is a benefit in itself, but you haven’t reached 85% LTV so you’re unlikely to open up the next band of mortgage products.

Now let’s consider the debt. This is where I would want to know exactly what that £10,000 consists of. If clearing it removes a £300 monthly loan payment for example, that could make a meaningful difference to the lenders affordability calculation. Depending on how tight affordability is, that might be far more useful to this particular buyer than moving from 90% to 86.7% LTV.

But change the numbers slightly and my advice could change with them.

If that £10,000 took you into a new LTV band for example, we’d want to explore what products opened up and what impact they would have on the mortgage overall. Equally, if the debt had a relatively small monthly commitment and wasn’t restricting affordability, clearing it might not achieve much from a mortgage point of view.

And then there’s the part we haven’t talked about yet: what money are you leaving yourself with afterwards? I wouldn’t automatically recommend putting every available penny into either the deposit or clearing debt without looking at the costs of buying, moving and what you’ll have left as a buffer once you’ve got the keys.

If you’re looking at this and trying to apply the same logic to your own figures and circumstances, that’s where I’d be careful. A different property price, deposit, LTV, debt or monthly commitment could lead to completely different advice.

25/09/2026

Putting an offer in on a property is a weird mix of excitement and anxiety at the best of times. For the overthinkers out there, putting in an offer below the asking price can feel surprisingly uncomfortable.

But negotiations are an entirely normal part of buying and selling property. An asking price is exactly that: the price the seller is asking for. It doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the figure they expect to achieve, and making an offer below it doesn’t mean you’re being cheeky, wasting anyone’s time or insulting the seller.

There are plenty of perfectly reasonable reasons why you might offer less. You may feel the property is priced a little too high compared to others you’ve seen, there might be work that needs doing, or you might simply have worked out what the property is worth to you and what you’re comfortable paying for it.

It’s also worth remembering that sellers don’t necessarily look at the number in isolation. Your position as a buyer can matter too. Someone with no chain, a mortgage Agreement in Principle already sorted and the ability to move at a pace that suits the seller can actually be more appealing than somebody offering slightly more but with a longer or less certain chain behind them.

If your offer isn’t accepted, you haven’t done anything wrong. You can always decide to increase your offer if you’re happy to, and there may continue to be a bit of back and forth before you reach a figure that everyone is comfortable with. Equally, if you’ve already offered what you believe the property is worth to you, you can stick with it. The difficult bit, particularly if you’re prone to overthinking, is giving the other side a chance to respond before you start negotiating against yourself.

23/09/2026

Same £350,000 property. Three very different Stamp Duty bills.

For a first-time buyer purchasing their main home, the Stamp Duty bill would be £2,500. For someone selling their current main residence and moving to the same £350,000 property, it would be £7,500. If the higher rates for an additional property apply, that jumps to £25,000.

It’s quite a good example of how the price of a property doesn’t really tell you what the numbers behind the purchase are going to look like.

You could have three people viewing the same £350,000 house, but the amount of cash they’ll need, the mortgage they’ll require and the costs involved in getting there could all be completely different.

Stamp Duty is obviously just one part of that. Deposits will vary, people will have different amounts of equity or savings available, and the mortgage itself will depend on their own circumstances too.

These figures are illustrative and based on a £350,000 residential purchase in England or Northern Ireland under the current rates.

22/09/2026

We all know how clickbait works. The headline gives you the bit that’s going to grab your attention, but you normally need to read the article before you understand the full story (or realise you’ve been duped by said headline 😉).

I think there’s a bit of that when people compare mortgages too. It’s very easy to look at two mortgages, see those ‘headline rates’ of 4.3% on one and 4.69% on another and assume you’ve already found the cheaper option. But the rate is only one part of what you’re paying for. Once you take into account things like the product fee, how much you’re borrowing and how long you’re actually likely to keep that mortgage, the one with the lowest rate isn’t necessarily the one that costs you the least.

Rates are obviously important, and naturally they’re going to be one of the first things people look at. Just don’t choose a mortgage based on that number alone without looking at the facts that sit behind it.

18/09/2026

Getting your credit reports and documents sorted early can save a last-minute scramble. Knowing what you are comfortable paying each month can stop a lender’s maximum borrowing figure becoming your automatic budget. And keeping your finances relatively uneventful while the mortgage is going through means there are fewer surprises to deal with along the way.

It’s also worth remembering that getting the mortgage offer isn’t quite the point where you can switch off. There’s still the legal process to get through, enquiries to answer and potentially information to provide, so keep an eye on those emails and keep things moving where you can.

There are plenty of things in a property purchase you can’t control. These are some of the bits you can.

17/09/2026

It would be easy to look at these two mortgages and pick 4.59%. It’s the lower rate, so surely it’s the cheaper mortgage?

Not necessarily. To work that out, one of the first things we’d need to know is how much you’re borrowing. The 4.59% mortgage comes with a £999 product fee, so we need to establish whether the saving you make from having the lower interest rate is actually enough to justify paying that fee.

The more you’re borrowing, the more valuable that lower rate could become. If you’re borrowing a smaller amount, you may find that the interest you save doesn’t make up for the £999 you’ve paid to get it. In that case, the higher 4.74% rate with no product fee could actually cost you less over the two-year fixed period.

There can be other things to factor in too. If the product fee is being added to the mortgage, for example, you’ll potentially pay interest on it. There may also be cashback, valuation or legal incentives, or other differences between the two products that need to go into the comparison.

It’s why the lowest mortgage rate and the cheapest mortgage aren’t always the same thing. We need to look at the whole deal and work out what each option will actually cost you.

16/09/2026

People are often unnecessarily embarrassed about adverse credit when speaking to a mortgage broker. Missed payments, defaults, CCJs, a period where things got a bit financially messy…we’ve seen it all, and we see it regularly.

The important thing is that we know about it. The more we understand about your circumstances from the beginning, the better we can work out where to look and which lenders are likely to be the right fit for your mortgage.

So please don’t worry about telling us. We’re not here to judge.

11/09/2026

Household budgets rarely work as neatly in real life as they do on paper. Some weeks cost more than others, bills don’t always fall at convenient times and there’s usually something unexpected that wasn’t accounted for when you worked out what you should have left at the end of the month.

I think that’s worth remembering when a lender tells you how much you can afford to borrow. Their affordability calculation is important, but it’s ultimately them deciding that THEY are comfortable to lend you £x-amount. It doesn’t automatically mean that you’ll be comfortable repaying it.

If you’ve never properly looked at your household budget, now is the time to do it. Be honest about your spending habits, look at what you actually have left each month and think about what compromises you’d be willing to make, if any, for the mortgage payment you’re considering. You might decide you’re perfectly comfortable making a few changes, or you might decide to borrow a little less and keep more breathing room.

Don’t let the maximum a lender is prepared to offer automatically become your new budget without doing those sums for yourself first.

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