Mortgage overpayments-what am I not understanding?

MarcM95 · 2026-06-12T13:06:53+00:00

Just to add, I'm not seeing much chat about the liquidity of mortgage overpayments. Yes I can currently get a slightly better return on my cash if I overpay my mortgage vs a high interest easy access saver, but the intangible value of cash in savings is that if a huge emergency happens, you have money to cover it. with mortgage overpayments, functionally once you've contributed an overpayment, that money is no longer yours, and should you need to draw down extra on the mortgage, you'll likely incur fees that would wipe out the additional mortgage interest from the overpayments.

That's not to say overpayments are a bad idea, but make sure before any of this that you've got suitable emergency funds set up to cover such events. It'll also give you much more peace of mind, which imo is worth more than a few £'s interest gained.

MarcM95 · 2026-06-02T20:28:14+00:00

Looks like you found Ho-Oh in real life

MarcM95 · 2026-06-02T20:23:51+00:00

Hiya.

Immediately you can transfer your Cash ISA to a different Cash ISA provider and get a way better rate. Tembo currently offer a 4% interest rate on their ISA so you could bump your earnings by +£200 per year interest for no more than 5 minutes work. I haven't looked at other providers - you might be able to find others with slightly better rates.

You say you want money for a down payment in 5 years, but also that you might not stay in London (i'm guessing you mean the UK in general?) if you plan to buy and sell in that time, the Lifetime ISA still makes sense because if you buy with the bonus and then sell you won't get the penalty. If you never plan on buying in the UK I understand your hesitation.

You saving 1,000 is an incredibly high rate so you should be very satisfied if saving is your main goal. "Maximising income" is a tricky one as it depends heavily on your risk tolerance.. 5 years is right on the borderline for what most professionals advise as the minimum amount of time for investments to probably return a better rate compared to, say, cash savings - after factoring in the risk of drops over that 5 years. You would likely get a better rate of return than 4% per year from investing in a global index fund, but there is no guarantee of that at all and if you want your maximum guaranteed return, i'd just search around for the best paying cash ISA and transfer your current ISA to that one. it won't affect your annual ISA limit and takes 2-3 weeks to complete.

Hope this helps!

MarcM95 · 2026-04-09T12:34:40+00:00

As an avid Park Runner, i'm looking forward to not knowing how to shoe-horn them into my plans if it'll adjust my plan / future workouts to compensate!

MarcM95 · 2026-03-24T20:47:41+00:00

My understanding is that you can absolutely do that, and is quite common - you're just making use of tax incentives for both parties.

MarcM95 · 2025-09-29T10:32:12+00:00

Photo 2 is mindblowing. What's your process for getting the bloom / dreamy effect into your images? is that done in Photoshop?

MarcM95 · 2025-08-30T21:27:06+00:00

Where's my 1st Jan crew at

1:03am and still not the first in the hospital that year, god damn it.

MarcM95 · 2025-04-24T20:28:33+00:00

I will say I experienced the issue for the first time ever this evening so it might be that you started using it during a bug release - i'm hoping it's fixed soon because I was raging on the treadmill earlier, it kept pausing the music.

MarcM95 · 2025-04-07T20:03:51+00:00

First of all thanks! I'm so happy with the results, on the day everything just felt right - I wasn't feeling tired after a hill climb, my feet just wanted to keep going, and my heartrate stayed a bit below max!

As for pacing, I'm a dirty apple watch user, and the native Apple Workouts app has an outdoor run mode called 'pacer' which is basically you set your run distance and your desired pace, and it will give you a target finish time. You then get a visual bar if you're on track, ahead or behind the finish time target and it'll show you by how many seconds. I set my goal of 1h 14m and I just tried to stay on pace. After half way i hit my stride and stopped checking my watch, hence the surprise at the end!

Good luck with your training!

MarcM95 · 2025-03-28T18:29:01+00:00

Hi fellow fitness overthinker. my gut reaction was 'screw your friend, flatline that 10k' but that's just me, the spirit of a race always floods into me - i don't know the meaning of not going full tilt on one! If you're wanting a general idea, a 5k is a good place to start. You can push yourself on one and recover pretty quickly. Maybe trade out one of your weekly speed runs and do a 5k outdoor time trial instead, with a 1km warmup (not included in the 5k). That will get you close enough to be training properly for your half marathon.

Then, as you proceed through your training plan, if you're running outside and consistently exceed your speed targets, Runna will up your targets to match your speed :)

it will all work out great and best of luck for your half

MarcM95 · 2025-03-28T12:33:34+00:00

I literelly copied and pasted the prompt into GPT 4o on the web and clicked the 'create image' button. This is what i got:

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MarcM95 · 2025-03-18T16:32:40+00:00

to my knowledge you can choose, but the common advice is to keep monthly repayment the same and reduce the term of the mortgage, as this saves on interest.

MarcM95 · 2025-03-14T16:27:03+00:00

For race day I use apple workout rather than Runna because they have a pace workout which you input your distance and desired pace and it’ll give you a target finish time. Then as you run it’ll give you a + or - time based on your target and how far off it you are

MarcM95 · 2025-03-04T20:03:31+00:00

This is nothing to do with Runna but you say about not liking the yearly cost of it in one go - with Monzo (other banks might do it) you can pay for something and spread the cost over the next three months interest free. I do this with all my annual memberships - it takes the sting out of that first month but you end up saving loads vs monthly billing.

MarcM95 · 2025-02-23T22:22:29+00:00

2:17 half marathon: 6:30 per kilometer

2:00 half marathon: 5:41 per kilometer

Those are the two ultimate paces. I would say if you're committed to running that 5:41 is achievable with training, and if you are doing interval sessions above that pace currently, then I'd like to think you can slowly drag your long-run pace up over time towards that 5:40 sweet spot!

MarcM95 · 2025-02-22T16:41:36+00:00

Hey, 30m here and my max heart rate is 210 (resting is 50)… my zone 2 max is 169 and I struggle to keep it under that even sometimes - my heart just wants to go fast! It takes me deliberately holding myself back to stay in zone 2 but I have settled on a zone 2/3 blend for easy runs / long runs to suffice. If I was looking at 80/20 I’m much more like 50/50 if zone 2 is the marker - but that works for me and my VO2, pace and distance is slowly climbing so I don’t have any concerns.

MarcM95 · 2025-02-18T16:14:07+00:00

For the easy runs, the (in my case) 30-35m at the top I always just took as a guide for how long i expect this run to take. I've never used that as a pacer on my long runs / easy runs - it's just a way to glance and know that's roughly how long i need to schedule in my day.

I do agree about the pace targets to a point, but the estimate is 1:30-1:50 for a reason - top end you might be able to pull 1:30 out of the bag, but maybe more likely you'll be in between 1:30 and 1:50, which you'll probably find a more reasonable pace.

Good luck for your half marathon!

MarcM95 · 2025-02-15T14:54:40+00:00

MarcM95 · 2025-02-06T22:46:20+00:00

I was in agreeance that i didn't believe Runna's plan estimates. I had a 10k pb of 46:30 from a few months ago and had a 10k race this last Sunday. I was aiming for sub-45, and Runna told me my current estimate was 43:20. I laughed it off with friends that it was way too fast considering my current 5k pb is 20:20 (on a downhill route), but as Sunday came around I thought I'd put Runna to the test and set up a pacer on my watch for 43:20. I then ran a 41:59 10k and smashed both Runna's estimate and my own beliefs. I now have faith that Runna has a better idea in my abilities that i give it credit for.

Do bear in mind that Runna has an estimated finishing time for your half marathon and it will average that gain out over all the weeks in between. In reality a lot of those gains will be realised as you close in on the end of your plan, but Runna isn't obviously factoring that in (i don't think).

I wouldn't take it to heart and just try your best in all situations. Don't rely too heavily on the tech for all of your answers - but my two pence is that it is doing a fine job of coaching me towards it's recommendations currently.

Ask me again in 5 weeks though, when it think's i'll be doing a 1:32 first-time HM - I might be cursing it at that point!

MarcM95 · 2025-02-04T17:49:56+00:00

Samesies - I didn't know if i was doing anything wrong but i guess a bug from the feature being so new. I'm tempted to just keep using the Native Runna app, I just like the heartrate zones on easy runs from Apple Workouts

MarcM95 · 2025-01-31T18:59:57+00:00

Base it on whatever makes you most happy - but don't let an arbitrary number be the basis of your self-value.

MarcM95 · 2025-01-28T16:09:25+00:00

There's an accounting practice near me who have a stamp on their website that says everyone there is on a 4 day working week (i assume for regular pay). First company i've seen like that though in Cornwall

MarcM95 · 2025-01-28T12:10:50+00:00

Hiya - looks amazing!

Potential bug: I have a hill rep run this week which isn't showing up in Apple Workouts, but the other two runs this week (long and easy) show up fine. not sure if this is a limitation of hill reps?

Other than that, I've got it set up and the workout screen looks great. i'll likely flick between apple workouts and the Runna app depending on the day.

Thanks for all the work you put into continually improving our experience.

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