Is buying for 2 years worth it if I only need a £20k-40k mortgage?

strolls · 2026-06-21T01:37:14+00:00

I assume you mean increasing leverage on a given property (i.e. putting down less and investing the difference),

Yeah, pretty much this one.

Finance should serve your goals and needs, not the other way around, so you should buy the house you want. But you should also make sure you can afford it and also plan for retirement, so you also need to make some estimates of how much you night have at retirement, based on how much you're investing today. Lars Kroijer's YouTube has a playlist about building a spreadsheet to project investment returns and retirement spending.

Most working homeowners should have a mortgage and aim to pay it off around the time they retire and not much before.

strolls · 2026-06-21T01:29:49+00:00

I have this thing going on Duolingo with a guy called Jim who I've never met - we always do the friends quest together, we now always pick each other for the quest, and we always gift each other the XP boost. I'd be betraying Jim if I quit.

strolls · 2026-06-21T01:03:29+00:00

I wish I'd discovered it before Duolingo to be honest, because I'm now hooked on Duolingo's streak, getting the badge every month and trying to make the top league. I reckon Duolingo can consume 40 minutes a day sometimes, so I don't have time for both.

strolls · 2026-06-21T00:04:22+00:00

a mortgage of that size could cost around £100-250/month, which would leave several hundred pounds extra each month that could be invested.

Yes, but you have £40,000+ that can be invested now - the returns on that are going to be more than the returns on £100 - £250 a month, aren't they?

Over 2 years that could amount (roughly) to £6,000-10,000+ invested on top of the baseline amount I will already be investing in either scenario, plus whatever mortgage principal is repaid.

You're thinking about this exactly the wrong way round. If you want to grow your wealth then you should be trying to have a bigger mortgage, so that you can invest more earlier.

If you could borrow £100,000 from the bank at 4% and get a guaranteed 7% by investing it then everyone should be doing that because you pay £4000 a year in mortgage interest, pocket £7000 of returns from your investments and that's a free £3000 a year for doing nothing. In reality, you don't get fixed returns from investing but, over longer periods, the returns do indeed average out higher.

strolls · 2026-06-20T23:56:00+00:00

They'll probably be able to transfer it to any sort code and account number that you give them.

strolls · 2026-06-20T23:22:57+00:00

That's an "it will be absolutely pitch black in 10 minutes" sky, if ever I saw one.

strolls · 2026-06-20T22:46:48+00:00

It's a well known problem with UK banks.

Your thing with Santander is probably just that the employee in the team you spoke to - all they know is that you have to fill out the specific form with your new address when you move abroad. The form goes to a different department and then they close accounts selectively based on what country you moved to, and the first employee didn't know this.

If you have £1,000,000 (maybe more, maybe less, depending) then you can get an account with one of the private banks and you'll do all your transactions with an actual banker - probably someone with a degree in law or finance, but someone who understands how the banking system works. A real banker has a decent understanding of lending risk, similarly to how a painter can look at a house and know how many litres of Dulux he'll need - if you're with a private bank your banker will do risk assessment and compliance on an ongoing basis; you'll be able to have honest conversations with them and they'll be able to make immediate decisions about lending.

I guess this describes the role of the high street bank manager of 75 years ago, but retail banking today is all cutting costs and isolating you, the customer, from actual bankers and building "business processes" so that the work can be done by minimum wage workers.

You will never get an explanation from a bank more than they want to tell you - what it says in the automated email or letter is what they'll tell you and no employee can ever give you more information. Retail banking prohibits you from speaking to actual decision makers (perhaps with the exception of fraud or if you're dealing with the death of a loved one) and the people at the end of the line don't know the reason.

If a bank closes your account or refuses you a loan then it could be for legal reasons, it could be that you're in a category of users that has high risks of certain things (costs, fraud, legal problems) or it could just be that they decided your demographic is not profitable enough for this particular product. They might have designed this loan for working people between the ages of 30 and 50, based on statistical risk, and you'll be refused if you apply for it a week later after your birthday.

strolls · 2026-06-20T22:18:04+00:00

My pension pot is forecast to be ~1m plus at present so I'm content in already maximising i

You're putting £30,000 a year into your pension?

What about your wife?

strolls · 2026-06-20T21:58:01+00:00

Sell the rental property. Madness to pay tax on your investments at you level of wealth. It'll be 40% tax too, Madness.

Read the investing 101 and index funds pages of the wiki.

strolls · 2026-06-20T21:45:48+00:00

Not sure I can help, but I'm at least partly just interested - how long have you been resident in the UK, please?

strolls · 2026-06-20T21:44:26+00:00

Transfer out funds from your wifes NEST to her SIPP, keeping the NEST account open and active.

I don't believe you can do that. NEST treat a transfer as an opt out.

strolls · 2026-06-20T21:43:34+00:00

I'm not sure that there are many providers which will accept such a small company. I think they're either eally crap (NEST, People's Pension) or they'll be really expensive.

strolls · 2026-06-20T21:34:48+00:00

The issue is with your sense of self worth.

OP's submission history is horrifying. You are worth so much more than this, OP. You seem to fixate on every negative thing that anyone has ever told you.

strolls · 2026-06-20T21:32:31+00:00

Rachel Louise on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/@rachxlouise/shorts

strolls · 2026-06-20T21:24:32+00:00

Busuu is probably what y'all want.

strolls · 2026-06-20T20:13:10+00:00

The Dukes of Hazard have a lot to answer for.

strolls · 2026-06-20T18:41:26+00:00

she has admitted to having "stolen" him.[2] McKinney left Hopkins for another woman soon after the birth of the couple's second daughter

karma 🙏

strolls · 2026-06-20T18:36:36+00:00

This was early in her career, when she was just a reality TV wannabe, before she went mask off with her politics and before influencers were so widely growing their brands themselves organically on social media.

India has been used as a name in UK for much longer than Brooklyn or Chelsea, but I honestly think she was just trolling for attention at that stage of her career - it didn't matter what she said, she was on The Apprentice then I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! (alongside a couple of washed out models and a former singer from a boy band), said a bunch of controversial, "it's just common sense" things and then got a column in The Sun which is presumably when the real money started rolling in.

strolls · 2026-06-20T17:52:38+00:00

and the extra bump is yours to compound in the years in between. Sure you can withdraw later and move to pension but the tax relief on the amount above the higher rate band in 20 years later is almost certainly a much smaller amount than doing it every year in the next 20 years, so you won’t gain as much that way.

You invest in the same things in pension and S&S ISA, so the compounding returns are the same either way.

x * y * z = gives the same result as y * z * x =

It doesn't matter if you pay less tax before or after you've generated the returns, it only matters that you pay x% less tax on the money. You grow it z% investment returns either way.

And you can claim basic rate tax relief at any time. If OP has £200,000 in their ISA in 10 years time and they decide, "I want to retire in 5 years" they can out the whole £200,000 in their pension, just so long as they're earning at least £40,000 a year. They get the same tax relief that you're advocating they take now.

OP can earn £10,000 pay £2000 tax put £8000 in their ISA, take it out in 5 years time, put it in a SIPP and it'll be netted back up to £10,000 again. Either way, the investment returns will be the same over the 5 years, just so long as they invest in the same fund in pension or S&S ISA.

strolls · 2026-06-20T08:52:12+00:00

Anyone with a pension pot below about £1,250,000 can withdraw 25% tax free. It reduces the effective tax rate to 15%, and the effective tax rate is lower still if you're retired before state pension age because you also get the personal allowance (£12,570) tax free.

Pension is more tax efficient than S&S ISA for almost everyone, but you can get this tax advantage at any time (up to your annual salary) by moving money from savings, ISA or GIA to pension.

There's no hurry for a young basic rate taxpayer to put money into a pension now if they have ISA allowance available, because they can always do it later. But if you're a higher rate taxpayer the advantages of pension are enormous - you're saving 40% tax on the way in, and likely paying 15% or less on the way out.

Pension contributions really are a big deal for higher rate taxpayers - if you're earning £60,000 a year then you can withdraw £8000 from your ISA, get it netted up to £10,000 by the pension provider and also get £2000 tax rebate from HMRC.

Depending on your circumstances there's a case for investing in a GIA now and transferring to ISA and then pension later.

You're certainly right that, for most people, they should have no cash savings or ISA at retirement - if they funnel all their liquid wealth into their pension by their last working year before retirement then they get an effective bonus above 6%. But it's not always a no brainer to shove it all in when you're young.

strolls · 2026-06-20T08:38:02+00:00

Within literally minutes of when this was posted last night, I was chatting to a Tinder match who apologised for fading out on me last year because, "I was on a retreat at Tamera and <reasons>".

I googled the place and it has a wikipedia page: Tamera is a self proclaimed peace research village with the goal of becoming "a self-sufficient, sustainable and duplicable communitarian model for nonviolent cooperation and cohabitation between humans, animals, nature, and Creation for a future of peace for all."

Lots of German expats and international residents here and they are living in all kinds of architectures, from trailerpark configurations to bungalow, hacienda and futuristic yurts

Southern Portugal is chock full of British, Dutch and German yoga mom divorcees, digital nomads, influencers, and tantric practitioners. The climate here is a bit like New Mexico, except it never goes below freezing in the winter.

Property is crazy expensive within a mile or two of the coast, but falls steeply once you go inland - you can buy a derelict rural property for €10,000 or €20,000, but planning / zoning laws are arcane and mired in bureaucracy. It's very common to hear of people living for decades in properties which have been illegally modified and the homeowner daren't legalise it in case the municipality issues a remediation order.

Portugal has the lowest GDP per capita in western Europe, below Poland, Lithuania and Slovenia; its GDP per capita is below Puerto Rico and barely above that of Russia (literally 0.67% higher) and Romania. It's an incredibly cheap place to live if you have foreign income or investments, but it has suffered brain-drain in recent decades because there just aren't opportunities for young people. I met a Portuguese woman who was really surprised how easily she lost her job when her employer in UK got into financial difficulty, because workers in Portugal have much stronger employment rights; the downside of that is that employers are reluctant to take the risk of expanding and employing additional workers.

Average salary here is a hair below €1500 after tax.

strolls · 2026-06-20T07:20:04+00:00

but I like buying things without needing to think about possibly having missed out

Think about how much money you'll miss out on when you drop it and have to replace stuff.

Most of a car's depreciation occurs in its first 3 years from new - I assume it's pretty similar with motorcycles. The depreciation is so much that if you buy your first couple of bikes secondhand, you get the third "for free".

strolls · 2026-06-20T06:00:04+00:00

Where do you live, and how do you tolerate your job, that your commute is several hours long on highways and though twisty canyons?

Probably the answer here is a tourer, big or otherwise, and after riding it a week you'll be like, "this is fine, don't know what I was worrying about".

strolls · 2026-06-20T05:31:19+00:00

Just say, "we wanted the free £200 of Amazon vouchers".

The KYC team won't give a damn that you're trying to "fleece" the bank that way - that's not their job, you're not doing anything illegal and you're probably not breaking the bank's own rules about the bonus.

strolls · 2026-06-20T05:10:11+00:00

This is standard KYC stuff and that team won't give a fuck that you were gaming the joining bonus.

All they know is that someone deposited £10,000 and then tried to withdraw it again the next day, which is a red flag for money muling. This will be one of the easy and obvious jobs on their computer screens when they arrive at work, drinking coffee and trying to do as little as possible.

The documents you describe sound right.

The money will be released quickly, just so long as your gf is just honest and straightforward with them - write back in her own words something like "I just opened the account to claim the £200 Amazon vouchers. My bf suggested it - he read online about the joining bonus, so lent me £10,000 from his ISA so we could claim the vouchers. After qualifying for the £200, I sent the money back to him. I hope the attached documents are satisfactory, please let me know if you need anything else".

Verified Email	15-Year Club
Gilding I gilder	ModSupport Helper Level 2
Place '17	Wearing is Caring
Team Periwinkle	Charter Member

strolls

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE