Interesting reading this old thread, some of it is pertinent to my current situation...
Our mortgage comes to term next September. It's part repayment, part interest only. Because reasons, we don't currently have the cash in reserve to pay off the interest only part.
This leaves us with two options:
1. Remortgage
2. Take a lump sum out of my wife's pension pot to pay off the outstanding amount
I'm not sure how viable option 1 is right now. Aside from the general turmoil in the mortgage market, I'll be the wrong side of 50 by next September, and the current job is not a permanent employment contract, so I don't know if I would even get a mortgage. Wife has not been working full time for some years due to long-term illness and is also the wrong side of 50, so she's a non-starter.
Also, given that interest rates are on the increase, is a mortgage really a good idea right now? Current thinking is that if we pay it off out of my wife's pension, we can then start putting aside the amount we would have paid into a mortgage every month back into savings - even if we invest it very safely, I think we'll be better off financially in the long term. (If we invested at the same rate as our current monthly mortgage payments, we would repay the full amount inside 7 years.)
Definitely a bit of a risk involved, given the lack of job security, but that's true in any scenario, and I'm probably missing something obvious that makes this a bad idea.
If the worst comes to the worst, we can sell the house - the interest only part of the mortgage was about 10% of the property value 10 years ago, so we have plenty of equity even if house prices take a hit over the next year.
I think we need to seek proper professional financial advice before making any firm decisions though.