Compare four ways to bring your payment down

How the four routes compare, step by step

Your payment has gone up, and the useful next move is working out which of the four routes actually fits your own figures, then taking one specific question to your lender.

1. 1

   Your payment going up is where this starts

   A fixed rate ending and reverting to a higher one is usually what turns a manageable payment into one that's hard to meet. Every route that follows starts from the same three facts: your balance, your rate and your remaining term, as they stand today.

2. 2

   Put in your balance, rate, term and overpayment

   The calculator asks for four figures: your mortgage balance, your interest rate, your remaining term and any overpayment you're currently making. Nothing you type is sent anywhere; the working happens in your browser.

3. 3

   The same figures run through four routes

   Each route changes the shape of your payment differently, so the same balance and rate produce four different outcomes. For each one you see the new monthly payment, the total interest to the end of the term, and a year-by-year breakdown.

   Extending the term

   Spreads the remaining balance over more years. The monthly payment falls; the total interest paid over the life of the mortgage rises.

   Six months interest-only

   Drops the capital portion of the payment for six months, which lowers it the most in the short term, but the balance still owed at the end is unchanged.

   Stopping overpayments

   Returns the payment to the contractual amount if you've been paying above it. The term and rate don't change.

   Selling

   Removes the mortgage altogether, at the cost of the property and whatever equity is tied up in it.

4. 4

   What the numbers alone don't tell you

   A lower monthly payment doesn't say whether a lender will check your income again, or what a credit reference agency will see afterwards. Those depend on which door the change comes through.

   Which of these applies depends on whether a payment has already been missed and on the lender's own policy.

   Agreed while up to date

   A standard term extension, or a Mortgage Charter option at a signatory lender, with no new affordability check and no effect on your credit score.

   Formal hardship arrangement

   Help agreed under MCOB 13, the FCA's Mortgage Conduct of Business sourcebook for borrowers in difficulty, which usually leaves an arrangement marker on the file.

5. 5

   The question to take to your lender

   Once you can see which trade-off suits your figures, the conversation with the lender is specific: which route they can offer, whether it sits under the Mortgage Charter or needs a formal arrangement, and how it will show on your credit file. The lender has to tell you that last part.

These figures are illustrative, built from whatever you enter. They don't account for lender fees, early repayment charges or future rate changes, and the calculator can give a wrong answer if the figures you put in don't match your mortgage.