MortgageDrive

GET THE BEST MORTGAGE FOR YOU

We designed MortgageDrive to show people that mortgage providers are not for life and that you can save thousands by switching mortgage suppliers once your current deal comes up for renewal. It may be that your current provider advises you stay with them. But MortgageDrive recommends that you check out the whole market and see if there is a better mortgage out there.

You don’t have to spend hours poring over rates and terms you can trust a specialist supplier who searches for the best deal and digitally switches you to another supplier and a better rate. No need to visit branches or go through endless paperwork.

It’s not just about switching mortgages MortgageDrive can also provide help with first time mortgages, buy to let mortgages, longer term retirement mortgages.

Click on a heading below and see a summary, and if you're interested you can GO and read more about it!

Here are some facts and stats  about mortgages. GO!

See which type of mortgage might be best for you. GO!

See what government backed schemes there are. GO!

See what the choices are between getting advice or doing it yourself. GO!

If you’re a visitor to our site you can join and download information, assess your own health and create your own action plans, and even contribute to our site.  GO!

We have a video and testimonial.  GO!

See what you can do next. GO!

We have some additional information on this subject. GO!

Facts About Mortgages

mortgages
1 million

11 million mortgages in the UK 2021

Buying with mortgage
28.7%

share of people aged 45-54 buying a house with a mortgage was 28.7% (Statista)

homeowner remortgages
1 ,000

 469,000 homeowner re-mortgages in the UK in 2021

Couples with children
32.4%

Couples with dependent child(ren) as a share of mortgage borrowers was 32.4% (Statista)

0.1 %

3.56% is the average mortgage rate 2022 in the UK

Biggest lender
19.5%

The market share of the biggest mortgage lender Lloyds banking group was 19.5% (Statista)

mortgage lenders
10

100 mortgage lenders in the UK

Lower lending in Q4 2021
8.4%

The value of gross mortgage advances in 2021 Q4 was £70.2 billion, 8.4% lower than in 2020 Q4, and the lowest level since 2020 Q3. (FCA)

man thinking about mortgages

Which mortgage is best for me

To answer that question, you need to obtain financial advice from a qualified Mortgage Advisor. But before you do that you need to understand more about the types of mortgages so that when you meet with an Advisor you are not clueless and need to take their words as gospel. The more informed you are the better the chances you have of getting the right mortgage.

The first thing to consider is your own position
Your family situation matters - are you buying a property with a partner, with children (existing or planned?
Is this your first mortgage, are you re-mortgaging your existing property or are you moving house?
Is the mortgage actually for a property you plan to live in, or is it for a property you intend to rent out (known as a buy-to-let mortgage)?

Then there's the type of mortgage - is the capital repaid at the end of the term or not (repayment or interest only), how is the interest rate set out (e.g. fixed or variable), and some specialist types of mortgage.
See some details in the tabs below.

Mortgages by purpose

The chart here from Statista (sources FCA and Bank of England) shows the split between mortgages used for house purchase, remortgage, buy to let and buy to let remortgage.

Gross advances on residential loans issued to individuals in the United Kingdom (UK) from 2015 to the second quarter of 2021 in this statistic are distributed by loan purpose. In the second quarter of 2020, the share of house purchase loans dropped due to the coronavirus pandemic and the disruption of normal business activities. This share recovered in the following quarters and reached over 75 percent in the second quarter of 2021.

- Note the loans for house purchase dropped in Q2 2020 because of the pandemic, but recovered in the following quarters. So the %-age of mortgages for home ownership is again at pre-pandemic levels at 53.0%, down 10.9pp from 2020 Q4.(FCA)
- The share of gross advances for remortgages for owner occupation also moved towards levels observed before the pandemic, at 28.1%, an increase of 9.7pp since 2020 Q4.(FCA)
- The outstanding value of all residential mortgage loans was £1,613.4 billion at the end of 2021 Q4, 4.7% higher than a year earlier.
- The value of gross mortgage advances in 2021 Q4 was £70.2 billion, 8.4% lower than in 2020 Q4 as shown above in Facts, and this is the lowest level since 2020 Q3.

Government backed mortgage scheme

Lifetime Individual Savings Account (LISA)
You can use a LISA to buy your first home (for a property costing £450,000or less) or save for later life. You must be aged between 18 and 39 to open a LISA.

You can put in up to £4,000 each year, until you’re 50. You must make your first payment into your ISA before you’re 40. The government will add a 25% bonus to your savings, up to a maximum of £1,000 a year.

If you’re buying with another first-time buyer who also has a LISA, you can both use your LISA towards the same property.

Be aware that there’s a penalty for taking money out of a LISA if you’re not putting it towards a deposit or withdrawing after age 60.

Clicking the button on the back gives you more information and YouDrive’s view!

Whether choosing an interest only, repayment or offset mortgage or renting, I'll seek professional advice I'll make the decision myself to get the right answer

I'll sort this out myself

I can use Google and mortgage comparison websites to get the best answer for me

I'll get professional advice

This is a big decision so I'll get professional help.
Click here for more information and YouDriveHealth comment

For visitors

Why don't you join us?

You can register to join us as a member, when you’ll be able to download our stuff and comment, or as a YouDriver when you’ll also be able to check your health and set up your own action plans to make some improvements.  If you’ve already registered, sign in below. Or let us know what you think.

Mortgages Explained

Mortgages Explained

In this 17 minute video MamaFurFur explains the basics of mortgages

"Home is where the mortgage is."
Billy Connolly
Scottish comedian

Next Steps

It doesn’t matter what stage  you’re at – it’s important to be the best you can be.  At the end of the day it’s about taking personal responsibility – You Drive!

It’s really your choice. You can find out more information about the subject, or see other institutions that can help by going to Support. There you will find organisations, training, coaching, self-help courses and other items to support your personal change. We have also started developing a panel of experts to provide info, advice, help and support. 

Get Support

There are times when you need some help to meet your aims –  a helping hand. That might be  an organisation that can provide you with some help,  some specialised information, a particular book or tool to help, or just getting some background reading material.

We have a lot of items which appear on our Drives and other pages, which you can go to by clicking on the picture or link.  Some contain affiliate links and we may receive a tiny commission for purchases made through these links.

If you know of anything which could help you or our other visitors then please click the button on the right, which will take you to a Contacts page where you contact us.

Experts

We are compiling a list of experts who can provide advice, help or specialised services.  You will be able to access these experts from anywhere on our site you see our ‘Experts’ symbol.  Click the green E to see what our Experts list will look like, with a couple of imaginary ‘experts’ added!

More Information

Scroll down to see more information on this Drive. 

If you register you can also download reports, white papers, quizzes and other collaterals.  We will never ask you for any financial information, and we’ll only send you the information you want. You can register for our site either above or in the footer below.  You can provide your own questions and experiences in order to help other members.  We only moderate for spam and inflammatory language – see our moderation policy.

If you’ve found this interesting, then please share it on social media.  Choose your network!

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More information

How to Buy Your First Home

(And How to Sell it Too)

Phil Spencer, property expert and co-presenter of hit series Location, Location, Location, provides everything you need to know to help you buy (and sell) your first home


Go to Amazon

The Complete Guide to Property Investment

How to survive & thrive in the new world of buy-to-let

Over the last 20 years, more than a million Brits have made life-changing profits from buy-to-let. But as prices keep rising and the tax landscape changes, investors need to get smarter in order to succeed.


Go to Amazon

Help me, I’m buying a house

A practical guide for buying your own home in England and Wales. From First Time Buyers, for First Time Buyers and those who don’t know what they are doing.

Almost 300 pages of hands-on guidance. An essential and fun read about buying your own home – from First Time Buyers, for First Time Buyers. Illustrated by Ben Jones to make you smile.


Go to Amazon

45 Ways to Buy Property

Strategies and tactics to build your property portfolio

Property provides a rare opportunity to create wealth and replace your income, do you want to replace your income in 2022?
But, it’s an area shrouded in mystery. How do people grow a portfolio of 20, 30 or 40 properties?


Go to Amazon

Citizens Advice have information on managing your mortgage

MoneyHelper give some guidance on mortgages

The Financial Conduct Authority have some tips and advice on finding an adviser

Scope provide advice for disabled people on getting a mortgage

MoneySupermarket have a mortgage calculator

Stuff you might want regarding smoking

Now you’ve read about smoking you might want to make a bit of a statement.  Have a look at some stuff below we think has some humour value!  We may make pennies on commission, but that’s not the point really.  Click on the image to see more details.

Quit Smoking Gift Stop Smoke Free T-Shirt

In many colours and sizes

Go to Amazon

quit smoking tee shirt

Proud Quitter – Quit Smoking T-Shirt

In many colours and sizes

This graphic is the perfect for someone who recently quit smoking cigarettes.
Lightweight, Classic fit, Double-needle sleeve and bottom hem

Go to Amazon

quit smoking tee shirt

I Quit Smoking Wow What Funny Novelty 11oz Mug

11oz Mug
Hand Printed in the UK
Highest Quality in the Market
Microwave & dishwasher safe

Go to Amazon

quit smoking mug

Dorothy Spring Never Quit You Can Do It Inspirational Quote Plaque Metal Sign Perfect Gift Size 15x20cm

Length: 20cm / 7.9inch | Width: 15cm / 5.9 inch
Metal Wire Included / Easy Hanging
Perfect gift 
High Quality Beautiful Gloss Finish Print

Go to Amazon

sign

All areas of health are interlinked

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Find your initial focus

You might think that physical, financial and mental health are quite separate, and for some people they are. However, often a problem in one area has a knock-on effect on others. Losing your job can lead to anxiety and depression, which can turn you to drink and impact your health.

You might have a severe issue in one area but that can lead to problems in other areas, and the people treating you for the first problem won’t be equipped to deal with these linked issues.

For example, doctors and nurses can treat you for a physical problem but can’t advise you about your job or finances.  Nor for the anxiety that comes with it, apart from prescribing some drugs, which might or might not be the best solution.

We encourage you to take a holistic view – we look at all areas and offer support across the whole spectrum.

health areas interlinked

Even this view of health is simplistic, as you’ll discover later if you go down that route.  You might want to consider overall health, or wellness or wellbeing, which include additional types of health, such as occupational health (how you are in your job).   Then there’s happiness and quality of life – how do these fit?

If you’re interested in that, click the link here to see more information.

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Stuff you might want on mortgages

Now you’ve read about mortgages you might want to make a bit of a statement.  Have a look at some stuff below we think has some humour value!  We may make pennies on commission, but that’s not the point really.  Click on the image to see more details.

How to get onto the property ladder

A first-time buyer’s guide to financing and finding your first home

This updated 2022 edition includes the latest government help-to-buy schemes and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic – including its effect on interest rates, property prices and buyer preferences. So much has changed.

Go to Amazon

property ladder

Rent 2 Rent Success

Our ethical 6-step system to get you started in property without buying it

Want to get started in property but worry you don’t have enough money, time or experience?
Stephanie and Nicky Taylor were there too. These dynamic sisters were working too hard, for too many hours. They wanted the time, freedom and options that property investing seemed to provide others, but they didn’t know how to start and couldn’t see anyone like them doing it.

Go to Amazon

rent success

How to: Buy a House

This book gives a Layman’s terms view on how to purchase a property without the confusing jargon you may find online. It highlights all the important steps you’ll need to know before purchasing a property and also the steps you’ll encounter whilst going through the process.

Go to Amazon

buy a house book

Mortgage Management For Dummies

(For Dummies (Lifestyle)) Paperback

Quickly make sense of mortgages
Taking out a mortgage to purchase real estate is a huge decision, one that could affect your family’s finances for years to come. This easy-to-follow guide explains how to secure the best and lowest-cost mortgage for your unique situation. Whether you select a 15- or 30-year mortgage, you’ll get all the tips and tricks you need to pay it off faster—shortening your payment schedule and saving your hard-earned cash.

Go to Amazon

mortgage management for dummies

How to Buy Your First Home

(And How to Sell it Too)

Phil Spencer, property expert and co-presenter of hit series Location, Location, Location, provides everything you need to know to help you buy (and sell) your first home

Go to Amazon

buy first home book

The Complete Guide to Property Investment

How to survive & thrive in the new world of buy-to-let

Over the last 20 years, more than a million Brits have made life-changing profits from buy-to-let. But as prices keep rising and the tax landscape changes, investors need to get smarter in order to succeed.

Go to Amazon

property investment book

Help me, I’m buying a house

A practical guide for buying your own home in England and Wales. From First Time Buyers, for First Time Buyers and those who don’t know what they are doing.

Almost 300 pages of hands-on guidance. An essential and fun read about buying your own home – from First Time Buyers, for First Time Buyers. Illustrated by Ben Jones to make you smile.

Go to Amazon

buying a house book

Health Areas in Domains

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Domains

We break down the overall concept of health or wellness into ‘bite-sized chunks’ that we can actually do something about.  The first level we call health domains. 

We like the Life of Wellness site and we have chosen the following domains.

1. Emotional Wellness: Awareness and acceptance of feelings
2. Spiritual Wellness: A search for meaning and purpose
3. Intellectual Wellness: Recognition of your creativity, knowledge and skills
4. Physical Wellness: Need for physical activity and balanced nutrition
5. Environmental Wellness: Positive awareness and impact on your environment
6. Financial Wellness: Debt reduction, cash flow balance or financial future planning
7. Occupational Wellness: Personal achievement and enrichment from your career
8. Social Wellness: Contribution to your community

Health Areas

Within each domain, we have included a number of health areas. These are specific issues that you can tackle.  Within each health area, e.g. Depression, we have built additional information and exercises which you can do to help in the area. You can create your own Action Plan to address this area, and see

Emotional: Anxiety, Compassion Fatigue, Depression, Gambling, Laughter, Narcissistic, Personality Disorder, Sleep, Stress

Environmental: Environmental Issues, Greenness

Financial: Debt, Family Finance, Financial Planning, Financial Wellness

Intellectual: IQ, Personality, Procrastination

Occupational: Jobs for Different Personality Types, Retirement Income, Work Life Balance

Physical: Alcohol, Disabilities, Dizziness, Drugs, Fitness, Food Preferences, General Health, Healthy Ageing, Illness, Nutrition, Sleep Apnea, Smoking

Social: Communication Skills, Communication Styles, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Love Partnerships, Mental Abuse, Parenting Styles, Sexual Addiction

Spiritual: Are You Sensitive, Mystical Guidance, Spirituality

Each health area has supporting information and its own questionnaire.

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Understand Health

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Physical, financial and mental health

One definition of health is:

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. 

The NHS define health as: ‘We use a broad definition of health that encompasses both physical and mental health, as well as wellbeing. This means we are not only interested in whether or not people are ill or have a health condition, but also in how healthy and well they are.’

We believe we also have to consider financial health, as this can easily impact physical and mental health. Click the button to see an example of how these are connected.

 It gets more complicated…

What is Health? How about Wellness, Wellbeing or Happiness?

The Active Wellbeing Society (TAWS) define Health as a state of the overall mental and physical state of a person; the absence of disease. They define Wellbeing or wellness as a way of life that aims to enhance well-being and refers to a more holistic whole-of-life experience which also includes emotional and spiritual aspects of life.  We expand on this definition of health to include financial health and mental health, to make it synonymous with wellbeing or wellness.  

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Health domains

You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!

We break down the overall concept of health or wellness into ‘bite-sized chunks’ that we can actually do something about.  The first level we call health domains.

We like the Life of Wellness site and we have chosen the following domains.

1. Emotional Wellness: Awareness and acceptance of feelings
2. Spiritual Wellness: A search for meaning and purpose
3. Intellectual Wellness: Recognition of your creativity, knowledge and skills
4. Physical Wellness: Need for physical activity and balanced nutrition
5. Environmental Wellness: Positive awareness and impact on your environment
6. Financial Wellness: Debt reduction, cash flow balance or financial future planning
7. Occupational Wellness: Personal achievement and enrichment from your career
8. Social Wellness: Contribution to your community

wellness wheel

Health Areas

Within each domain, we have included a number of health areas. These are specific issues that you can tackle.  Within each health area, e.g. Depression, once you have subscribed we have built additional information and exercises which you can do to help in the area.

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

See which domains you should address

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Having established that we use 8 domains, you need to understand which you should concentrate on.

The 8 are:

  • Emotional
  • Environmental
  • Financial
  • Intellectual
  • Occupational
  • Physical
  • Social
  • Spiritual

 

You can take a questionnaire, which scores you in each domain.  You can decide which domains you are strong in, and which you need to improve.

Another analysis shows which domains you should look at, but also which domains you want to look at.

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Locus of Control

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  • We want to help people in all aspects of their health  – physical, financial and mental. We also provide detailed explanations of how overall health (or well-being) is measured.
  • We believe these things are often linked, so we try and address health holistically. We are building templates, questionnaires and exercises to help you identify what’s important to you.
  • We think people should try and take responsibility for  of their own health as much as they can.  See below for what that means.

People look at things differently.  Some people believe things happen to them, while others believe they can influence what happens to them. Technically this is called the ‘locus of control’.  People can have an Internal or external Locus of Control

So how do you see things?

Psychology Today have a 15 minute test which gives you a summary of your position you can buy the detailed results if you want to.

My Personality Test have a 10 minute test which gives you a summary.

People tend to take more responsibility (locus gets more internal) as they get older.  However, external isn’t always bad – for example if you are physically unable to do some things you can accept it and focus on the things you can do.  This American video explains the concept and gives examples of how this can affect relationships.

locus of control

Internal

  • More likely to take responsibility for actions
  • Tend to be less influenced by others

External

  • Blame outside forces for what happens
  • Don’t believe they can change their situation themselves

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Add your attitude to change - see how you view changes in your life

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Do you need to change?

No matter how healthy you are at the moment, the chances are that there are some areas you could improve. It may be that you have a real problem in one or more areas, and you would like to make some improvements.

At YouDrive we accept that there are many different degrees of ‘not wellness’ in a large number of different health areas, ranging from physical illness such as covid-19 through mental illness such as anxiety through to financial problems like debt.  We try and help where the problem ranges from ‘slight’ to quite bad’ – after this expert help and intervention may be needed.

However, especially in these times, we have to try and make these changes ourselves, possibly with some help from others, whether remotely or face to face.

The thing is, to make an improvement we have to change some things.

This involves changing our behaviour in some respects, and that’s not always easy.

Henry Ford, the creator of the assembly line, is quoted as saying “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”.  

henry ford

Another way of looking at this: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” – attributed to Albert Einstein.

Consequently we need to make some changes.  The problem is that we have already developed a lot of habits, some of which we need to break and replace by better ones.  Some of our bad habits have become entrenched, and the bad results they create in turn engender further bad habits to develop – in effect the bad habits can feed on themselves.

We need to understand how we can make changes and stick to them, and that’s what this part of your health profile is about.

It will involve some learning, through reading, some videos and some additional information and also seeing how you react to change currently.

It will also ask you to consider whether you feel you are in charge of your future, or whether you feel it’s all fate.

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Assess your overall health using a health questionnaire

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At YouDrive we try and help people improve their health. We use ‘health’ but we understand there are other terms such as wellbeing or even happiness that reflect how we are doing in our lives – if you’re interested in the different definitions and ideas see our page on the subject.

We want to help whether you have a particular problem – physical, financial or mental – or if you just want to improve some specific part of your life or just make some improvements overall.

You’d be surprised, but there has been a serious amount of scientific work done in this area over the last twenty years.

So first we allow you to assess your current health (or wellbeing, or happiness).  We do this by questionnaire.  Which one is determined by the type of person you are:

  1. You understand yourself well and want a quick overview of your health and wellness, and will drill down in any areas needing work
  2. You want to do a more detailed assessment and then focus on areas you’re already aware of
  3. You want to look at the whole situation in more detail across all the health domains.

By the way, we take your privacy seriously – we collect information that you choose to provide but we de-identify it as much as possible and will never share it with anyone without your explicit consent.

You can then drill down into some specific areas and there are more questionnaires to see your situation in these particular areas.  We provide you with specific information and refer you to other potential aspects of help. Our next step is to build a personalised action plan – for now we will make a suggestion for you to develop your own plan and then after a time you can see whether this has had a positive impact by retaking the test.

In future we will be engaging with medical and behavioural specialists to devise action plans for individual people with specific situations.

We have an overall questionnaire which you can complete which will assess your current state.

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Values, Attitudes and Beliefs

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We all have our beliefs, attitudes and values – these have developed throughout our life based on who we are and what we have done. Let’s look at what these are.

The University of Reading explain: “People’s values, beliefs and attitudes are formed and bonded over time through the influences of family, friends, society and life experiences. So, by the time you’re an adult, you can hold very definite views on just about everything with a sense of “no one is going to change my mind”.

The combination of your personal values, beliefs and attitudes are your moral principles that guide you in life and affect your behaviour. However, your views can wildly differ to others and in an institution such as a school, these beliefs may be counter to the values of the school, child development or indeed the law.” 

Let’s look more closely at the differences between beliefs, attitudes and values.

Beliefs

These come from real experiences – we think our beliefs are based on reality, but in fact our beliefs colour our experiences; also, an original experience e.g. when we were a child is not the same as what’s happening now. Beliefs can be moral, religious or cultural and reflect who we are. They can be rational (‘it gets colder in winter’) or irrational (‘I am never going to make something of myself’).

Attitudes

This is an immediate belief or disposition about something specific. It is a recurring group of beliefs and behaviours aimed at specific groups, people, ideas or objects. They will normally be positive or negative and we will always behave that way to the target group. Examples of attitudes include confidence (I can or can’t do something), grateful (I an entitled to / grateful for XXX) and cheerful (I am generally happy / miserable).

Values

These are things (principles or qualities) that we hold in high regard or consider to be worthwhile or right / wrong. They are formed by a belief related to the worth of something – an idea or behaviour. Some values are common (e.g. family comes first, the value of friendship) or cultural (which the whole community have – see video at Study.com here)

The theory

Links to Wikipedia

Expectancy Value Theory suggests you balance your beliefs about something with the value you attach to it. The Theory of Reasoned Action suggests that beliefs and evaluation about behavioural outcomes determine attitudes, and intentions lead directly to behaviour.

Beliefs

Expressions of confidence – can change over time

Attitudes

Learned predispositions to something – are subject to change

Values

Ideals that guide our behaviour – Generally long lasting and often need life changing experience to change

Iceberg demonstrating implicit and explicit bias – from Owlcation

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A Butterfly Life: 4 Keys to More Happiness, Better Health and Letting Your True Self Shine

Times of change can be a challenge, no doubt! Whether it’s a relationship breakup, job loss, or being diagnosed with a serious health issue. Or you may WANT things to be different, but it feels a little scary or overwhelming. The butterfly reminds us change can be beautiful, even necessary, in order to realize our full potential and live our best life.