Published: 09/02/2010 14:45 - Updated: 08/11/2011 16:52

I'VE got to go to a meeting tomorrow that could either make us or break us. It's time to review our mortgage.

 

It's been nearly two years since we bought our house and it's more or less exactly two years since we sat in Christine Griffin's mortgage advice office in Ashbourne finding out whether or not we could afford our own pad.

 

It turned out, at the time, that we could. Fairly comfortably. But that was two years ago and you may have noticed that an awful lot has happened in two years.

There's been a national campaign to keep newspapers full of horror stories dreamed up by the Labour party. It's called a recession, and it made anything to do with money go a little bit mad.

What it should mean, to us at least, is that interest rates have dropped since we last looked at them and, as we're coming to the end of a a fixed rate mortgage, we finally see a benefit to that drop.

 

When we signed up we weren't sure what the future held and to safeguard us against a rise in interest we opted for a two year fixed rate term. 

This turned out to be very stupid of us as the rate dropped during the credit crunch and we lost out on a big monthly saving.

However, now that this fixed term is coming to an end we should be able to drop to a lower rate come April. We hope.

 

There's nothing to say that the mortgage lenders, who are now on their knees to some extent, won't get all jittery and only offer us a high rate because they're skint.

This is unlikely to be honest, but if our rate does go up it will make life very tricky - and could even shelve our wedding plans for a while.

On the other hand, this could leave us in a very good state. We could save a bit of money each month and it will be wonderful. If that happens, we'll crack open a nice old bottle of wine and maybe even buy a new car. But let's see. 

On a lighter note I've just booked us a holiday to Ireland. For no other reason really than the discovery of a way to do it for £200. Actually slightly less than that, amazingly.

Unusually for me, we've decided to do the whole holiday on public transport. We'll start on a train, which we can pick up from a few hundred yards from our house, and then ride on a big boat before jumping on another train and some buses and so on to our nice three star hotel.

This is going to be something of a challenge for the one person who, for some reason, has never been able to comprehend timetables. 

But I'm looking forward to the challenge. It should add an interesting element to the holiday. It'll be complicated, exhausting and slightly uncomfortable. A bit like picking a scab.

So in late march we'll be heading out to Dublin for three nights to get away from it all and relax. Who knows, depending on how this meeting goes a holiday might be exactly what we need. 

 

I'll let you know how the meeting goes!