Owning your own home

I stole the idea from Dammit and it is what I hope to be able to do next August/Sept. Touch wood.

I own a 2 bed ground floor maisonette with an 8m x 4m garden. Bought 6 months ago. A 2 bed, first floor flat with similar sq m, access to only a shared garden has gone on the market across the road from me for 12.5% more than my gaff cost me. I hope this is a good sign.

Given current interest rates (much less than your mortgage rate!!) you should pay it off on a monthly basis as the interest calculated on the mortgage is monthly. Waiting means you're paying interest on the amount you've not taken off the mortgage whilst not gaining any valuable interest by having it in savings.

The only benefit to having it in savings would be as a safety net should you not have any other savings available for emergencies. That way, should you have an emergency, the savings would mitigate likely short term loan or credit card interest rates which are higher than that on the principle of your mortgage.

Or save it separately until it's sizeable to take a significant chunk out of the remaining balance.

You're unlikely to be able to make more in interest saving it separately than you would save by paying off the mortgage in those small chunks.

I overpay regularly (as I have an interest only mortgage but treat it like a repayment mortgage) but we also build up a little pot of savings to cover random expenses (holidays, sprucing up the flat, etc) and when the savings pot gets over a certain amount then a further big chunk goes towards the mortgage. On track to pay off mortgage about 5 years early, which would be nice.