I thought I'd provide an update since I've some more questions:
Age: 32
Spouse’s/Partner's age: 33
Annual gross income from employment or profession: 170k (122k salary with rest from bonus and shares)
Annual gross income of spouse: 66k + overtime
Monthly take-home pay: Not sure exactly but cashflow isn't an issue
Type of employment: e.g. Civil Servant, self-employed: Private sector, partner public sector
In general are you:
saving: Saving on average 2-3k/month
Rough estimate of value of home: 572k (bought for 500k in 2019, price index suggests about 14-15% increase since, will need to get valued)
Amount outstanding on your mortgage: 353k with 28 years to go. We paid off lump sum upon suggestions here, thanks!
What interest rate are you paying: 2.8% (Just under 3 years left of 5 year fix)
We overpay the 10% allowed from bank of Ireland + extra money to bring monthly repayments to about 2000, the contract amount is about 1550.
In theory we are meant to pay a breakage fee on the extra repayments (taking into account the break fee has been about 0.8-1%) but the bank hasn't been charging us for it, nor do they recalculate the repayment amount every month, even though they probably should. It's probably due to incompetence and bad IT systems but either way we don't get charged on it.
Due to get 4300 eur in cashback if we stay the fixed term
Other borrowings – car loans/personal loans etc: None
I was planning on buying a car (with cash) but with another car and home working and shortage of second hand cars, I'm in no rush here.
Do you pay off your full credit card balance each month? Yes
If not, what is the balance on your credit card? N/A
Savings and investments: 65k in cash. About 25-30k was earmarked for car up until recently. About 15k was for maxing pension contributions for last year and like about 15k rainy day.
Do you have a pension scheme: Approx 90k, partner contributes to public service pension and maxes PRSA. Estimate fund at around 40k. Both max contributions
Do you own any investment or other property?
None
Ages of children: No children
Life insurance: Mortgage protection, 650k life policy (38 years left) and 4x salary life policy via work. 400k or so mortgage protection. My partner works in public sector so whatever they get.
Prob over insured, I'll prob stop letting my life policy increase.
Since I overpaid mortgage, can I reduce mortgage protection inline with it?
What specific question do you have or what issues are of concern to you?
I'm wondering if it makes sense to break fixed term, move to Avant or ICS? I try not to predict the future but I think in 3 years, mortgage rates will either be the same or higher than now. Therefore, it might make sense to fix at a low rate for a longer time.
We aren't far off the 60% LTV and could use some of the cash to get to it, if required after we get it valued.
I calculate if we were to move to avant today we would save approx 8500 in interest over the remaining fixed period. (353k x (0.028-0.0195) x 3, then allow for principal reduction over that time of 500 eur, bit of a guess).
We will have to forfeit the cash back (4300), the solicitor + valuation will cost about 1500 and the breakage fee I'll have to find out about. I'll be pessimistic and say 1% of loan (3500). So it looks the swap would be pretty cost neutral over the next 3 years, plus or minus a few hundred euro. If interest rates were to stay the same, there would be no point doing this.
My question, is it worthwhile to swap to Avant's low rate for 7/10 years as a hedge against interest rate rises in my case?