Santander has urged customers to consider overpaying £144 on their mortgage this month – because it could save £28,373 in interest and reduce the term by four years and eight months. Giving up 30 pints in Dry January could hand Santander customers enough to pay £144.
Calculations from Santander show that a homeowner putting the monthly price of twelve pints (£57) towards overpaying a 25-year mortgage of £200,000 at 4.5% over the life of the mortgage, would save £12,983 in interest and be mortgage-free two years and one month earlier than planned.
Even committing just part of the savings could make a difference, with Santander accepting overpayments from as little as £10 per month, which, on a £200,000 mortgage, would save more than £2,490 in interest and shave four months off a customer’s mortgage term.
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Graham Sellar, Head of Intermediary Channel – Mortgages, at Santander, said: “Whatever the reason for doing Dry January, there’s an undisputable benefit to your bank account. It’s tempting to spend that extra cash, but for those able to put even a small proportion of it aside, starting a habit of overpaying on your mortgage could reap huge benefits in the long run.”
Santander says it “makes it easy for mortgage customers to make a one-off lump sum or regular monthly overpayments through its online banking and mobile app.” In 2024, Santander customers overpaid a total of more than £2.2 billion, with 30,000 more customers opting to overpay in 2024, than in 2023.
In the first few days of January 2025, Santander saw £100 million of mortgage overpayments being made by customers. Four pints is the equivalent to £19 and will see nine months taken off a mortgage by saving £4,647 in interest, while six works out at £28 – rounded down to the nearest pound 0 trimming your mortgage term by one year and one month and saving £6,730 in interest.