Moving house is certainly up there as one of the three msot stressful events in life. It ranks right up there with divorce and death. Armed with this knowledge, advance planning and preparation will certainly help prevent unwanted stress and anxiety. These plans must begin weeks if not months in advance of your move. One of the first things is to choose a moving company. Although it maybe tempting and somewhat less expensive to move yourself, by hiring a professional, insured movers (a specialist type of road haulage company), you will be saving yourself and friends risk of injury, frustration and undue burden. Specialist moving companies will be safe, efficient and can handle the unexpected.

Once you have decided on a moving company, you can then decide if you want to pack your own items or have the moving company do this for you. Packing your own items will allow you the advantage of knowing how and what was packed in each box. Packing items room by room is the best way to attack the mamoth task . Schedule your packing well in advance by room and set aside at least one day per room and start packing with the less used items first. Then assign a color to each room and fix this color to the boxes filled from that room. You can use markers, tape or any other creative way to color code your boxes. As well as color coding, label each box with the room it came from and the items that are contained within the box.

By starting this far in advance, you will have time to sort through items that you do not use anymore and donate them. You will need to fill out the necessary forms to have your mail forwarded to your new address and contact the utility companies of both your old home to schedule a discontinuation date and your future home to begin services.

As the moving day approaches you will want to have easy access to a variety of items, which if not considered in advance, may be forgotten. If you are moving with children, pack an activity box for them. Include items that will entertain them based on their ages and interests to help busy them while you are working on the move. Some other things that you will need for your first night are enough bed linen , towels, bath soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes. Of course, you will want to include necessary clothing for the night and following day. On the first morning in your new home, you will need a box that contains cups, coffee or tea, sugar, milk, utensils and cereal. These few tips will help reduce the stress that you will inevitable experience.

Of the various types of mortgage available, the fixed rate mortgage is only one of them.
You get your interest rate locked for the period of the deal, usually a few years.
The interest rate you pay is locked; therefore your monthly payments are also locked.

Do fixed rate mortgages have any plus points?
You benefit by not having the yo-yo effect on your monthly payments. They stay the same every month.
You can benefit by knowing your monthly payment is fixed which allows you to budget more effectively.

It doesn’t matter how much interest rates rise, your payments are fixed.
In the not too distant past there have been some real scary rate rises.
People on variable rate mortgages are much more likely to be affected by rapid rises in interest rates.

There can be certain circumstances when a fixed rate mortgage may not be right for you.
If you think you may move home, or even have another child and need an extra bedroom, then think carefully before taking a fixed rate mortgage.
Either of these events will cause you to trigger an unwanted redemption penalty.

A redemption penalty is a charge that almost always comes with a fixed rate deal.
These charges can be pretty steep, and come at a time when you don’t need the extra stress.
These unexpected charges can hurt. Consider carefully whether a fixed rate is the one for you.

It’s worth thinking about paying a bit extra each month in addition to whatever you normally pay.
You may have a fixed rate but it doesn’t mean your payments have to be fixed if you can afford extra.
The lenders would love you to do this but they will rarely tell you that you can indeed pay extra.

What are the best reasons to paying a bit extra every month?
The extra payments reduce the sum owed quicker and the result is you save years off the term of your deal.
You can save a shedload of cash as well as knock a few years off.

In what way does a mortgage overpayment calculator work?
You input various figures relating to your mortgage.
You can put various amounts in as the overpayment. Feel free to play around with this figure.

You get a resulting figure out of the calculator in years you can shave off.
It also gives you a figure in cash that you can expect to save.
The figures in years and cash saved will increase the more you overpay each month.

You might be pleasantly surprised at the savings to be made.
If you had a 25 year mortgage and borrowed 100 grand at 5% interest.
You could save over twelve thousand and shorten the mortgage by more than 3 years just by paying an extra 50 each month.

That example is paying just 50 extra every month. What if you could afford 100 a month to overpay?
Using the same example mortgage from earlier we now pay 100 extra.
You can knock a staggering 6 years or more off the length and save yourself in the region of 20 thousand.

An extra advantage is you won’t have any payments to make during the last few years of the mortgage.
It’s definitely a reality for you to be free of your mortgage years before planned.
Of course your lender will never tell you this, you have to discover this on your own.

In our example where we saved six years off the length with a hundred a month overpayment.
You pay nothing more for the last 6 years of the term, which equates to about another 40 grand saved.
You don’t pay this money to your lender so you get to keep it, either save it or spend it.

In this article we’ve looked at the potential of fixed rate mortgages.
Every month you pay the same so you get to sleep easy at night knowing this.
We also had a look at the savings to be made by paying a bit extra every month. It all adds up.