Invitations and Becomings

Those of you who have mortgages will understand how important this little number is. The Available Balance tells you how much extra cash you have saved in your mortgage account, i.e. how much you could access if you needed it. It becomes really important if you're trying to get through the last couple of months of maternity leave on one income.

What you may not understand is how it is calculated. The available balance is the difference between your current balance (i.e. how much you still owe) and your scheduled balance (i.e. how much you're expected to owe at this stage).

You can get ahead of the curve with a mortgage and use your mortgage account as a savings account by making bigger repayments than you're expected to. Not only does this give you some money you can access later, it also slightly reduces your repayments, because it is subtracted from your principal.

I have a healthy distrust of banks, and I like to double-check their maths every now and them. Unfortunately, our mortgage lender, INGDirect, provides us with a list of transactions and a current balance, but doesn't provide us with a scheduled balance. So we are expected to take their word for it regarding our available balance.

Theoretically, we could calculate the scheduled balance ourselves, but this is pretty tough, especially considering that our interest rate has already changed four or five times since we took out the loan.

Does your lender provide you with an updated scheduled balance, or are we all in the same boat? Or does anyone know a trick for calculating it ourselves? I have a customer service query in with ING asking how we can find out our scheduled balance on a regular balance. I'll keep you posted on what they say.