So let’s say mortgage is £800, but I want to pay £1000, rather than pay it to the mortgage & save 2% or less on the mortgage interest, I’ll pay it into the LISA & get a £50 bonus (25%) every time I pay in. At that point I’m 23% better off on the money I’ve put in. I’m 37, so have minimum 23 years until I can draw down on it penalty free (& tax free). As I’ve got 23 years I’ve got plenty of time to let investments do it’s thing, 7%-9% is easily achievable on what I’d consider medium risk portfolio, so comfortably making more money than save by overpaying my mortgage. I’ll probably go higher.
Upshot is, the LISA contributions move up at a much faster rate than the mortgage balance would go down.
The payoff I’ve got to have is I can’t access the money until 60 to make the final payment off the mortgage. I’m comfortable with that. It’s all part of the long term plan. If things go well, I’ll have the money to pay off the mortgage then some tax free cash to spend. I haven’t done my final sums yet as I’ll be remortgaging in the next year or so, so I’ve only got rough figures in my head. What I’ll do is review it yearly based on how mortgage rates are moving & how much my contributions are & the investment performance.
However, I’m as sure as sure can be, I’ll have a pot of money much bigger in the LISA than I would have had if I’d have overpaid the mortgage.
I think lots of people take the term pension & LISA literally. All it is, is another vehicle to receive a generous bonus that I can’t access until 60. I can spend the money how I like. If I’ve got enough to supplement my income, it means I dint have to pay tax on pension drawdown. Or, I might just go mental with it. If it was actually for a pensionable income, there’s no real benefit (for me) to use the LISA. As it is, it’s handy to keep one pot of money from another.
As an aside, I’m going to open a LISA in my wife’s name too. Anybody who’s under 40 should open one with £1. You’ve got until 50 to contribute, it just means there’s another option for us should we want a long term savings plan separate to retirement planning. Worst case scenario, we don’t use it.