Two hundred thousand borrowed, over thirty years, with a one percent spread. At the end of 2021 that payment is about 598 a month. Two years later — same loan, same spread, same house, same person — it is about 1,074. Nothing about that borrower changed.

In Part 1 we chose the bank. Today we choose the rate, and that number is the reason the choice matters.

Most people treat fixed versus variable as a prediction about where rates are going. It isn't one — and I'll show you what the question actually is.

In this episode I cover:

• What actually moves your reference rate, and how often yours resets
• Variable, fixed and mixed — what each one buys you and what each one costs you
• Why fixed is not simply the safe option, and the two different products that both get called "fixed"
• The one question that decides it, which is about your budget and not the market
• What repaying early costs, and what stretching the term really costs you

Two episodes, two decisions. Choose the bank on total cost with at least three offers on the table. Choose the rate on whether your budget can absorb movement.

Bonus Episode 3 — The Mortgage, Part 2: Choosing the Rate

Show notes and full episode summary: https://www.beyondpiggybanks.com/episodes/episode-b0103.html

Almost everyone shopping for a mortgage compares the wrong number.

The rate you're quoted isn't the cost of your mortgage — it's one component of it. In this first of two bonus episodes, Jorge breaks down what you're actually paying: the reference rate the bank doesn't control, the spread it does, and the insurances and commissions that never appear in the headline figure.

You'll learn why the same borrower gets meaningfully different prices from different lenders, why the insurance the bank sells you is rarely the cheapest available, why some of your costs rise every year without anyone asking your permission, and the one number worth comparing between offers.

Plus the single most valuable thing you can do before signing — and why three offers beat two.

Mortgages differ enormously between countries. The anatomy doesn't. Learn it once, and you can read any offer, anywhere.

Part of The Foundation Years — a Beyond PiggyBanks series.

The foundation is holding. You have an emergency fund, you know where your salary goes, and you know which debt works for you and which works against you. Now we build the thing that sits on top of it — the engine. This is the episode where your money stops being money and starts being a system.

I'll be honest up front: this episode tells you to be more aggressive than you probably expect, and more careful than you probably expect. Both are true. They just apply to different pots of money.

In this episode I cover:

• What ten years of waiting actually costs — the same €200 a month, run twice, and the gap is bigger than you think
• The three horizons, and why sorting your money by when you need it comes before any decision about risk
• The mistake almost nobody warns you about — and it isn't being too aggressive
• Why your income is an asset, why it isn't diversified, and how people accidentally bet their salary and their savings on the same outcome
• The straight answer on what the long money actually goes into
• Why the allocation you've been told to build may already exist — just not inside one account
• How to start from a lump sum, from living at home, or from zero
• The four rules of the engine

Time is doing most of the work here. Your job is smaller than you think.