Owning your own home

Much more likely to get an interest-only deal through an IFA.

We got our original mortgage at a time when Mrs GB was between jobs and my salary wasn't quite enough to cover a full repayment mortgage so the IFA (paid by commission not by us directly) who helped us arrange it agreed that we had a plan for the repayment side (the plan being that when Mrs GB is working again we'd have the money to make overpayments and/or stick money aside to pay off lump sums at renegotiation times).

We also got the interest-only mortgage in 2009 which was before the banks got really spooked about sub-prime and clamped down on it. Once we had the interest-only mortgage we've stayed with the same provider and watched the interest rates fall on a 5 year fixed (5.09%, 2.89%, 1.98%).

We've effectively got a mortgage with as many repayment holidays as we like, although that comes with the obvious pitfalls. We're probably 2 years behind where we should be (with 8 years to go) but I'm not fussed as we can just extend for another 2 years or, as I hope, we work a bit more (or go to more demanding jobs) when MiniGB starts secondary school and needs us around less. Yes we would have ended up paying more interest than if we'd paid it off as a standard regular repayment mortgage but, by my calculations, it only amounts to a couple of months of extra repayments which seems a big amount on its own (>£4k) but is worth is for the flexibility that we've had.

With the interest only part we're effectively paying £400/month rent (although we are our own landlords so we have to cover major problems/wear/tear etc) instead of £2400 of a repayment mortgage.

tl;dr speak to an IFA and get them on board that you have your own repayment plan