A hike in mortgage rates might force me to recruit another terrier-loving lodger

Telegraph

18-07-2025

I'm obsessively monitoring the financial headlines. 'Tax raid looms'. 'Job market slows'. 'Economy shrinks'. 'Food prices up'. 'Interest rate cut likely', and so on. Cheery stuff like that. I don't pretend to understand terms such as 'fiscal headroom' or 'consumer resilience', but I read them all the same. It's anything about interest rates that I find most gripping, though, because my mortgage is up in a month and it's not looking great. After five blessed years of a lovely low rate, I'm now facing something much higher, and my repayments are likely to double.
It's a choppy time for a freelance writer. 'I should have become a corporate lawyer after all,' I thought last week, squinting through yet another financial article about the chances of a rate cut next month. The lack of knowledge about fiscal headroom and consumer resilience might have held me back, but I'm sure I could have muddled through. I keep checking in with my mortgage adviser, a terrifically jolly man called James who's often on holiday (most recently in Croatia, so perhaps I should have become a mortgage adviser instead?), and he's doing his best to fiddle around and see what can be done, but still, like plenty of others across the country, I'm facing a hike.
Should I find a second lodger, that's the big question. I already have one living with me in south-east London, but soon we may need a third party to join us. Or a fourth, if we include Dennis, my terrier. Given that I'm 40, this feels very studenty. Three of us milling around in the kitchen, trying to make supper at the same time? Separate shelves in the fridge? Taking it in turns to use the washing machine?
'You have a flatmate?' a friend said, in vaguely horrified tones, when she came for dinner recently. 'Yes,' I replied simply. I wanted to add (but didn't), 'and you have a husband to share the mortgage, so try not to sound so patronising'. I don't have a husband, and Dennis is rubbish at contributing to the bills, so it's just me on the mortgage. One flatmate helps, but if my repayments double, then another one would help even further. But the idea of having to wait for someone else's pants to dry on the line before I can hang my own isn't absolutely filling me with joy.
I know, I know, I'm extremely fortunate to own anywhere at all, to have two spare rooms that I can let out. Moaning about mortgage repayments when plenty of Gen Z say they'll never be able to afford a house is the kind of grumble which is likely to get me metaphorically lynched on the internet. Again. But the looming increase is making me feel more sympathetic to those who carp on about the 'singles tax' – the extra costs single people face because they don't have a partner to share household bills, car repayments, grocery shopping, and the odd emergency trip to the vet because the dog has swallowed yet another chicken bone off the pavement.