👉 Okay, let’s tackle this wonderfully prickly beast of a housing-related mouthful:
"Mortgage 5 Down."
Now, I get that when you throw around financial terms, they sound like little grey guys marching into your ears and shouting about impending doom. Let's unpack it with the kind of gentle mockery your overdraft balance deserves! Basically, "Mortgage 5 Down (or sometimes affectionately called a 20/80 split or a low-down-low loan) is when you, as a prospective homeowner, pledge to cough up just 5% upfront for that ridiculously shiny new… well, wherever you're buying. That 5% goes straight into the seller's piggy bank – honestly, it probably has a tiny little mortgage of its own! The remaining 80-90 (you get the picture, I’m rounding here to avoid further stress) is covered by the lender - your bank who, frankly, just really wants that monthly mortgage payment. They essentially guarantee the rest of the purchase price, taking out an "interest-only overdraft on the remainder of the amount, which you then repay over a period of years. You have to keep paying that 5% upfront as a percentage of the outstanding loan amount, but in return, your monthly payments will be lower. The whole point? To make it seem marginally attainable for folks who are still figuring out where they parked their car last week, and also
