Mortgages & Loans

How it works

The mechanics of this kit, plainly — what runs and when, where the data lands, and what you look at.

• Rate watch runs mondays · 7:30am and keeps the What you owe dashboard fresh. Mondays — checks the market against your loans, redraws the board, and speaks only when a window opens.
• Credit check-in runs the 3rd of each month · 9am and keeps the What you owe dashboard fresh. Monthly — asks once for this month's score, notes what moved, and keeps the credit panels current.
• What is captured lands in the Loan register dataset, which lives at Data/Loan Register in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Credit reports dataset, which lives at Data/Credit Reports in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Application papers dataset, which lives at Data/Application Papers in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Credit disputes dataset, which lives at Data/Credit Disputes in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• The What you owe dashboard reads from the dataset and shows, at a glance: until the next fix ends · owed in total · loans on record · where it sits · fixed or floating · where the balance is heading · loan-to-value · what the market offers, beside what you pay · go through your balances · papers for an application · a month of debt service · interest this year, roughly · latest credit reading · credit standing over time (share of the agency's scale) · on the report · what this is.

The wiring, in one breath: Loan capture writes to Loan register · Loan register shown by What you owe · What you owe kept fresh by Rate watch · Rate watch grounds Remortgage brief · Remortgage brief reads Credit reports · Credit reports kept current by Credit check-in · Credit check-in answered through Credit report capture · Credit report capture given to Oak · Payoff and borrowing sums reads Loan register · Application papers and disputes writes to Application papers · Application papers and disputes writes to Credit disputes · Application papers shown by What you owe · Credit check-in reads Credit disputes · Payoff and borrowing sums given to Oak · Application papers and disputes given to Oak.

Getting the most from it

A kit earns its place when it changes what you look at and what you say, not when it is installed. This is the rhythm that makes it pay.

• Put every loan on the register once, with the date its fix ends. The Monday watch does the remembering from there and the board counts down.
• Say the score your credit app shows when the monthly check-in asks. One line a month draws the credit line, normalised across agencies.
• When a letter, a statement or a mortgage offer arrives, add it to the vault and say what it is. Loan capture moves only what it states, the early repayment charge included, and every sum works that charge in.
• Ask for the Remortgage brief six months before a fix ends — the case both ways, sourced rates, the questions worth asking a broker — then take it to a broker. Nothing here is advice.
• Keep the property estimate honest. Loan-to-value is only as good as the number you gave it.
• When balances move, Go through your balances on What you owe takes each loan you still owe on, one at a time, and saves the figure to its row. It is quicker than saying them one by one.
• Ask Oak which debt to clear first. Payoff and borrowing sums works each order through on your own figures, side by side, with the method shown, and never picks one for you.
• Thinking of borrowing more? Give Oak the rate you were quoted and it works the payment, the interest and the total. A rate it looked up is never treated as an offer.
• Before you apply, ask for the papers list. It goes on the board as a list you tick, from a source Oak names on each row, or from your lender's own list if you paste it in.
• Found a mistake on your credit report? Oak drafts the dispute the way that agency asks for it. You send it yourself, and the monthly check-in watches for the reply date.

Make it yours

Nothing here is fixed. The pieces are ordinary agents, routines, datasets and dashboards, so anything you know about shaping those applies. Retire whatever earns nothing.

Things people usually change first

Say any of these in chat, or edit them on the kit’s page in the app.

• How far ahead of a fix-end you want the first word — six months is the default.
• What counts as a material gap between your rate and the market before it is worth a card.
• Whether the monthly credit ask happens at all, and on which day — or which score-update emails the check-in may read, enabled and disabled by name.
• The property estimate behind the loan-to-value figure — it is yours to change whenever you like.
• When the Monday rate watch runs, or turning the cards off and just keeping the board.
• Whether a payoff or borrowing sum is kept as a note in your vault, or just worked through in the chat.

Your first run

Installing starts a short setup conversation — not a form. Answer roughly, correct later.

1. It opens with a conversation, not a form, and Oak looks before it asks. Oak, the Kit's own keeper, first checks what you have already told 1Presence and any statements or lender letters in your vault, asking your permission to look there if it needs it, and shows you what it found so you can confirm or correct it. Then it offers the territory of borrowing as one tap-to-answer panel (a mortgage, a personal loan, car finance, a student loan, card balances that carry, an overdraft) and takes each loan in turn: the lender, roughly what is left, the rate and whether it is fixed, when the fix ends, the monthly payment. Each goes on the register as you speak, and you can stop whenever you like.
2. Then the credit side, lightly: whether you use a credit-score app, and the number it shows if you have it to hand. That first reading starts the line. If you do not have one, the monthly check-in asks once a month, in one card, and stops asking if you tell it to.
3. Nothing reads a bank, a lender or a credit agency out of the box. If you mention that your score updates arrive by email, Oak offers that one specific check by name, and only what you switch on is ever read — going back a year the first time so the line gains its history.
4. From the first Monday, the Rate watch looks up what the market is offering for your shape of loan and redraws the board. Most weeks it says nothing. When a fixed rate comes inside six months of ending, or the gap between your rate and the market turns real, you get one card with the facts and the arithmetic — and the offer of a remortgage brief that lays out the case both ways. Never a recommendation.
5. If you stop part-way, nothing is lost. The Kit's page, its board and a fresh chat with Oak show what is still missing, and the next time you talk to Oak it offers once to pick up where you stopped. Say not now and it drops it. Bills, lettings and the tax return are other Kits' desks: Oak knows which and hands you across rather than filing them here.

Watch the first pass, then tell it what you would have done differently — that correction teaches it more than any setup could.

The essentials

Learning, preferences and run costs work the same in every kit — so they are covered once, in the Kits guide.

Living with a Kit — the Kits guide →

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