Hi,
I’m hoping someone might be able to give me some advise on my rather shameful situation.
Mortgage taken out in May 2007 - 288k at 92% Loan to value over 35 years.
MBNA credit card (mine) – 8k (no payments made now since August)
MBNA credit card (his) – 4k (paid up to date)
My personal loan with BOI – 17k (+ 1000 arrears) 670 euro per month
My mortgage repayment is 1050 per month.
There are 3 months arrears on this mortgage from 2008 when my partner first lost his job (he is a bricklayer and lost his job in January 2008 – 6 months after we bought our house!)
I have a permanent full time job (40K per annum) and managed to get a second job in January 2009 working night shifts in a call centre at the weekends and did that for a year while my partner was still not working and kept us up to date with all our repayments during that time. I gave up the second job earlier this year as my partner got work on a construction project in the city centre and I thought I’d die of exhaustion J.
Almost as soon as I gave up the second job, my salary from my primary job was cut. But we still managed to keep up our mortgage repayments as he was still working.
My partner then lost his job in July this year and despite trying absolutely everything is still out of work. He is in receipt of jobseekers benefit at 196euro a week.
I have kept up the mortgage repayments until this month, basically by (stupidly, admittedly ) running up arrears on my credit card and personal loan and now I am totally up sh*ts creek.
I have worked out a plan as to how I can manage to continue, I don’t want to loose my home obviously and I want to take responsibility for everything that I borrowed but I cant do it within the agreements originally made with the lenders.
This is my plan – maybe totally ridiculous though :
1.His credit card – 4k – He has paid protection on this and therefore we can effectively park this for 1 year while we try sort ourselves out.
2.I can afford to make about 2/3’s of my mortgage repayment per month – 650euro until he secures full time employment.
3.My personal loan was originally 32k over 5 years and is now at 17k after just over 2.5 years. If I could re-take out the 17k loan now and include the 1k arrears, over a further 5 years, the repayments would be about 400euro per month (270euro less than current repayment amt)
4.Pending the previous two points being accepted by the lenders, I could then put 500 euro a month off my 8k credit card debt. This is obviously the one I want to attack first as its the highest interest and I am sick of trying to pay it off and getting nowhere.
5.On more long term note, if the above is granted, my partner plans to retrain completely, has already done two courses in renewable energy and there are some more retraining options we have up our sleeve. Obviously the objective here is for him to be able to obtain employment outside of the ‘doomed’ construction sector with a view to us being in a better position in a few years time to then look at increasing our repayments on our mortgage.
6.If option 5 above does not happen and he does not secure employment here, he has been granted a working visa for Canada and has family out there he could live with so he would not have to pay rent out there. Although I could go out there too, I would be reluctant to give up a good permanent job here too hastily.
I have 4 questions I would like to ask ....
1.I just really wanted to ask what anyone thinks of the above plan? Is it totally ridiculous and over ambitious ? Would the lenders consider this do you think or would I be laughed out the door. Ive really tried to avoid having to do this at all costs, with getting the second job and that, but I cant keep going racking up arrears and digging the hole deeper. I have to try something.
2.When I spoke to some friends about the above and mentioned my plans they said to me not to put this to the lenders as a proposal but more as a non-negotiable. Like in other words ‘tell’ them this is the situation, rather than ‘ask’ ? Does anyone have an opinion on this ?
3.If I were to approach the mortgage lender with the above idea, would it be advisable to mention the possibility of my partner going to Canada to get work ? Some friends have said they think this would be a bad idea as the mortgage lender might suspect it would become tempting for us to just ‘do a runner’ if money and that was so much better out in Canada ?
4.With my MBNA credit card – would I be better off if I let them sell it on to a debt company? Like what happens in that situation ? Does the amount then remain static as it is on the day that it is sold ? Or does the debt company apply the same interest arrangements as MBNA ?
If you have read all of this – all I can say is sorry and thanks for your time !!. And any opinions or suggestions would be very much appreciated.
Thanks,
Flo
I’m hoping someone might be able to give me some advise on my rather shameful situation.
Mortgage taken out in May 2007 - 288k at 92% Loan to value over 35 years.
MBNA credit card (mine) – 8k (no payments made now since August)
MBNA credit card (his) – 4k (paid up to date)
My personal loan with BOI – 17k (+ 1000 arrears) 670 euro per month
My mortgage repayment is 1050 per month.
There are 3 months arrears on this mortgage from 2008 when my partner first lost his job (he is a bricklayer and lost his job in January 2008 – 6 months after we bought our house!)
I have a permanent full time job (40K per annum) and managed to get a second job in January 2009 working night shifts in a call centre at the weekends and did that for a year while my partner was still not working and kept us up to date with all our repayments during that time. I gave up the second job earlier this year as my partner got work on a construction project in the city centre and I thought I’d die of exhaustion J.
Almost as soon as I gave up the second job, my salary from my primary job was cut. But we still managed to keep up our mortgage repayments as he was still working.
My partner then lost his job in July this year and despite trying absolutely everything is still out of work. He is in receipt of jobseekers benefit at 196euro a week.
I have kept up the mortgage repayments until this month, basically by (stupidly, admittedly ) running up arrears on my credit card and personal loan and now I am totally up sh*ts creek.
I have worked out a plan as to how I can manage to continue, I don’t want to loose my home obviously and I want to take responsibility for everything that I borrowed but I cant do it within the agreements originally made with the lenders.
This is my plan – maybe totally ridiculous though :
1.His credit card – 4k – He has paid protection on this and therefore we can effectively park this for 1 year while we try sort ourselves out.
2.I can afford to make about 2/3’s of my mortgage repayment per month – 650euro until he secures full time employment.
3.My personal loan was originally 32k over 5 years and is now at 17k after just over 2.5 years. If I could re-take out the 17k loan now and include the 1k arrears, over a further 5 years, the repayments would be about 400euro per month (270euro less than current repayment amt)
4.Pending the previous two points being accepted by the lenders, I could then put 500 euro a month off my 8k credit card debt. This is obviously the one I want to attack first as its the highest interest and I am sick of trying to pay it off and getting nowhere.
5.On more long term note, if the above is granted, my partner plans to retrain completely, has already done two courses in renewable energy and there are some more retraining options we have up our sleeve. Obviously the objective here is for him to be able to obtain employment outside of the ‘doomed’ construction sector with a view to us being in a better position in a few years time to then look at increasing our repayments on our mortgage.
6.If option 5 above does not happen and he does not secure employment here, he has been granted a working visa for Canada and has family out there he could live with so he would not have to pay rent out there. Although I could go out there too, I would be reluctant to give up a good permanent job here too hastily.
I have 4 questions I would like to ask ....
1.I just really wanted to ask what anyone thinks of the above plan? Is it totally ridiculous and over ambitious ? Would the lenders consider this do you think or would I be laughed out the door. Ive really tried to avoid having to do this at all costs, with getting the second job and that, but I cant keep going racking up arrears and digging the hole deeper. I have to try something.
2.When I spoke to some friends about the above and mentioned my plans they said to me not to put this to the lenders as a proposal but more as a non-negotiable. Like in other words ‘tell’ them this is the situation, rather than ‘ask’ ? Does anyone have an opinion on this ?
3.If I were to approach the mortgage lender with the above idea, would it be advisable to mention the possibility of my partner going to Canada to get work ? Some friends have said they think this would be a bad idea as the mortgage lender might suspect it would become tempting for us to just ‘do a runner’ if money and that was so much better out in Canada ?
4.With my MBNA credit card – would I be better off if I let them sell it on to a debt company? Like what happens in that situation ? Does the amount then remain static as it is on the day that it is sold ? Or does the debt company apply the same interest arrangements as MBNA ?
If you have read all of this – all I can say is sorry and thanks for your time !!. And any opinions or suggestions would be very much appreciated.
Thanks,
Flo
