Redundancy and paying off loans ?

GirlyGirl_2

My husband is about to be made redundant and will get a decent pay out of £30 ish.
However we have a £20k loan and £2,000 on a credit card, my initial thoughts with the change to the policy of the benefits people paying the mortgage is that we pay those off and then use the remainder to tread water until the government will pay the mortgage, 3 months I believe or he finds a job whichever comes first (obviously a job would be preferable of course).
However I've been told that they still count us having the money if we spend it on something they consider unacceptable, so I guess what I'm asking is paying off the loans unacceptable or a bad idea ?
Thank you

YorkshireBoy

GirlyGirl wrote: »

However I've been told that they still count us having the money if we spend it on something they consider unacceptable, so I guess what I'm asking is paying off the loans unacceptable or a bad idea ?

You might 'get away' with paying £2K off the credit card, but clearing a £20K loan will almost certainly be classed as 'deprivation of capital'.

DipStick

GirlyGirl wrote: »

My husband is about to be made redundant and will get a decent pay out of £30 ish.
However we have a £20k loan and £2,000 on a credit card, my initial thoughts with the change to the policy of the benefits people paying the mortgage is that we pay those off and then use the remainder to tread water until the government will pay the mortgage, 3 months I believe or he finds a job whichever comes first (obviously a job would be preferable of course).
However I've been told that they still count us having the money if we spend it on something they consider unacceptable, so I guess what I'm asking is paying off the loans unacceptable or a bad idea ?
Thank you

Pay off the loan and the CC then use the remaining £8K to tide you over. Keep as much in reserve as you can. If you don't pay off the loan, how much interest per year would you be paying on that £20K and where would you get it from if you remain out of work?

Hope he finds another job soon.

ALIBOBSY

They will likely access his claim with the whole amount as capital irrelevant of what you pay off, this will likely disallow the income related jsa. They will usually only accept essential spending, but the decsion maker would look at each case individually.
However given the amount of redundancy I assume he has been in work for a while and will likely qualify for the contributary bit of jsa for the first 6 months.
To qualify for the mortgage you will have to apply for both though. When I did JSA the mortgages were a specialist calculation so we would do the main award and pass the claim to a mortgage section so I'm not 100% sure, but I believe you may still qualify for some mortgage even if you dont get the main benefit.

good luck
ali x

BTW if you have a mortgage protection policy they will expect you to claim on that first, so you may not qualify for any mortgage payments anyway