To pay off or not to pay off?

Crumb0809

Hi everyone

I hope this post is in the right place, anyway here goes.

My husband could be about to lose his job. He is in the Merchant Navy and gets a new contract each time he rejoins the ship. This contract only covers him for the length of tour (four weeks). We have mortgage protection but I'm not hopeful it will be of any assistance given the nature of hubby's job. I'm not sure if he will be entitled to any redundancy pay either, his employers are based overseas and not very co-operative at the best of times. I am assuming the worst so that we can plan accordingly!

My question is this - should we pay off the mortgage before he loses his job? I expect he will try to claim unemployment benefit (or whatever the correct term is nowadays) but no doubt our savings would be taken into account. I don't know if mortgage payments are considered in the DSS calculations. Neither of us has been unemployed since the last recession, which was before we were together, hence my ignorance!

We don't have a great deal in savings but could just about scrape enough together to pay the mortgage off. The reason we haven't done this before is that we are still working on our house as it was rather run down when we moved in, so have been paying for improvements with our savings.

Nothing has been confirmed as yet, but I'd be grateful for some advice if anyone has been through a similar situation.

Thanks very much!

Cannon_Fodder

If he has made the right National Insurance contributions, he can apply for Jobseekers Allowance on a Contributions-basis, for the first 6 months.

Then he would revert to Income-based JSA which doesn't get paid if there are savings of more than £16k. Working Tax Credits may be adjusted to reflect the new total household income, I guess, not sure.

There are various Mortgage Support schemes. Guidance is available here;
http://mortgagehelp.direct.gov.uk/

It might be tempting to pay it off, but then what would you live on, if it dragged on?

I think you need to look at your overall financial position and get some specific advice.

Try CAB or Shelter.