help! meeting with the bank on monday

cheshire_cheese

Need some urgent advice. My partner is self employed and over the past 15 years has not run his business very efficiently and due to extended sick leave over recent years, we now find ourselves in a position where he is owing around £20K on credit cards and in bank account overdrafts. We are meeting with his business manager at the bank on monday to discuss how to sort this out. They want us to put it on to mortgage, but doesn't feel like the right route to me? I can not get my partner to budget plan as he is in the construction industry and he argues that income and outgoings vary so much each month that it is impossible to do. Please help. I have tried calling dept helplines but they will not discuss with me as they are not my debts.
Other than leave him (its getting to that stage!) what do I do??

JamieT1977

Putting it on your mortgage does not seem the right thing to me. As your currently unsecured debts will become secured (least i guess they would).

He is right I guess you can not have a fixed budget if his workload varies, but you can set a budget on the lowest he would get (any extra money due to a good month, would help towards debts).

Post a SOA on here and others will help I am sure.

GeorgeUK

There is no way you should feel pressured to change unsecured debt into secured debt.

Do any of his accounts have payment protection insurance (PPI) on them? Quite often these do not cover you if you are self emplyed so these would have been missold.

Is the mortgage in both your names? If so then i think it requires both of you to agree to adding a debt to the mortgage.

Has he been missing payments?

JamieT1977

Like GeorgeUK suggests look into the mis-selling of PPI if it applies. You can claim back on loans etc which have been paid off not only ones ongoing.

cheshire_cheese

Hi, no PPi's unfortunately.

JamieT1977

cheshire_cheese wrote: »

Hi, no PPi's unfortunately.

Are you 100% sure?, sounds silly but sometimes you can be sold them and not know.

Oneday77

Do not get forced down the adding it to the mortgage route. Tbh the only way they can force you is if each lender approaches the courts for a Charging order against the house. Depends on how may lenders and the value to each one we're talking about though.
What I would say is you need to address the imbalance between the 2 of you first before you can figure a way out of this. Your last sentence set my alarm bells ringing. Have you discussed where you see his head in the sand stance taking your relationship, if so and it was pointless, have you tried some counselling?
As said above your OH must have some kind of average earning coming in each month or some kind of minimum. My guess would be winter low, Spring\Summer|Autumn higher. Budget for the winter income and save the extra on the high months to allow for un-expected earning dips. Then work out an SoA on the low income and present that to the bank with projected earning uplifts through out the year that can help towards repayments.

Butti

Hi
Would just like to reiterate what others have said; Do not make your debts secure by fixing them to your house. The business manager may be appearing to do what is best for your OH but I'm sure they will be doing what's best for the bank.

Do get your partner to budget plan, based on lowest case scenario or average overall. It's a real cop out for him to say it varies month to month so he can't do it. It varies for Costain, Taylor Wimpey, Yuill, etc.etc.etc. aswell but I'm fairly certain they will have budgets and business plans (even if they have taken a bit of a battering in the past 2 years). If the worst comes to the worst he needs to look at whether he is in the job that's best for his skills. Maybe he would be better swallowing his pride and working for someone else.

B

katsu

Try telling him we all budget at an intuitive/instinctive level. E.G. if he needs a new tool or a new car, he buys one that he thinks he can afford. So he is making rough calculations somewhere in his head of what he anticipates having coming in.

Alll he needs to do with an SOA is write down what he knows. So, every month for this year his vehicle insurance will cost him £Z, for example. Where he does not know things he can average it out - so if last month and this month together he spent £150 on fuel then that averages out at £75, so he can put £75 in the SOA and monitor against it. Perhaps if he can see it is like a map and he does not have to be right, he might be more willing?

Good luck to you.

MrsTinks

Do NOT NOT NOT secure this debt on your house in any way - mortgage or secured debt - of course this is what the bank wants you to do. That way they have some guarantee against the debt which they would now have to go through the courts to get. Also if things are tricky between you you would in effect be taking half that debt on because it would be paid off any equity in the house. So when sold and split you carry half that loss IYSWIM...

Either your hubby get's onboard and frankly gets a grip on budgeting or you think about buying him out and making him pay rent and he can go BR...

kaya

sole trader, limited company, debts in his name, your name, joint names or business name?