Income Support and Mortgage extra payments

wazza

Would paying an extra amount towards the payment of the mortgage cause me any problems with the benefit office? Here is my background...

I am a lone parent and disabled. Have been on income support for a few years. My mortgage interest is being paid by the benefit office.

Have been looking for a job but no success.

My mortgage term finishes in about 6 years and since it is an endowment policy naturally there is a shortfall. When i was working i used to pay a bit extra so my capital is reduced slightly year by year.

Now that i am getting disability allowance etc i can save a £100 or so every month. I want to pay an extra £100 or so per month to reduce the capital over the next few years. Would this cause any problems with the benefit office?

kingfisherblue

I'm in a similar position to you, except that I'm a lone parent and a carer on IS. I pay off a bit extra whenever I can afford to and it doesn't cause any problems for me, but I can't afford £100 a month.

I was worried about the shortfall, so earlier this year I went into the Halifax (where I have my mortgage) and spoke to them about my worries. I have two endowments finishing in 2014 and one finishing five years later. I was especially worried about the two that finish in four years time - at one point in my life, I thought I would be quite excited at getting close to the end of the term for my mortgage, but as circumstances have changed, it just turned into a worry.

The Halifax were great, they told me not to worry about it as I can put any remaining amount onto a basic repayment mortgage - apparantly this is quite common, as endowments have failed to perform as highly as they were previously expected to. Even though I am on benefits, and likely to remain so for some time, they were really positive about it. I was especially worried as the house has been adapted for my son's needs, but now I feel much more positive. I'm going to pay off whatever I can before the end of the mortgage, but I'm not worried about it any more.

My shortfall is likely to be less than £7000.