Not sure where to turn now..

Nara

Hi all, I have read these sites for a while but never posted but now i have found myself in a position i never expected to be in.

Last December my partner was made redundant from his job that he had been in for 12 years, pretty much his only job since leaving college. It was a shock, he really thought his job was safe and he was the most experienced person there and only earnt a couple thousand a year more then other less experienced people. Tbh everyone in the company was shocked and most believed it was more a personal decision by a manager who didn't like him, but they played the game of saying it was the 'role' they were making redundant not him personally :mad:

Anyway he got a payoff since he had been there so long and we have had to spend that money on paying the mortgage and the bills since i was working part time only as i have a young child.

8 months later and he still hasnt found any full time work and is doing a part time job that pays low wages and is claiming job seekers.

The problem is that jobseekers said they would pay our mortgage interest 13 weeks after we started claiming which they did, but where the first letter said they would pay all the interest now they have lowered it to £45 a week from £145 a week! and his jobseekers has gone down to 10p a week.
I and my partner have rung them about 10 times and spoken to people in different departments and got nowhere other then them saying that it goes up and down depending on what overtime i work, which makes sense apart from say i earn an extra £200 a month and that doesnt happen often, why would it go down by £400 a month on the mortgage payments and take his jobseekers from £20 a week to 10p! that doesnt tally up to me, but we cannto get any explanation from the jobseekers people or the mortgage side of things and each person has told us something different each time on the phone, it seems they don't know what info they have, even tho my partner is down there every 2 weeks with all our wage slips and paperwork.

The problem is we are starting to struggle now and i am so scared of losing the house, it seems when u work full time and earn a decent wage people are throwing money at you, but when u get into bad times and need some help, no one wants to know you anymore...the bank cut our overdraft without telling us because of JSA getting paid into the account set off some alarm bells ringing on their system, then they charged us for going £20 overdrawn!! ( i managed to get the charges wiped off after pleading with them on the phone)

We also have 2 credit cards and a loan ( not secured on the house) to pay and my partner is worried about his credit rating being affected if he does anything about these so we are still having to pay the full amounts each month. The loan people will only extend it to twice the amount of time to lower payments or it will affect his credit rating just to lower it.

I just don;t know what to do or where to turn, we are meant to remortage in decemeber and im worried if we havent found work by then that they won't let us. Even if i get a full time job the wages i could earn would not come close to what he was earning and i would never be able to afford everything but i would be classed as earning to much to get any help with benefits.

I feel so trapped by the benefit system now, everyone lives to their means and my partner really needs to find work at a wage that was close to what he was earning to be able to pay everything we owe.

I'm terrified of losing the house tho, i personally don't care about credit ratings i wish we had never had credit cards and loans and i dont plan to ever have another one if we ever get rid of these. My daughter is starting a new school in sept and i can;t move out of the area otherwise i would feel so guilty about tearing her away from her friends and there are no council houses within 2 miles of this school.

Sorry to type so much but i needed to get it off my chest, my partner is not the worrying type and figures things will work out but its always on my mind, and i feel sick worrying about it and trying to get any help or answers from the benefits people is like trying to saw my arm off with a blunt blade, its painful and makes me so mad i end up opening a bottle of wine just to get over the anger i feel at the uselessness of the system

I guess i feel sick because we have both worked all our lives since leaving school/college and paid taxes galore between us, scrimped and saved to buy ourselves a house and only had one child as thats all we can afford even when my partner was working and even though i would love another, and now i feel like there was no benefit to that at all, no extra help for us...nothing...sometimes i wonder why we bothered. Now we both feel we are back at square one in our lives, struggling to keep hold of what we have while the money runs out.

I'm just lost and i don't know what to do anymore. Thanks for reading and any advice welcome.

katsu

Perhaps Citizens Advice can help with sorting out the JSA issue? Get your DH to go to CAB.

nimbo

with the loans and credit cards you might be able ot negotiate a freeze in interest, and pay a token payment on them for a period... - ask on the Debt free wanna be board. (i'm not very technical - sorry) if this is pre agreed then it shouldn'e affect your credit ratings etc, even of they refuse the token payments if they agree to freeze the interest then at least you're paying off more of the laon... do you have PPi on any of them that could either pay them for a period, or that you could reclaim???

if you head to the Old style money saving they may be able to hekp you cut your grocery bidget down, and they have the most amazing wholesome recipies etc for anything that are cheap, and healthy...

sorry i can't be of more help on the benefits front, but i'm just looking here for advice in case i need to claim soon.

bigbadandy

Well it would seem to me you are both better off not working - my understanding of the system is you get your mortgage interest paid off whilst you are unemployment (after 13 weeks). Then you have to pay the interest back once you are in employment.

A big problem is that you cannot be seen to deliberately leave paid employment and then claim benefit. So you may have to be creative!

I'm not sure of your postion but could you apply for a higher paying full time job and leave you husband to to the bulk of the household/ child rearing jobs? With both of you looking you double your chances.

What area do you and your husband work in by the way?

Nara

Hi,

thanks for the replys, we live in Kent. I could get a full time job but as i'm a dental nurse it doesnt pay that well, i could probably get a job earning just under half what he used to, so i worked out after paying tax the monthly take home would pay my mortgage and council tax then i would have no money left to pay anything else for the month, and i think the amount of benefits we would get to help wouldnt be enough to cover our debts and food/other things needed for the month so we would be living out of an overdraft, that is if the bank agreed to give us one again.

It does seem crazy to me that we are better off not working at all and im wondering if to find another job to do over 16 hours and claim working families but then our mortgage interest won't be paid and since our full payment is £780 we have a high amount to pay.
The mortagage people won't let us take a break as we haven't paid off enough, so i think im gonna have to ring them again and ask if they can lower it as low as they can, we have to remortage in december so are deffo gonna get interest only for a few years at least till we are back on our feet ( that is if they let us do this on a low income!)

I think i will ring the debt line, the problem is my partner hates speaking to anyone about it, altho all the debts are in his name as it finds it embarrasing.
I can see his point, he hates signing on and being spoken to like an idiot by all these people at JSA. They will never be able to find him a job as he worked with specialised software in the mailing industry and theres just not many jobs out there atm unless we move very far up north which i don't want to do.

I will contac CAB and the debt free line i think, even just to get some advice because i find it hard dealing with all these companies.

Thanks!