General Benefits Query

embob74

It is worth checking whether her employer has made anyone else redundant as there could be a potential claim for discrimination due to pregnancy.

warmhands.coldheart

embob74 wrote: »

It is worth checking whether her employer has made anyone else redundant as there could be a potential claim for discrimination due to pregnancy.

Spoke to them over the weekend and she's not taking it laying down. sounds like they really have shafted her. Sshe's expecting an offer of a compromise agreement this week but isn't expecting it to be much. She knows there are other jobs at a different site similar to the one she is doing which she could do and they are recruiting for this at present. They refuse point blank to let her do it from her site even though she did one of them before at her site prior to being actively encouraged to take up the role she's now being made redundant from.

They are in a bit of a pickle in that they need the mney to service their debts but if her employer offer her pitance and she contests it and decides to take a sex dexcrimination case, it could drag out for over a year......

Having listened to her (I know I may be a bit biased) it really does sound like they have been awful to her..

Mara69

To be honest, they've been living completely and utterly beyond their means (am I right in thinking they have £65k worth of debt?) and this is going to be a harsh wake up call. Can they not sell the second house?

warmhands.coldheart

Mara69 wrote: »

To be honest, they've been living completely and utterly beyond their means (am I right in thinking they have £65k worth of debt?) and this is going to be a harsh wake up call. Can they not sell the second house?

No, not living beyond their means in my view (he's a bit ofa tight !!!!! actually), just unfortunate to have had the Main Breadwinner been made redundant unexpectedily. (Her yearly salary wouldn't be much less than the amount of unsecured debt they have. He's on about 1/2 her salary so essentially their household income has droipped by 2/3. They reconed 2~3 years would have paid it all (or at least bulk of it) off if all had have continued as was with both of them in employment... The reason for the vast majority of the debt also was to move into their new house to be closer to her work... Ironic really!

Would be financially unwise to sell their other house as to get rid of it they would probably have to take less than what it's really worth in current market in the area they lived in and would only really break even on it so would still have the debt! ... if anything the second house is potentially an extra income of about £100/month after servicing it's "debt"

Gos to show how one redundancy can take you from happy family's to financial mess!!

Mara69

So they do have £65k worth of debt and no means of paying it? That, to my mind, is living beyond their means. No job is 100% secure and every single person should have some form of contingency and savings to hand in case the worst should happen. As it has in this case. I appreciate they wanted to move but am quite sure they could have done so without incurring such soul destroying debt. Now they need to look at ways of drastically reducing their debt in order to survive.

DannyboyMidlands

They sound like a pair of idiots to me.

Seventy odd grand combined income, no savings and a shedload of debt.

OK, so they didn't anticipate the redundancy but !!!!!! can and does happen and needs to be prepared for.

warmhands.coldheart

Mara69 wrote: »

So they do have £65k worth of debt and no means of paying it? That, to my mind, is living beyond their means. No job is 100% secure and every single person should have some form of contingency and savings to hand in case the worst should happen. As it has in this case. I appreciate they wanted to move but am quite sure they could have done so without incurring such soul destroying debt. Now they need to look at ways of drastically reducing their debt in order to survive.

I can see what your getting at but the point is they did have a way of re-paying it.... they both worked and the debt was not a huge amount more than her yearly salary. If you were to base borrowing on what your saying, no-one would be able to afford a mortgage as house prices go up and down as we've seen so no garauntee it would always be worth what was paid for it.

The thing that really pains her is she was encouraged to move into this role from another role by the company and now they are making the role redundant and aren't willing to give her back a similar role to what she had been doing at the site she is at, even though there is a vacancy at another site which she could easily do at her current site... They are being complete knobs to her..... she recons they have someone else at the other site lined up for the role...

can see it all getting messy!

skintmacflint

DannyboyMidlands wrote: »

They sound like a pair of idiots to me.

Seventy odd grand combined income, no savings and a shedload of debt.

OK, so they didn't anticipate the redundancy but !!!!!! can and does happen and needs to be prepared for.

To be fair to the OP's friend, it's only a couple of years since the banks were throwing money at people with no income, or uncehcked self declared income . As it immediately earned huge profits for the banks. As soon as people signed on the dotted line they could relend 10 times the amount the person had borrowed. Then they simply packaged it up as triple rated secure investments and duped even cautious pension funds into buying what the banks knew was toxic debt.

And how many people got shafted when banks doubled CC interest rates on many accounts?. Doesn't take long for a balance to snowball when interest rates jump from 15 to 30%.

Many people lost out in the fall out from the worlds economic crisis including savers, investors and pension funds. As well as thousands losing their jobs.

The family who sold AT Mays travel agent to RBS were partly paid in RBS shares. They saw their £50 million value shares drop to £5 million overnight. Also affected a £5 million trust fund whose interest paid for a variety of charitable activites for vulnerable people.

Your friend could check out the possibility of discrimination redundancy on the employment board, and get advice on the Debt Board as well as seeing CAB. Should be possible to freeze interest and make lesser payments for the time being using the Bank Lending code. (maybe called something else now) Will affect their credit rating but least of their worries just now I'd think.

Mara69

warmhands.coldheart wrote: »

I can see what your getting at but the point is they did have a way of re-paying it.... they both worked and the debt was not a huge amount more than her yearly salary. If you were to base borrowing on what your saying, no-one would be able to afford a mortgage as house prices go up and down as we've seen so no garauntee it would always be worth what was paid for it.

You are missing the point. They could repay it if they both had jobs. They failed to allow for one or both losing their jobs. Getting vast amounts of debt that you have absolutely no way of servicing if one job is lost is insanity - especially in todays climate.

Most people can manage to pay one mortgage following the loss of a job, as long as they have bought a house within their means in the first instance. Making cutbacks in other areas and possibly with the help from the Government means a family could limp along for a while - especially if they have saved a contingency fund like 3 months of all bills. However, your friends have bought two houses and have racked up colossal debt. I am totally sure this was completely unnecessary and now they cannot service that debt.

Your friends employers may be behaving badly, but really, that is the least of their problems at the moment.

skintmacflint wrote: »

To be fair to the OP's friend, it's only a couple of years since the banks were throwing money at people with no income, or uncehcked self declared income

That's a really weak argument. The OP's friends were not forced to take on this debt; blaming someone else is a cop out. They chose to borrow it and did not plan for the eventuality that has now happened.

skintmacflint

I'm not the OP and the people mentioned in this thread are not my friends.

I'm a pensioner, brought up to work , save for things we wanted and avoid running up debt. Back in the days when we bought a house you needed a history of well established regular savings and a fair size deposit to be able to buy a house, or obtain credit.

But all of that changed in the 80's. Banks are and were supposed to be the responsible gatekeepers to credit access. Even Mervyn King has stated it was the banks jobs to ensure people didn't overstretch themselves. Their purpose was to ensure lending was sensible and people had the earnings and back up to cover contingencies like redundancy.No one forced the banks either to lend millions to people who were going to be overstretched in the case of changed circumstances. It was done for profit and greed.

Even back in 2007 when it was obvious where things were headed banks ignored all the warnings and continued to lend to anyone who asked.,and encourage others to ask.

Different scenario today. It's unlikely the couple concerned would be granted the amount of borrowing they got , even with a high income and a perfect credit rating.

As for saving and planning, my private occupational pension was affected by the economic downturn, and our savings gain little interest and can't compete with rising food and utility costs. And you can't even trust a banking group with more than a set amount in case they go under.

The banks aren't paying for their mistakes but the OP and the general publc ifrom all walks of life are and will be for many years.

It was not my intention to put all the blame on the banks but nor on the couple involved. All I have tried to do is put another viewpoint I still consider valid forward, which was slightly less harsh on the OP's friends. And it's perfectly acceptable for you to disagree with it.

But I don't feel I should be personally jumped on and accused of 'weak' arguments . All I said was to be fair..........I've no wish to detract any further from the OP's thread so I'll now go back to my gardening.