Wife is main earner but has bad credit rating

pokeaslug

Hello all,


New on here, but could do with some advice. I took my mortgage out just under 5 yrs ago, but since then I have lost my job and my wife has become the main earner in the house, with me just having a part time job and looking after the kids.


The problem is that come June our latest 2yr fixed mortgage comes to an end and I'm worried that my wife's bad credit rating will mean that we wont be able to get another mortgage and will have to go on to standard variable (we are on 3.1% at the moment)


She is on a good wage (close to 30k), I am only earning 6k, we have a few debts like normal people but I'm worried that with changing onto standard variable will mean that we be paying £50-100 more a month that we could really do with out.


Does anybody have any advice on how to apply for maybe a joint mortgage or whether anybody has been in the same position and found a solution.


Thanks in advance!!

Pixie5740

What do you mean by bad credit rating? Is it normal to have a few debts? What is a few anyway?


Get your credit files from all 3 CRAs and go and speak with a mortgage broker. The broker should be able to give you an indication of what kind of mortgage produces are on offer to you.

wishus

Somewhere on here is a really useful video by Martin Lewis on what can affect your credit rating. I'll see if I can hunt it down.

Little things like only ever paying back the minimum on your credit card bill can do harm.

I am now in a position where I can apply for a joint mortgage - our issue was a couple of defaults in the history for one of us, and we just had to ride that out until we were 6 years clear.

wishus

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59ktBKCMdMQ

pokeaslug

We've probably got about 15k debts with the 6k car loan included. With both our wages at the moment we are just about ok and could survive (I'm looking to go back to uni this year, so we could ride it out for 18mths/2yrs) after that I should be able to get a decent wage and we'd be fine. But if the mortgage payments goes up another 100 pound I'm going to struggle.

Pixie5740

Go and speak with a broker and see if you can get another fixed rate. If your budget is so tight then you'd struggle with payments going up by another £100 then you should try and fix a better rate if you can.


£15k of debts is quite a lot with a combined income of £36k. Maybe if you put together a statement of affairs and post it over on the Debt Free Wannabe board you'll get some help trimming that fat from your budget.


http://www.stoozing.com/calculator/soa.php

bookgirl_2

It would be worth seeing if your current mortgage provider will offer a new fixed rate. We did this a few months ago, and it didn't entail any new credit checks as we weren't borrowing any more, were up to date and our payment was going down. Took about half an hour on the phone and there was a fee for the new product.

(We are with Santander btw, who wrote about three months before the end of our fix to prompt contact to discuss rates.)

pokeaslug

I think I need to a) find exactly how bad the wife's credit rating is and b) go and see if I can get a new fixed rate mortgage. Our smallest child starts school come September so that would free up childcare costs and give me the ability to get more hours at work. I think uni will have to go on the back burner for a while. Thanks for all the advice

fishpond

Try Open university.