Consolidate debt with Mortgage

sunflowerlady

What’s the general consensus on taking out additional borrowing on a mortgage to consolidate debts?

[Deleted User]

That it's a poor idea.

But it's circumstance specific.

[Deleted User]

We did it twice and it didn't work out for us, we've doubled our mortgage repayments in that time and now won't be mortgage free until DH is in his 70's.

fatbelly

It's moving non-priority debt to priority debt, so not recommended.

There used to be a second reason it that the support for mortgage interest safety net would only pay the mortgage element used for purchase of the property. That still applies. But SMI is a safety net full of holes, with very poor take-up. That one's not so important any more.

sourcrates

sunflowerlady wrote: »

What’s the general consensus on taking out additional borrowing on a mortgage to consolidate debts?

This is normally seen as a next step once your zero % deals have all but run out, but its actually a very bad idea, and i`ll tell you for why, its because a persons basic financial behaviour doesnt tend to change once they consolodate, they may start off with the best intentions, but they soon slip back into there old ways of overspending, "oh just bung that on the credit card" it`ll be fine, but they tend to keep repeating this behaviour, and before they know it, the debt is back to pre-consolodation levels, and they are back in a hole again.


We see it all the time on here, i`ve done it, more than once, so have many regular posters to this forum, eventually we all saw the light, and the folly of what we were doing, you cannot borrow your way out of debt, debt solutions exist, and are provided by Government, for a reason, for you to use without getting into more debt, i guess we just don`t like admitting we can`t handle credit.


If your debts are getting too much for you, then post a statement of affairs and we can take a look at your situation, the first thing to swallow, when in unmanagable debt, is your pride, no judgment here.

Stenwold

As zx81 says, it's circumstance specific.


Moving debts to your mortgage will cost you a lot more over the long term, however you'll probably be able to reduce your immediate monthly outgoings significantly so it depends what your priorities are.


Definitely pay attention to the advice on here though; if you move your unsecured debts on to the mortgage, using credit cards again is a slippery slope.