Saving for mortgage

ldp

Hi I need help as I’m loosing sleep!!! I’m a single mum of 2 kids saving for a mortgage in 9 yrs time when I have to sell my family home through divorce. Problem is I get tax credits & after a certain amount of savings you loose tax credits, at which point then I couldn’t save. I’m a saver not a spender & don’t think I should be penalised for that when it’s going towards a property for my family. How can I save without loosing my tax credits???

george4064

I really don't know much about tax credits, but I think you'd get much better responses if you instead posted in the Benefits & Tax Credits sub-forum.

Link here: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=139

Malthusian

Will you be able to get a mortgage if your income is currently low enough to be on tax credits?

If you have enough spare income to save for a deposit you can do without the tax credits (this is not a judgement, this is the assumption behind means-testing), so the choices are to either do without and save as much as you can, or to build up your savings to the maximum you can without losing tax credits over the next 9 years (£6,000?), and leave further saving until the kids have grown up and you can put what you were spending on them towards the deposit fund.

Sky_

Could you save £6000, then make well-documented overpayments on your mortgage instead of saving further?


Alternatively, continue saving beyond £6000 and accept that you will lose some tax credits. Maybe you could look to build up your earned income during this time, to slowly reduce the amount of tax credits you need to claim, until you're fully independent of tax credits and can use your money as you want? No judgement intended, but neing self-sufficient would give you more financial freedom.

strawb_shortcake

Savings don't affect tax credits, we had a large sum into our bank account last year and on investigation I can still claim.
I earn a good bit over average wage and still get some tax credits monthly and have a mortgage so it's perfectly feasible.

There is the arguement of whether its moral to take the money but that's another topic