My mortgage clobbering post

Frith

£40 Quidco cashback

Mortgage - £35,877
Mortgage interest - £52.02
Savings - £100
ISA - £100
Lloyds - £740

Virtual mortgage total - £34, 937

Frith

Not too much happening, mortgage wise.

I have almost transferred to Universal Credit and it seems similar to before, except they take the amount for Carer's Allowance off the total for UC. I have written to Income Support to find why this stopped last year, but have received no reply yet. I have double checked and am not eligible for the savings scheme or the budgeting loan. 

Still waiting for a school place for my smaller son. He has been home for 21 months now. My other son is still recovering from his bike accident and had to have one of the broken off front teeth extracted completely. 

I did manage to replace my car! I now have a 17 year old Toyota Yaris. It is even older than my previous car but has a working handbrake/windows/blower/front left wheel etc. 

Frith

Mortgage - £35,877
Mortgage interest - £52.02
Savings - £100
ISA - £125
Lloyds - £1440

Virtual mortgage total - £34, 212

Frith

Should have added!

Older son has a new (false) front tooth.
Younger son has a place at SEND College (only took me 22 months and help from another college, GP, online, our MP and a solicitor...) 

Samuelsjourney

Just happened across your thread, wow your doing so well, my lovely partner who I met has a similar life story to yours. You should be really proud of how you are doing! It can’t be easy but your keeping afloat. When that mortgage is gone, that will be another hurdle you have cleared! Well done.

Frith

Still no word from Income Support - it has been weeks since I wrote. As I wasn’t paid IS last year, I now owe £1200 of council tax (as I shouldn’t have received the benefit for that, without IS). I also owe an £812 budgeting loan, as that was supposed to be taken off my IS automatically and thus has not been paid.

Tax credits wrote and I owe them £450 as they overpaid last year.

And County want £500 towards son’s transport to SEND college. He has now been at home for 23 months. I’ve had 6 hours respite in that time. 

I’ve used all the little savings I’d made for food - Prolific and Quidco monies plus Nectar points. 

All I’ve bought (besides food) is some charity shop and EBay hoodies for son2 as he has grown 7 inches since he was last in education. 

The SEND College is going to send someone out to the house to get son2 used to education again next week (none of this is their fault, it’s entirely the County Council). The tribunal against the CC will be in February. 

Im very tired. 

FtbDreaming

I feel your pain. Everything seems to happen at once doesn't it. You will have to prioritise who you can pay back and just offer them all token payments £1 a week or whatever you can manage. Could they not calculate the council tax reduction on your other income even if it wasn’t IS? 

I am probably going to need to claim UC but want to stay on tax credits until Christmas is out the way at least otherwise I’ll have no income at all for several weeks and that might push me over the edge. 

Has your son started his school yet? I can’t imagine how hard it is. Ive not been to work for a month and am going crazy without the ‘break’ from the kids. Especially DD2 I love her to death but she is wild and needs watching 24/7. I don’t know how I’ll cope if they close the schools. She is definitely much more manageable when she’s in school. 

Take care and hopefully everything will fall into place x

Frith

Thank you, @FtbDreaming

You can get an advance payment to ease the transition between tax credits and UC. I asked for £1000 and am paying that back at around £80 per month. 

No school until the week after next... it’s been such a long time I’m not even sure it’ll work out. 

Strangely, my other son (no SEND) is the one who gets into more scrapes! 

Frith

Still no reply from Income Support. A further £30 is being taken off my Universal Credit per month to pay back the old budgeting loan. £80 per month is being taken off UC to cover the advance I applied for so we could manage until the first payment was made. This is not great.
Child benefit has gone down £40 per month now I only have 1 child of child age. This is also not great. 

No word yet from the Green Grant but no one else seems to have a voucher either. 

The only positive financially is that a council tax lady realised we had all survived on just child benefit and tax credits last year so perhaps asking me to pay back £1200 wasn’t a good idea! So that debt has gone. 

The County did another U turn and son 2 now gets transport to school. He started last week - 23 months at home prior to that. It’s seems very strange when he’s out of the house! 

I’m over my overdraft limit so have bought no food this week and the meals are starting to get interesting. 

When I had slightly more money, I booked a 2 night trip away (thanks to the Family Fund) so am looking for free things to do in York! Luckily we (and York) are in tier 2. That is the week after next. Really, it’s to take son2 to the National Railway Museum so I booked our time slot for that today. 

Also applied today for the Warm House Grant. I’m actually £400 in credit with electricity so I could do a mortgage overpayment if I could get that back. I’m trying to just heat the water every 2-3 days (for the washing up). No central heating so it must be the water heater that is costing us. 

FtbDreaming

I’m glad they cancelled the council tax bill! That’s one less stress for you. And your son finally being in school will do him good. I do place a high value on schools for all sorts of benefits they bring. 

Hopefully you’ll adjust with the lower payments then feel better off when they eventually go up again. There was a point this year my tax credits went down to £50 for about 5 months and I managed. Thank goodness they’re up again now otherwise I wouldn’t survive at all. 

Oh a weekend in York sounds lovely. I feel like I haven’t done anything at all with the kids this year but then again nobody has have they. We’ve done lots of walks and bike rides etc but none of the ‘fun’ (expensive) stuff we would usually do.

roll on 2021 and hopefully a bit more luck and money so we can start smashing these mortgages xx