A Bankers View, Open Letter To Martin Lewis And His Followers On Bank Charges.

BANKER_GIRL

my situation as follows, i am 21 and my boyfriend is 25, we both work for the bank so we have a joint mortgage with them that is excellent, we moved in at the beginning of november and obviously whilst carrying out renovation work on our flat and paying the new mortgage this is why we do not shell out for internet or sky tv or anything as such, it is simply not viable at the moment while also saving for what we plan for the future and as contigency. Once we have saved a good amount and got into the routine of paying necessary bills we will get these things but at the moment, no, much to my boyfriends horror as he misses his setanta sports v much, haha. But we will not risk it at the moment, that is the basic situation and thus why i do not have the internet!
meh my whole family are asleep in front of tv, very boring. anyone around?

and in regards to Tootsies figures, there are many many on this thread way back from the 2nd or 3rd page onwards, its good to have a supporter.

Charis

krisskross wrote: »

Honestly I am not unsympathetic but you really do seem to think it is all 'someone else's ' fault.

Do I? What gives you that idea?

I was referring to a young couple I know well, who are in the situation I have described, and how easy it is to fall into debt through no fault of your own. They are not the only people I have known who find that there is no safety net when you are really in dire straits, which is the exact moment you are likely to go accidentally overdrawn and become a victim of sharp practice by the banks as vividly illustrated in other posts on this forum. Unemployed partners get no unemployment benefits or job seekers allowance.

Charis

krisskross

Charis wrote: »

. Unemployed partners get no unemployment benefits or job seekers allowance.

Charis

Yes they do get unemployment benefit despite being in a partnership of some sort. Everyone with the applicable NI contributions can claim contribution based JSA for 6 months even if their partner earns £60K. It is then means tested and yes probably won't be entitled to any further benefit if there is a working partner.

angelwillow

Can somebody please tell me about all these great benefits that you can get? My partner is on incapacity benefit and gets nothing else because I work - now I earn below the 'national average' and have to live and support both of us with a child,mortgage etc and I get no tax credits/benefits etc.
What I don't need is somebody with a cheap mortgage from the bank or somebody who is smugly never in debt telling me I should never be in debt! How nice it must be in your ivory tower.

Don't assume everybody in debt does it 'deliberately'!

Martin and this site have helped me alot and for that I am very grateful.

fiveyearplan

Hi Angel, I'm not exactly sure but I think it is something like www.entitledto.com.uk. Have a look and I'm sure someone else will give exact details. Merry Christmas.

krisskross

angelwillow wrote: »

Can somebody please tell me about all these great benefits that you can get? My partner is on incapacity benefit and gets nothing else because I work - now I earn below the 'national average' and have to live and support both of us with a child,mortgage etc and I get no tax credits/benefits etc.
What I don't need is somebody with a cheap mortgage from the bank or somebody who is smugly never in debt telling me I should never be in debt! How nice it must be in your ivory tower.

Don't assume everybody in debt does it 'deliberately'!

Martin and this site have helped me alot and for that I am very grateful.

I personally have known extremely hard times, so am not in an ivory tower.

Can't understand why you get no child tax credits , unless you are paying off an overpayment. I assume you get child benefit. Have you applied for help with council tax? Have you considered asking for DLA if your partner is on long term IB?

kittiej

What would you do BG if your bank went bust and both you and your BF lost your jobs?

Then what if neither of you could find another job with such great perks if you could get another job at all?

Who's going to bail you out then?

wannasavemoney

Hi Bankergirl, approx 16 years ago, I too was like you. Very intolerant of other people and their problems. It is a sign of youth and not having yet been a victim of just plain old bad luck. When my DH and I first started out, we purchased our house, both of us earning, no children, no debt. Then within 6 months, the recession hit. We went into approx 10,000.00 negative equity within a few months. My husband lost his job and to top it all, interest rates hit 15% on black Wednesday. It was grim. We had nothing to fall back on and at times lived off a sack of potatoes for over two weeks (very underrated veg the potatoe!). Luckily I was the main wage earner in a very secure, but not particularly well paid job (on long term contract). We had it very tough for about six years. My husband took any job he could lay his hands on and worked mainly for peanuts. Against the odds, we managed to pay our mortgage sometimes going without food altogether and like you, I did not want to get into any more financial difficulty than I had to. Luckily, I had been with my bank for some while and they were, it has to be said, very good. It would have been very easy at that time for something like bank charges to tip you over the edge financially. I did get charged a few times but nothing like the £35+ per transaction rubbish that some people have to put up with these days. 16 years ago these sort of sharp practices would have sunk us completely which in some cases it did. Friends lost houses and got divorced etc. Anyway, my advice to you would be to get your savings put away pdq and then batten down the hatches, cos when bad luck does strike, make sure you are ready for it. Sometimes people are not ready for it and get into difficulty – that’s when you could actually make a real difference by helping them out instead of kicking them while they are down. Finally, take your training for what it is – a guideline and then put some humanity in it and your customers will treat you much better.

lewt

BANKER_GIRL wrote: »

my situation as follows, i am 21 and my boyfriend is 25, we both work for the bank so we have a joint mortgage with them that is excellent , we moved in at the beginning of november and obviously whilst carrying out renovation work on our flat and paying the new mortgage this is why we do not shell out for internet or sky tv or anything as such, it is simply not viable at the moment while also saving for what we plan for the future and as contigency. Once we have saved a good amount and got into the routine of paying necessary bills we will get these things but at the moment, no, much to my boyfriends horror as he misses his setanta sports v much, haha. But we will not risk it at the moment, that is the basic situation and thus why i do not have the internet!
meh my whole family are asleep in front of tv, very boring. anyone around?

and in regards to Tootsies figures, there are many many on this thread way back from the 2nd or 3rd page onwards, its good to have a supporter.

So you work for a bank and after you have paid the same back the morgage money for somewhere to live you have no money for half decent things in life, dont sound excellent to me. sounds like what some immigrants have to do just to have somewhere to live, i might understand it if there was just you but theres 2 and you only have a flat. i rent with my wife which costs 600 per month. and have a nice car too. im the same age as your BF and my wife is a littl older than you and works on the phones for national grid. i am a support worker. we have all the things we want and are not in debt. if a house crash happens you'll be in trouble in fact trapped with a flat that you cannot live in if you want a family and cant sell for anywhere near what you paid for it. maybe then the morgage charges will start?

i claimed most of my charges back last year. about £1000. now if the banks were not taking that money when they should nopt they would not have paid it back, what have they told you the reason is for paying so much out.

your duluded comments in the OP were funny to me. did you have trainnning on bank charges that day at work ? how can "fining" someone be helping them?

Gale_10

Well, when she grows up and gets the nappy marks off her backside, has a bit more experience working in the real world, then she will know what we have all felt.

Just give it about...........three or four years and she will be ashamed of what she has done.

Seven months in a bank, and she thinks she knows it all! Laughable..........

She also didn't do enough research did she??????????

*Hands "Aly" a facecloth, to wipe the egg off..*

Gale