Employment Checks: Financial Vetting

PoundSaverMenu

Hello,

Thank you for your warm welcomes to the MSE forum/s.

I’m here wishing to correct my mistakes and pass financial vetting for a future dream role/employer. 

I’ve been successful before in such checks some time ago, but the past three years or so have made me dread the process after revising the vetting policy in the job description. 

It reminded me how (and rightly so) in-depth the checks are, and how far I have slipped.

The plan is to take massive corrective action and reclaim my finances for a number of reasons.
 

• Doing it for me and break the cycle to prevent further mismanagement leading on to greater difficulties. 

• If my employer needs my financial history, to be able to evidence the steps taken to show I'm not “financially vulnerable” and a risk to my employer.

• The rise in bills and with better management to have reserves for emergencies.

• Get over my embarrassment and burying my head in the sand on such matters.

• Return to my proud ability to look after myself and not be put off enjoying myself whilst living within my means.

I’m happy that I don’t have/had loans or had CCJs, my extent has been in my overdraft (and unarranged a handful of times).Not declared bankrupt either.

Does anyone have any advice on how to start the ball rolling?



These are some of my first steps taken whilst my account here was pending: 
 

• Opened my calendar and went through the dates of my outgoings.

• Mark them on the calendar and see if I can change, without charge the dates to be closer to payday....
   This will limit the dread of any forgotten bill/s late in the month which leads to me being O/D or "unable to take payment" embarrassment.

• Change payments like Council Tax from 10 to 12 instalments to lower the amount owed PCM.

• Overdrafts. (that’ll need more attention). The idea is to use the money saved from my old outgoings to create a gap between.
• In two months have enough saved to approach my bank and switch off my overdraft which will stop the charges. Then put back half into my savings to save and keep the gap.

• Cancel services such as Audible which is £7.99 PCM. Not used in the past six months (yearly saving of around £66 P/Y).
• Downgraded my mobile phone from a bells and whistles £43 PCM which was out of contract at the start of lockdown felt it was the lease productive thing to do.
• Discovered that out of contract phone providers add charges so bought a £20 PCM....
   As I'm now hybrid working so my phone will be on the home WIFI and improved work WIFI too.

• With EE new phones can have a cap to prevent over spending. Was going to add a £5.00 cap "encase of emergencies" but didn't.
• I signed back up to the gym using my work discount, this allows me to get heathy before and after work using the sites at work and home. Both walking distance.
• GYM: This encourages me to be healthy and have access to showers and a short/trucks and swim costume dryer (fancy) which will cut down on my own bills.
• I took a look at what discounts my employer provides and see if these can be used to save on bills.
• Printing off all these changes (at work with manager permission) and putting them into an old plastic wallet for the future form.
• Review each month. How long do you think is a good indicator to show that you have corrected missed payments? Until the vetting needs to be completed?

• With EE new phones can have a cap to prevent over spending. Was going to add a £5.00 cap "encase of emergencies" but didn't.
• I signed back up to the gym using my work discount, this allows me to get heathy before and after work using the sites at work and home. Both walking distance.
• GYM: This encourages me to be healthy and have access to showers and a short/trucks and swim costume dryer (fancy) which will cut down on my own bills.
• I took a look at what discounts my employer provides and see if these can be used to save on bills.
• Printing off all these changes (at work with manager permission) and putting them into an old plastic wallet for the future form.
• Review each month. How long do you think is a good indicator to show that you have corrected missed payments? Until the vetting needs to be completed?

PoundSaverMenu

Sorry, my first post too. The post has doubled up. Unable to edit so approached the forum team to help. Ideas to edit without there involvement is welcome. 

[Deleted User]

Your employer will generally only see the publicly available data, such as CCJs or bankruptcy, unless it's a regulated financial service role or MI5.. What is the role?

For the rest of your issues and other money saving ideas, post on the DFW boards.

MalMonroe

PoundSaverMenu said:

Sorry, my first post too. The post has doubled up. Unable to edit so approached the forum team to help. Ideas to edit without there involvement is welcome. 

Hi, if your post is the first one on the thread then you cannot delete it but you should be able to edit it by clicking on the settings button (looks like a cog) you should see in the top right hand corner of your post. 

If that's unavailable you can email the forum team, as you have done - but they may take a while to answer as they are usually extremely busy. They will delete the post for you and then you can start again. 

No employer I've worked for has ever needed or wanted any information about my financial status. All they ever requested was my bank details so that I could be paid.

If you work for a financial institution, your employer will naturally want more information, though. (I didn't work for one.)

You can contact one of the free debt help agencies for help in getting your finances up to date and for any information about how to control and use your money. I recommend Stepchange. Free phone call, free advice and no judgements. Here is a link -

https://www.stepchange.org/  You can just look around their website if you don't want to call them, they give lots of advice.

If I were you and wanted to cut my expenditure, I wouldn't pay for gym membership, even with a discount because to my mind (and having had past experience of paying for exercise) walking is just as good as organised exercise and it's free.  Even in bad weather, blows the cobwebs away. 

In the past I've been in terrible financial difficulty - that's where Stepchange came to my rescue - and now I don't have any debts (but it's taken a while). I check my banking app daily on my phone. I now know where every penny is, or should be and I know when my direct debits and standing orders go out of my account. You need to familiarise yourself with your bank account. I don't care if people think I'm a bit OTT with looking at my account so frequently, it makes me feel better and works for me. 

As zx81 has said, the Debt Free Wannabe boards should also be helpful. 

[Deleted User]

MalMonroe said:

PoundSaverMenu said:

Sorry, my first post too. The post has doubled up. Unable to edit so approached the forum team to help. Ideas to edit without there involvement is welcome. 

Hi, if your post is the first one on the thread then you cannot delete it but you should be able to edit it by clicking on the settings button (looks like a cog) you should see in the top right hand corner of your post. 

If that's unavailable you can email the forum team, as you have done - but they may take a while to answer as they are usually extremely busy. They will delete the post for you and then you can start again. 

No employer I've worked for has ever needed or wanted any information about my financial status. All they ever requested was my bank details so that I could be paid.

If you work for a financial institution, your employer will naturally want more information, though. (I didn't work for one.)

You can contact one of the free debt help agencies for help in getting your finances up to date and for any information about how to control and use your money. I recommend Stepchange. Free phone call, free advice and no judgements. Here is a link -

https://www.stepchange.org/  You can just look around their website if you don't want to call them, they give lots of advice.

If I were you and wanted to cut my expenditure, I wouldn't pay for gym membership, even with a discount because to my mind (and having had past experience of paying for exercise) walking is just as good as organised exercise and it's free.  Even in bad weather, blows the cobwebs away. 

In the past I've been in terrible financial difficulty - that's where Stepchange came to my rescue - and now I don't have any debts (but it's taken a while). I check my banking app daily on my phone. I now know where every penny is, or should be and I know when my direct debits and standing orders go out of my account. You need to familiarise yourself with your bank account. I don't care if people think I'm a bit OTT with looking at my account so frequently, it makes me feel better and works for me. 

As zx81 has said, the Debt Free Wannabe boards should also be helpful. 

For your reference Mal, a significant number of companies will do financial checks as part of their recruitment process, not just financial services industry - any firm contracting for the likes of the MoJ that would have access to their systems/data for example will normally need to get any employees who could have access through the SC clearance process (2 levels above the DBS check or whatever it is now). In my last role, even though I was never going to go on site or deal with anything except dead / decommissioned kit coming back from courts, I still had to be SC cleared. SC clearance looks at your background (I had to provide my parent's date and place of birth for example) as well as your financial records to see if you could be open to bribery for example.