Light at the end of the tunnel?

Lou3000

Firstly, I want to say that I had the most pleasant of phone conversations today with the new branch manager of our local BoS. Straight out of charm school! It made such a difference to me that because she was so pleasant and helpful, I immediately felt comfortable with her and feel as if she really wanted to help me.

This month, for the first time in years, I went overdrawn on my current account and exceeded my authorised overdraft. Many factors caused this to happen which I won't bore you with, but although they were not of my doing, it would have helped if I hadn't played ostrich and didn't open my most recent bank statements and had taken advantage of my internet banking account which I set up last year but never looked at :rolleyes:

I have 3 loans, one of them BoS and along with those, big outgoings include Broadband monthly D/D and Electricity D/D. Other than that, I pay for the food bill and hubs pays the other stuff. I was made redundant 2 years ago and since then have got 2 part-time jobs which are still not paying me what I was earning full-time and even then the full-time job was badly paid :mad:

I had phoned to ask about seeing the manager regards waiving the 3 lots of banks charges incurred (you know, the letters!) two of £35 and one of £28. I realised that if I was to pay those then then would amount to one weekend's wages from the supermarket job.

I am going in to see the manager on Monday but meantime she has said that although it is notoriously difficult to get charges 'waived' on this occasion, she will do it. When I go see her on Monday, we'll discuss the possibility of consolidating the 3 loans I have so that my monthly outgoings are more manageable. I have held off from this route for a long time because next year I'll be 60 and by then 1 of the loans will be paid off and the other big one will be paid off in 2010. But we'll see what the manager comes up with.

All I know is that I'll sleep better tonight.:j

CLAPTON

well be careful

they may try to sell you PPI .. dont take it

and consolidated loans while having low payments tend to be a high interest rates over long periods of time
given your age you really dont want to be lumbered with long term debt.

dont agree to anything but say you want to think about it/ talk to your OH and take any written quotes away.

Lou3000

Well, I went along to the bank today and the manager phoned the BoS/Halifax loan people for me to see about me getting a loan to 'consolidate' the loans I have.

Things have changed a lot since I last got a personal loan! Even though the loan is for myself and will be paid from my own bank account, they wanted to know if my husband & I had a mortgage and, if so, if I was a named as joint-owner of mortgage - which I am. Which meant that, in their eyes, even though hubs pays the mortgage and council tax out of his wages, should anything happen to him then I would be responsible for those debts (even though we have life insurance which would cover that).

Consequently, my own personal incoming salary would not cover the outgoings I have at present plus the mortgage payments and the council tax they say I'd have to find if the worst happens.

I wasn't that keen to take out another loan because all it's doing is prolonging the years of repaying a loan. As I'm 60 next year, I really don't want to be nearly 70 by the time I'm debt free!

However, because we are both on low wages but don't have any benefits paid to us, the manager wondered if it might be worth our while securing a loan using our mortgage (something my hubs did a few years ago with our endowment mortgage when he hit bad times - it was the only way to clear his debt). This seems sort of a good idea but only because the house does need work doing on it and we just can't afford stuff like new windows, central heating etc. with our wages. The way I look at it is we have a house which, if given a little attention, could be sold to make us some money on which to retire to a smaller place and hopefully have a little in the bank for our old age - which isn't that far away

One thing I must mention: I spoke to two different customer service people on the phone re the loan (long story why I spoke to two!) but even though, generally, I can understand the Irish accent, I found it very, very difficult to understand what these guys were saying to me. They had strong Belfast accents and spoke very quickly (it's all about time and sales, isn't it? ) and I gave up asking them to repeat themselves. I suspect they got a bit fed up of me asking to repeat what they'd said. There's nothing wrong with my hearing and I use the phone in my working hours so I know how important it is to speak clearly.

Is it just me or is it not more sensible for customer service based personnel to be able to speak clearly enough to be understood? :mad: