Support from Bank .....

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newbie2009

Registered User
Messages
74
Hi everyone,

Im sorry if Im posting this in the wrong forum.. a friend recommended I post on politics.ie to get informed feedback. So here goes...

Im looking for some advice...

At the moment I have a mortgage, visa card and a personal loan. Im finding it very hard to meet all the repayments in time, but so far I have managed it.

I contacted the bank and asked them for a mortgage break to clear my outstanding visa balance and my personal loan, which would leave me in a better position to manage my mortgage.

Currently my mortgage is approx 60% of my take home pay, but I am a public servant and in the last 3 months my take home pay has been down approx €400. I've always had to budget very tightly, but with this reduction in income, things have become even worse.

Anyway, the bank refused! They said that my first priority should be my mortgage and that I need to make alternative arrangements with my visa company and loan company instead.

I feel this is completely unfair. I thought the bank would have supported me in trying to clean up my finances, and hence not lapse on any mortgage payments etc., but no.

I would appreciate any opinions/suggestions anyone might have?

Thank you
 
You should talk to a company called MABS who help people work out debts with the institutions. They might get further than you with the bank.
 

I know of someone else that happened to and its hard at first to see their reasoning, but it comes down to managing current income to balance current expenditure, not lumping it onto your mortgage and selling your future.

Believe me I know it seems like the only option, but its their call and they're doing this kind of thing a lot.

I heard of another guy, good income who went looking for a car loan - refused. Yer man at the bank said there was money for things like extensions, but not car loans.

How many 2009 cars do you see on the roads this year?
How many are Ford Focuses or Quasquai's?

And the bitter irony of all this is that the ones whose dodgy purchasing of toxic assets and lending to over-the-top developers are the ones telling us to apply sound financial principles!
 
onq said:
And the bitter irony of all this is that the ones whose dodgy purchasing of toxic assets and lending to over-the-top developers are the ones telling us to apply sound financial principles!
Click to expand...

Not to let the banks off the hook (as they clearly lent money that wasn't affordable) but they didn't set out to buy toxic assets, they bought A-rated financial products with a good projected yield from some of the most respectable banks in the US. The ratings had been provided by the top ratings agencies (Moodys, Standard and Poor, Fitch) who seem to have emerged from this crisis relatively unscathed. The fact that there was a nice dirty pile of laundry sitting in the middle of most of those securitised packages was something that was deliberately hidden by the way that these were built. The fact that the self-same ratings agencies also supplied consultants to build those packages has been entirely glossed over. The basic idea was that prime and sub-prime mortgages were bundled together so that the prime provided the stability and the sub-prime the return.

Hmm, 60% of your take home prior to the swingeing budget and "mini"-budget cuts? That seems rather high - no wonder you are having difficulty meeting ends meet. Adding in your personal loan and visa card, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if you are simply running to stand still and living on your visa card month-to-month? Putting it harshly - you can't afford your mortgage, and you have added two additional debts onto it.

It is the banks purpose to provide you with facility (at a charge of course) to make large-scale purchases outside of the range of your day-to-day income. It is their intention to recoup the full cost of said facility from you. They aren't a charitable organisation and they are simply being prudent (late in the day as it is!). They don't believe that you will clear the other loans as easily as you think and they don't want to take the risk on. Interesting, given the comment from onq above and the answer you received from the bank, one of the roots of the current credit crunch was the unanticipated non-repayment of loans in the US. Banks were caught on the hop when sub-prime customers proved less amenable to paying the mortgage first. Their experience with their normal market indicated that people tend to prioritise mortgage out of fear of losing their home, but this new breed of customers/victims didn't behave in this way, they simply let their mortgage slide, preferring to pay others first.

In terms of actual helpful stuff, have you considered the possibility of extending the term of your mortgage? It may drop the repayments a little and the bank may be more amenable to that. Have you done as your mortgage provider has suggested and spoken to your other creditors about changing repayments there?
 
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