Debt Reduction Blog. What happens if you miss mortgage payments? August 16th 2008

A question we are sometimes asked is ‘what do we do if rates rise and we find it hard to make payments?’. The root of the answer lies in not getting into debt you may not be able to service in the first place, having said that the home of your dreams is not always going to be sold at a dream price and many people are feeling an increasing debt burden in 2008. This is down to a slowing economy, redundancies, increased margins on loans, and ECB rate increases.

Today’s post will have some simple tips about money management and ways to avoid bad debt. For a start you need to get a piece of paper and write down guaranteed outgoings, such as mortgages, personal loans, credit cards, groceries etc. If there is a hierarchy in what requires priority food comes first then further down the line debts, for debts (if you ever have to make that choice of which one not to pay) make sure you pay your mortgage first, and personal loans further down the line.

However, …

Read More

Debt Consolidation

Debt consolidation is a popular term in the mortgage market and what it involves is taking out one large loan to pay of other smaller ones, in the mortgage business this normally means tapping into the equity of your home in order to do so. The equity of your home becomes the security for the loan, and this means that you may get a lower interest rate however there are also inherent drawbacks to this.

If you take out a loan in the form of a mortgage and it is secured against your home then in essence you are putting your home on the line, if you were mortgage free and bought a car for €80,000 putting your home as security for a loan in order to get the car then if you could not pay you could potentially have to foreclose on your home. Typically you would sell the car but this is just to give an example of the risk.

Sometimes debt consolidation makes perfect sense, for instance if you have several loans (especially if they are at …

Read More