The Credit Crunch just hit hard

Soldato
Joined
29 Jun 2004
Posts
12,957
In my household it's me, my brother and my mum. My mum doesn't work because she's ill; I’m at university full time so I only work part time at the weekends, so my brother works full time at Wickes. He's the main source of income. He pays the bills, puts food on the table, and keeps a roof over our heads and gives us everything.

He's the supervisor at where he works. He's really good at his job. Now, he works with three other supervisors and two managers above him. He just received word from the area manager due to the recent financial instability the companies profits are low and they need to let go of two supervisors. Now, it's up to the managers to work out who.

Problem is, he's the newest supervisor and it's highly likely he's going to be the one made redundant.

Poor thing is sorting out stuff he needs and stuff he doesn’t. He's going to sell his camcorder which he loves, his iPhone which he loves and buy a cheap £20 one and sell other none essentials. We have savings but something is telling me it's not going to be enough.

I guess money does make the world go around :(
 
Poor thing is sorting out stuff he needs and stuff he doesn’t. He's going to sell his camcorder which he loves, his iPhone which he loves and buy a cheap £20 one and sell other none essentials. We have savings but something is telling me it's not going to be enough.

I can't really see that selling all his worldly possesions is going to pay the bills for very long. He should be looking for other jobs rather than hoping to get £300 or whatever from selling an iPhone.
 
Sorry to hear this. Makes me worried, I don't know what I would do if I was made redundant.

surely you can't be that dependant on him. Many students live alone while at uni and some of them don't even seem to have jobs? Assuming your parents are on low income do you not get a large loan? Also if your mum is ill she would be entitled to some benefits?
 
Depends how long he's worked there. It'll be something like a month's pay for every year he's worked there.

a weeks pay, not a month. Plus if he is the newest then he might not be entitled to anything (<2years service). a lot of companies offer above this but don't have to.
 
Do some part time work, I'm a full time Uni student and have 2 part time jobs.

I also agree with Lopez, your brother should also be looking for another job rather than selling things that won't stretch very far.
 
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Sorry if this has already been mentioned, but are you not entitled to bursaries from your Uni in cases like this?

I'm self sufficient at uni and that's without bursaries. I work part-time and have the standard uni loans to cover my accommodation.

Maybe I've missed a couple points, but last year I took home ~£450/500 a month whilst studying. I covered all my food, books, drinking and socialising plus bills.

I know that him losing the job will cause a lot of problems, but if he starts looking now he could well find something.
 
I can't do extra shifts during the day because my uni timetable is jam packed Monday to Friday. I don't depend on him; I do use my wages to support myself. But at the end of the day, running the house it all comes down to him. He pays the mortgage which I can't due to insufficient funds. We go halves on shopping. He pays the bills etc. Like I said, we have savings, but when something like this happens, you can't help but panic.
 
Is the mortage in his name if so i presume insurance would have been taken out for times like this?

Mortgage insurance is utterly useless for any situation you would actually need it, waste of money.

I would see if you could switch to interest only though.
 
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