Just bought new house - some advice on finances?

[GlasgowTitan]

Hey folks have just bought my first house with my fiancée and are moving in next weekend. We got the new build house on a shared equity deal and have our mortgage and insurances (buildings/contents) sorted, the only thing I'm missing is some form of payment protection in case of unemployment/illness etc.

The mortgage is with Natwest and they dont do payment protection so anybody got ideas of where to look for the best company to offer this protection? I had a look on moneysupermarket.com and their quotes seem to come from unheard of (to me!) providers such as "helpucover.co.uk" "protectionuk.net" and "i.protect insurance"

Anybody heard of these people or got any better suggestions for us? Thanks

 

[Von Smallhausen]

Feel free to tell me to mind my own but do you mind if I ask what rate you got with NW ?

 

[Defcon5]

Cant you get it with your life insurance?

 

[GlasgowTitan]

@ VS the overall rate was 4.3% fixed for 2 years.

@defcon i wasn't sure if the life assurance covers the likes of illness/unemployment - maybe i should read that policy a bit more closely first!

 

[Bear]

Forget about payment protection as its a waste of money and just put that money away instead. There are so many clauses before they actually pay out, normally 3 to 6 months not working, having to be signing on etc not worth bothering with.

 

[GlasgowTitan]

Forget about payment protection as its a waste of money and just put that money away instead. There are so many clauses before they actually pay out, normally 3 to 6 months not working, having to be signing on etc not worth bothering with.

Somebody else mentioned this aswell, but to my mind surely paying a few pounds a month is worth it if I get my legs squashed by a giant alien (you get the point) and I then wont be able to pay the monthly bills of around £800 which our savings could probably only ever cover 1 or 2 months of?

 

[EddScott]

You could visit a local general insurance broker who will help you with ASU (accident, sickness and unemployment) which I think covers you up to about 2 years and can have day 1 cover.

Another policy is income protection although this is unlikely to have unemployment cover. Income protection will cover you for about 50% of your income if you become ill and is usually written until 65. Again this will have day 1 cover or deferred periods upto 6 months - the longer the cheaper if you see what I mean.

However, it can be tricky to get a claim honoured. I'd be tempted to seek professional advice purely for the reason that if you need to make a claim you've got someone on your side to help you.

 

[GlasgowTitan]

Thanks, will have a read up on those

 

[ToastedCheese]

Forget about payment protection as its a waste of money and just put that money away instead. There are so many clauses before they actually pay out, normally 3 to 6 months not working, having to be signing on etc not worth bothering with.

This +1.

OP, Critical illness may be worth considering for piece of mind but insurance is in its nature a balance between cost and your attitude towards risk.

 

[DBT85]

I looked at payment protection but ultimately didn't bother. I did however get Critical Illness/life insurance to pay the mortgage off. At least that way should something truly awful happen the other one doesn't have to worry about the house.

The reason I didn't bother with payment protection is that the wife and i have enough money in an account that we don't ever touch to pay half the mortgage off for 4 months. We'd both have to lose our jobs at the same time to even need to consider it a problem.

Also we put enough in regular savings every month to give us another 3 months cushion at least.

 

[HangTime]

May be worth weighing up the relative incomes of you and your fiancee. When I bought my first house with my gf we only insured for unemployment for her as she earned a lot more than me; I was of the view that if I lost my job that I could find another one paying the same or better within 3-6 months anyway.

Nowadays we don't bother with insurance at all as I earn more money now so we could survive on single income, redudancy and savings for quite a while, long enough to find another job anyway.

Obviously if we both got laid off at the same time it might be a bit more tricky but I don't think the risk is high enough to warrant shelling out on insurance every month.

 

[LordSplodge]

One caveat that you need to be aware of is that a lot (if not all) Income Insurance policies (and Critical Illness) do not cover existing medical conditions.

Thus if you happen to have been blessed with bad genes (like I have) then do your research as the policies may not be worth it. Oh and check that they do cover things that are passed down as they may not pay out just because you great granddad had that form of cancer or whatever...

I just have enough savings to cover me for x months. A lot less hassle but you do, of course, need to be able to save the money and hope nothing happens to you in the meantime...

 

[airrunner]

see a ifa principality are knocking natwest out of the water at the moment

 

[GinG]

@ VS the overall rate was 4.3% fixed for 2 years.

@defcon i wasn't sure if the life assurance covers the likes of illness/unemployment - maybe i should read that policy a bit more closely first!

Rate seems a bit high for shared equity, currently doing a similar scheme and with nationwide our rate is 2.99%.


On another note we have gone through legal & general for left insurance with critical illness / payment protection for £60 a month for both, possibly worth a shot?

 

[Crizzy]

Rate seems a bit high for shared equity, currently doing a similar scheme and with nationwide our rate is 2.99%.

How can you tell the rate is high not knowing the details of the mortgage?