The most important thing is that you’re open and honest with your bank before you get to the point of financial despair. It is critical that you protect your future credit rating as much as possible. You should speak to your lender before your bills mount up!! Before approaching your bank read the Irish Mortgage Federations Code of Practice on Mortgage Arrears on the www.ibf.ie website. Ensure you have all the facts and entitlements in advance of meeting your bank

Option 1
Request a payment holiday whereby you will not have to make any repayments of capital or interest. This is what you should ask for first.

Option 2
Ask to be moved to interest only until you are back on your financial feet

Option 3
The Mortgage Interest Supplement. provides short term support to help you pay your mortgage interest repayments. You will only get assistance with the interest portion of your mortgage repayments. You will not get help with the portion that pays off the actual loan and house insurance. You should contact your lender to discuss repaying the actual loan.

To get Mortgage Interest Supplement you must meet the following conditions:

•When you began your mortgage, you could afford the repayments
•Your house is not up for sale
•The amount of your mortgage interest payable does not exceed an amount the Health Service Executive considers reasonable to meet your residential and other needs

See here for further conditions…..

What is the process?

To apply, fill in a Mortgage Interest Supplement Form . Part of the form will need to be filled in by your lending agency. You will also need to fill in another form called the Supplementary Welfare Allowance Form – this form is used to gather additional details relevant to your application for Mortgage Interest Supplement.  When you apply for Mortgage Interest Supplement the Community Welfare Officer will assess your means. You may qualify for a Rent Supplement if you live in private rented accommodation and are unable to meet the cost of your rent. You must be in receipt of either a Social Welfare payment or Supplementary Welfare Allowance (SWA) payment in order to receive this Supplement.

Some of the most common reasons that people do not qualify for a rent supplement are:
•The rent is too high
•Your income is too high
•One member of the household is working full-time (over 30 hours per week or more)

Rent/Mortgage Interest Supplement Means Test

Taking up part-time employment can effect your Rent/Mortgage supplement. Income is assessed in the following way:

The first €75 of ‘additional household income’ is disregarded.
Additional household income over €75 is disregarded at 25% of its value. There is no upper limit on the amount that can be disregarded.

EXAMPLE – SINGLE PERSON ON JOBSEEKERS ALLOWANCE & NO OTHER INCOME

Single Rate Jobseeker’s Allowance €204
Basic SWA rate for a single person – €204
Additional income above Basic SWA rate €0.00
Private Rented Accommodation per week €115
Minus minimum personal contribution (person pays) – €24
Maximum Rent Supplement payable per week (HSE) €91
Minus additional income above Basic SWA rate – €0

Rent Supplement payable (HSE) €91 per week

For Further Information go to www.inou.ie or www.welfare.ie

http://www.careermentors.ie

Survey of Pay and Benefits in Ireland -
CIPD ( Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development )

This survey was undertaken early 2009…..the conclusions are worth a read. Click here for the more indepth report

•Over half (53%) of those surveyed received a pay increase in 2008 and, of those working for an employer that pays bonuses, 83% received one last year.
• Overall, the majority were satisfied with the size of their pay increase (70%) and
or their bonus but of those who were not satisfied, many felt the amount of their
rise did not keep pace with inflation / the cost of living.
• Although a high percentage of employees received a pay increase and/ or bonus,
the majority believe such will not be the case next year with 43% predicting no
pay rise and 21% a rise lower than 2008, only 19% think their pay rise will be
greater than this year.
• A significant proportion (68%) do not know what they need to do to achieve a pay
rise in 2009, suggesting both uncertainty and that communication around pay
could be improved – nearly half wanted more information about their pay.
• There is support for basing pay around individual performance, experience and
linked to inflation / cost of living.
• Transparency of pay is also something employees favour – over two-thirds would
like to know how their pay increase compared with others and most are also
happy to disclose how much they earn, if it meant that they could find out how
much others earn.

Tips for new job seekers:

Reading the job market
Whatever you do for a living, all industries go through cycles of growth and shrinkage. There are flat periods and booms. There are recessions, too, and their usual result is a drastic reduction in job vacancies. That leaves most job seekers with a pretty lame set of options: apply for the two jobs in the sector, or do something else, however vaguely defined.

It depends how you read the job market. Looking for jobs that aren’t there isn’t too productive. The usual problem is breaking the mold, getting out of the single stream of employment. The mistake here is to assume you’re stuck in the same industry. Most people’s skills transfer across to other areas in other industries, some quite unrelated.

The fact is that most people don’t know how to read the job market. They see a demand for accountants, but don’t notice it’s all in finance, not basic accountancy. The accounting analogy holds good for reading the job market. How many different kinds of accountant are there? Hundreds. Does the word “accountant” mean very much if it’s not qualified? It’s almost meaningless, because of the very different skill sets.

It’s not a matter of jobs in demand, it’s a matter of skills in demand.

To read the job market properly, in your own area, you need to focus almost exclusively on skills. Qualifications do matter, but you’re usually in the bandwidth for jobs with the right skills. So your basic accountant will go looking for areas where they can demonstrate skills as the primary asset to getting the job.

Career paths are also built on skills and achievements, not job titles. To read the job market in career terms, you need to go looking for meaningful skill sets in your career path. If you want to develop your career, you have a general idea what’s required, but you have to match that to the skills required in a position. Some jobs don’t deliver that. If you want to become a research scientist, a series of steps in that career are required. You don’t just look for “research,” you look for opportunities to do the work that gets the results.

How to read the job market:

Check skills as your primary reference to the suitability of any job. This covers most of the real issues about whether it’s worth applying for.

Stay objective about what you want out of a job. Use this as the basic yes/ no criteria for job applications.

Ask yourself: Does this job go anywhere? If so, where and when? Be realistic about what a job can deliver.

How does the job compare to what you want? Sometimes you have to settle for what you can get, but there’s a cutoff point. Stay in the general zone of what you want, as much as possible.

One thing about this type of reading: It never gets dull. Just stay focused.

www.cvtips.com