Can you really afford that pen?
Under new rules that take effect on Saturday, mortgage applicants face tougher questions about their lifestyle, to give lenders greater confidence that borrowers will actually have the ability to pay.
Questions from lenders about customers’ regular outgoings – including childcare costs and even haircuts – could be included in affordability checks, along with a range of other lifestyle queries.
At the Evening Harold, we have obtained an early draft copy of the new questionnaire, so why not try it yourself and find out whether, in these difficult times, the mortgage companies will see you as a good risk?
Q. 1) You have ten pounds left until pay-day, in two days. Do you:
a) Spend it all on groceries, ensuring you and the kids can eat.
b) Buy a cheap bottle of wine (God knows you deserve it!) and tinned food with the rest.
c) Throw it all on one bet at the Chemin-de-Fer tables at Le Touquet.
d) Eat it.
e) Sell five hundred million guineas’ worth of government bonds and buy the Isle of Man.
Q. 2) You only have about £40 each week after bills and essentials. Your husband suggests an expensive subscription to Sky Sports. Do you:
a) Raise your eyes wearily to the heavens at the lazy gender sterotyping of this question.
b) Decide a man who likes his sport is sexy and jump on him right then and there on the settee.
c) Get hopelessly addicted to online casinos after viewing the endless adverts for gambling.
d) Kick in the TV and defecate in his hat.
e) Express surprise that a British landowner, who served as an Army officer and is the son of Robert George Grosvenor, 5th Duke of Westminster, should have a husband.
Q. 3) A chugger stops you and asks if you like pandas, snow leopards or cancer. do you:
a) Say “I’m sorry, I just can’t afford it. I have a mortgage, you know.”
b) Sign a form without reading it that commits you to paying a variable rate donation for the next 25 years.
c) Bet him he can’t run across a busy road blindfolded. If he can, you’ll give him £100.
d) You are a panda.
e) Instruct chef to prepare Panda à la bretonne avec salade de léopard des neiges cancéreux.
Q. 4) You win £750,000 on the lottery. Do you:
a) Give all the money to good causes.
b) Immediately pay off half your mortgage and enjoy a holiday in relative financial security.
c) Take out a much, much bigger mortgage which you can barely afford despite your new found wealth. And then put the £750,000 on red.
d) Not let it change your life of being a panda.
e) I don’t play the lottery. I own the lottery. In fact, the lottery plays me.
Q. 5) A friend suggests you take out a “payday loan” to cover the cost of a night out. Do you:
a) Warn him of the horrors of being trapped in long-term high-interest debt.
b) Consider it, as a one-off. You know people who do this – it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
c) Come up with an unbeatable gambling scheme where you borrow larger and larger amounts until eventually a 50-50 bet comes in.
d) Decide you are no longer a panda. You are the Emperor Napoleon, ruler of France and its colonies.
e) Set the dogs on him. And then set the other dogs on the first dogs.
Q. 6) Unfortunately, one of your kidneys stops working. Do you:
a) Resign yourself to being at the bottom of a long waiting list, with no guarantee of ever getting to the top.
b) Curse that you didn’t take up that offer from work to get discounted BUPA care.
c) Feel pretty confident that the other one will keep going OK. You’re a winner!
d) Invest in an expensive course of Homeopathic medicine.
e) Roar with laughter and light your cigar with a burning £50 note before importing a Chinese boy for ‘spares’.
Q. 7) You are having an expensive month. Which of the following might you be tempted to buy, despite knowing it might leave you short for your mortgage repayment?:
a) The funeral of a close loved one.
b) The latest iPhone, it’s just been launched and you need it immediately!
c) Mad Eric the Bastard taking your testicles out of the vice after the little dispute over those gambling debts.
d) Another facial tattoo.
e) Cornwall.
HOW DID YOU DO?
Mostly a) b) c) or d) There is no way in hell you are getting a mortgage. What were you thinking?
Mostly e) You are the Duke of Westminster, the UK’s richest man. You do not need a mortgage. There is nothing left for you to buy.
Why not share this using the buttons below, and see how your friends do? Perhaps they are the Duke of Westminster!
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