nowhereboy

Its not just the self employed. Millions of us are stuck working in large offices for employers who consider themselves “key workers” as a way of keeping the business open. If my place wiggles out of the lockdown Im faced with either moving out my home and not seeing my partner or son for months if not longer, or refuse to come into work and hope I don’t get fired.

What is everyone doing about work at the moment? My partner is high risk as she has Crohns and Asthma. Shes already unwell and awaiting treatment. Thankfully she can work from home. Obviously the schools have closed and my son is also at home. My employer is just bumbling along as normal with “ideas to look into home working” but ultimately nothing has been done and they expect us to come to work and sit in a huge office surrounded by people. Im considering saying I have symptoms and self isolating for two weeks and hopefully by then we will be locked down anyway. I don’t fancy waiting for the official advice before protecting my family. In the north east people are just going about their business as normal.

Yea that ship sailed didn't it? Instead we have access to thousands of experts who all have completely different opinions on any given situation

Yea I agree. It's just very hard to make an informed opinion based on the information we have at the moment. I believe it's either going to blow over within a few months, the press will get bored and we will go back to business as usual or it's going to turn into a catastrophic sh*t show. I really don't know which of the two at the moment.

I must say I went from being completely unfazed by the whole thing to fairly concerned very quickly. So much contradicting information in the press and even from governments and victims. We are being told the death rate is very low and only a real concern for elderly or unwell people. Then on another hand I've viewed loads of verified videos of European doctors on twitter in complete meltdown mode, some having nightmares when they sleep and showing lines upon lines of dying people on ventilation. I've saw doctors crying saying they can't help these people and that it's way more serious than governments are suggesting, they're also saying being young does not make you safe. So yea, it's all a bit confusing at the moment. Like everyone else I have bills to pay and currently work in an office with over 60 other people in an open space. Not a great deal I can do but keep cracking on until anything changes. I worry about the financial fall out as much as the virus itself.

Deleted.

Another thing people often don't realize is legal cover will not fight liability for you following a dispute of who was at fault etc. E Sure are not mistaken in their comment to you, however it's misleading. I worked in the motor insurance industry for 7 years and put it this way, I don't/won't pay for legal cover.

Motor Legal Cover is a bit of red herring anyway as the majority of insurers will cough up uninsured losses as long as you're not at fault, if you're at fault MLA won't cover uninsured losses anyway. Many people don't actually understand MLA and what it covers. It's primary purpose is to claim back losses not covered by the Third party insurer, IE policy excess and loss of earnings etc

You will never save money in an ST. If you want one, buy it, but it won't save any money.

I sold my Z for the same reason, stupidly I bought a MK2 ST running 300+ BHP and that was even more expensive to run. I now drive a FN2 Type R and it really made me realize, it's not all about big BHP. The little Honda is so fun to drive and I absolutely love it. I also realized it's absolutely mental to spend 8 hours a day working a job I dislike to fund a completely unnecessary item that sits in traffic 90% of its life.

Update! Been super busy the last few weeks, pleased to say we completed our house purchase at the end of last month and all went through with no problem what so ever. Thanks for all your input as always guys

Thanks TT (long time no speak by the way). We have made our decision and will be sticking with it. I’ll be sure to let you guys know how we get on. Whatever the outcome I’m prepared for it, lifes a bitch sometimes and if it bites us in the arse we’ll get over it. Cheers

Gangzoom, financially we are fine, the only problem being we've wiped out all savings on house purchase and if sale falls through we would need to find a large sum of money to pay to the vendor, this is a help to buy purchase so if sale falls through we need to pay remaining 5% to make it up to 10% deposit. My partners new job will pay 3k a year more than previous one with a further 3k rise in two years time. So no worries regarding bill paying or keeping up mortgage payments. I could pay all the bills on my wage if worst came too anyway. Sarnie, I'm not comfortable disclosing lender on a public forum at the moment. We are due to complete just weeks after her current role ends which means if payslips were required we could still obtain one right up until we move. The only way I can see them finding out now is if they were to actually pick up the phone and ring employer or write to them. I do find this unlikely as they did not do this prior to giving out the offer, it wouldn't make sense from a layman's point of view to start doing that now. I would really like to know how likely lenders are to start digging things up and checking things out at this stage but it would appear people in the industry don't like to disclose this information (which I understand).

Thanks for the response Sarnie! I feel absolutely sick with worry today, I can't help but feel that people within the industry are obliged to state we should tell them as they can't exactly go around telling people to hide things from lenders. I've read stories on other forums where people have fessed up and lost everything, I've also read many threads in which people have kept quiet and been successful. We have paid a very high broker fee to obtain this offer, we have simply ran out of money to pay another 4 figure sum if the broker requires more money due to needing a new lender. We have used a specialist broker and had limited options for providers to start with, we feel very lucky to have obtained a good rate from a high street lender and the mortgage may become out of reach if we need to use another lender. The bottom line here is we are at risk regardless of what decision we make, it's just trying to work out which option contains the least risk.

Thanks for the input guys, quite a clear response on this one then. I have asked on a forum elsewhere that is tailored to mortgages etc and the advice was to tell them as it's within my contract and the right thing to do, they also mentioned this is mortgage fraud and could blacklist us for life. I kind of suspected this advice was exaggerated/skewed due to the forum in which I requested it. It's such a hard situation, we need to arrange moving vans, give notice on current house and plough forwards, it's nearly impossible to settle my mind over this one and I'm not going to be able to relax until this is all over with. I'll drop Sarnie a PM and link him to this thread.