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Being a single parent has a lot of responsibilities. These include food, transportation, healthcare, insurance payments, and mortgage payments.
The government mandated child-support payments take care of majority of these, but single parents still have to make the monthly necessary payments to pay these items. These payments usually range from $4000 ? 6000 per year.
From combined incomes, the single parent needs to support the family through of her income. This is exacerbated when the partner does not contribute to the expenses. One needs to take on additional jobs to be able to address the growing expenses of the family.
This leads to feelings of not having control over one?s life and a feeling of helplessness. Being financially independent is the biggest challenge of single parents to date. Being debt-free is a big factor in happiness among single parents. One of the most popular debts of single parents is the mortgage.
The mortgage of single parents has significantly increased over the past twenty years. A recent study conducted in Britain stated the debt difference between a home-owning single parents and single parents who rented apartments.
Findings showed that the debt of single parent homeowners are at 13% while single parents who rented apartments was at 25%. Either way, the study shows that single parents are struggling with mortgage payments. Several alternatives, such as moving to a complex to lower payments or living with other single parents have been done, however, does minimal, or no help in the mortgage payments.
One way of securing financial independence, in terms of mortgage payments for single parents, is having a strong income power. The single parent needs to analyze his finances to be able to figure out what works in terms of the mortgage payments. Sometimes, the single parent realizes that he/she needs to take on additional jobs in order to support the mortgage payments.
In choosing the right mortgage for single parents, one needs to think about the following, current financial standing, dynamics of changing finances, how long one intends to keep the house, and the change of mortgage payments.
One needs to take into consideration fixed mortgage rather than yearly mortgage and refinancing for example. The bank also reviews one?s credit limit, when the single parent applies for this.