PEOPLE OFTEN ADJUST their diets when they want to lose weight, eating less as they attempt to make their bodies smaller. And the diets are often targeted at a specific occasion, such as a wedding or a reunion.
It may not be a matter of cutting out sugars and carbohydrates, but preparing for a big occasion such as buying a house, with the accompanying loan that, and legitimately invariably need to access, often does require a diet of a certain kind.
The load has to be lightened to accommodate the loan.
This is because a financial institution, such as a bank or credit union, demands that the applicant have a certain amount of money above the required regular repayment. Worked out as a percentage of the monthly salary, for many institutions the monthly repayment cannot be more than one-third of the person's income.
EXPENSES
Expenses are taken into consideration, ranging from rent to utilities to existing loans, and the person processing the application decides whether or not the applicant can handle the required repayments.
At 39, Marie can look back and laugh at the 'lightening' she went through seven years ago in order to acquire a mortgage to buy a house with her partner. It involved not only selling one of their two cars, but also moving in with her parents.
"We couldn't pay rent and also qualify for the loan, so we had to do something. He didn't really like it, you know how men are about moving in with a woman, much less the woman's parents, but fortunately everybody had got on really well before and we all knew it was for a short time and for a particular objective," she said.
That objective was achieved, but it took more time than was thought at first.
"It is like going overseas to work. People say that they are going to go for five years and come back, and you don't see them until 20 years later. In our case, we thought we would just stay for two months, just to get the loan processed. We ended up staying for close to a year," Marie said.
The results were well worth it, though, and they have learnt an invaluable lesson.
"We went on a serious saving programme as well. You would not believe how every little bit adds up, because we had to find the closing costs ourselves," she said. "We have continued on the same savings strategy, because you know that the next step is retirement," she said.
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