Graham Topping thought he’d retire and be mortgage free at 60. Two years on he owes more on his home than ever before
At the age of 62, Graham Topping’s life has not panned out as he had hoped.
Instead of being retired and mortgage-free, living a comfortable life and regularly travelling abroad to visit friends in America, he’s working 60 hours a week as an ambulance driver, and using half his wage to pay off the interest-only mortgage on his one-bedroom house in Southend, Essex.
Topping had thought he’d be in a good position to retire at 60. He was on a salary of £60,000 working for a printing company and renting a house in the Peak District with his then wife.
When their son Charlie was born in January 1997, his wife stopped working and the pair used credit cards to subsidise their monthly expenses, with the plan that they’d start to repay them when she began working again. They also planned to move to Southend, where house prices were cheaper.
But when they divorced in 1999 after three years of marriage, his ex-wife and son made the move to Essex alone, and Topping went to Derby for his job.
Then in 2002, Topping also moved to be closer to his son. As he no longer wanted the insecurity of renting alone, he took out a 25-year repayment mortgage on the one-bedroom house where he still lives.
The £400 monthly payments seemed manageable at first. But that quickly changed. He had to leave his job due to the distance. He was earning less and needed to pay child maintenance costs of £600 per month, plus bills. He was also responsible for the credit card debt that had accumulated in the early years of his son’s life. He couldn’t make ends meet.
After using more credit cards to afford his food and necessities, he ended up with £30,000 worth of debt. “I was teaching but the money was appalling,” he says. “I was in arrears and they tried to repossess the house one Christmas Eve. I had a Rolex watch which I pawned. My main thing was trying to keep the house.
“I had a platinum credit card and of course when you don’t have enough money you start using them more. It spiralled. I had a good credit rating at the time so I could put three or four credit cards onto one and it was interest-free for 18 months. That just pushed it further down the line. I was thinking that there’ll be another good job around the corner.”
Topping switched to an interest-only mortgage just before the financial crash of 2008 to reduce the payments, but things got worse when Northern Rock went bust and his mortgage was transferred to another provider.
He’s now a so-called mortgage prisoner, and has been stuck on a high standard variable rate mortgage ever since. He bought the house for £108,000 but currently owes £110,000.
Topping is one of around 200,000 mortgage prisoners in the UK – a group of people who took out high-interest mortgages with lenders before the financial crash and lending restrictions were tightened. As many of the lenders folded mortgage prisoners are effectively being held hostage by agreements they signed under difficult circumstances. Many, like Topping, are unable to shop around for a new deal as they do not meet lending criteria, due to their age, income or credit score.
His interest rate is currently 9.7 per cent and his £2,000 a month salary is barely stretching to pay it. The mortgage payments alone are £987, and with additional bills and his car, Topping is “lucky to be left with £200” a month for basics like food.
He started as an ambulance driver seven years ago. “Half my wage is going on interest. I’m not clearing any of the capital. To charge such a high interest rate seems criminal and morally wrong. We’re near double the base rate.”
If unexpected expenses crop up he has to wait to address them. The battery on his car currently needs replacing but he’ll have to wait another month to replace it. He says he feels “bitter” considering how hard his job can be. “We do a lot of stretchers and if someone lives upstairs we’ve got to go up two flights of stairs, that’s hard work. I do that five days a week. I leave my house at 8am and I’m lucky if I’m home by 8pm.”
When he was young, Topping was a diver, and narrowly missed out on a place in the 1984 Olympics team. “I went to university in the US and did more travelling than most of my friends. I was cocky in those days. I had a good job and I’d always been good with money. I thought I’d have a good income when I retired. I had plans for the future. I always thought I’d be comfortable.”
Now, aged 62, he’s unsure what his future looks like. “I have a few years left of my mortgage and I’m not clearing any capital. I wanted to retire at 60, now I can’t even retire at 67 because my state pension won’t cover the mortgage.”
Topping’s private pension from his printing job was spent servicing his debt. When his payment terms come to an end in the next three years, Topping knows he’ll be lucky to get another mortgage. As his house is currently worth £275,000 – his mortgage is £110k – he will have some equity he could put towards another house, but it’ll be unlikely he’ll be mortgage free.
“I’d have to use the money to rent somewhere but I could be moved at anytime. I could have to be out in 48 hours. I don’t want to be that age moving around every six months. I’ve had friends that rented and they get moved and it’s a pain to pack up. All you want when you retire is a roof over your head.”
And he’s upset that he’d have nothing to leave his son Charlie, now 28. His lifestyle, which used to consist of multiple holidays a year, has stopped. He now goes for a beer once or twice a month if he can afford it. All his meals are prepared at the weekend and reheated as he works such long hours.
He blames the financial crash and the Government for his situation. “I always voted Conservative. I believe they were better for the working man and we’d be looked after.”