Joana Regidor, a retiree who receives 800 euros in pension, owes a total of 20,000 euros in a loan “that I have to pay back in a year and a half.” The problem is that he has to pay the house bills, the supermarket shopping and the bills and that with what is in the checking account and the less than a thousand euros he receives from Social Security he cannot make ends meet. And if we add to this an emergency dental treatment that had to be performed, the result is that of a retiree, suffocated by debt.
That is why he went to the Antena3 program ‘And now Sonsoles’ where he explained his case and asked for help. “In addition to this (the 20,000 euros), I had to take out another loan of 6,000 euros through mouth, which I needed to fix. I have stopped working due to an illness and as a result of that I am receiving a low pension, of 800 euros.” Of this amount, you pay 400 credit and the rest is what you have left to pay for the month.
You may be interested
Social Security denies permanent disability to a Lidl stocker with a 65% disability and low back pain who was fired due to sudden ineptitude
Elma Saiz insists that without immigration it will not be possible to pay the baby boom pensions
Getting your teeth fixed is something “normal,” the presenter tells her, but she is curious to know why she requested the 20,000 euros. “It was a while ago, for some renovations I did at home. I knocked down a partition to build a small room. I kept my parents’ apartment, it was old and I had to fix it.”
A loan with 7% interest
The retiree explained that the loan had an interest of 7%, to which economist Rubén de Gracia replied that “it is not too high, it is fine” although “it depends on the years.” In Joana’s case, it was 10 years away “with the initial one being 19,672 euros and I suppose that’s where the notary fees come from. I have about five thousand or so left pending.”
“A person with this pension should not have requested this credit because normally it should be a maximum of 30% – 40% of what you earn,” explains the expert. She refutes this argument and tells him that, at the time he requested it, “I was working.”
“That’s what happens with loans, you have to be restrained and think about it well. At a minimum, we should have saved 6 months of our salary in the bank and from there, ask for loans,” he highlighted.
“I have a monthly burden of more than 500 euros per month for credits”
Another woman who participated in the program, Yolanda Marcos, said she felt overwhelmed by these microcredits. “I have 5,100 euros of microcredits from sales, an interior design course, a mortgage, a car, I’m paying for the teeth, my partner had to do the windows because they wouldn’t let me. I have active credits that add up to a monthly burden of more than 500 euros per month.”