Hello All,

We are going to be applying for my hubby's visa under the 'cash savings' route. We will need to be parking around $60K for the requisite 6 months (working on pulling that together right now). We 'only' need $60K as his military pension will count towards our requirement.

Here's my question: we have a house to sell and which we'll need to pay for an approx $20K loss on, belongings to ship, short-term hotel accommodation to pay for (after house is sold) and of course flights to pay for. I'm trying to figure out whether the $60K will be available to us to use to pay for these expenses once his visa is in hand? For example: visa arrives Monday can we draw down those savings on Tuesday to pay for these necessities? Or do I need to plan on finding additional $$ to pay for those short-term expenses until we actually enter the UK?

Any guidance, ideas or personal experiences greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

We are doing the same thing. Sorry to say that you cannot use any of that 62K for 2.5 years, when you need to show it to apply for part 2 of the ILR visa. At 5 years, you will only have to produce 36K of that. It must remain liquid so you cannot use it to purchase a house for example. Good luck

We actually won't need it at the 2.5 year point, because (according to our immigration advisor) at that point we can switch to claiming under our joint income, He almost meets the income amount by his pension alone, so as long as I'm earning more than about 5,000 pounds a year we're golden.

My concern is whether we have to have the amount still in savings at the time of his entry into the country, or not.

Oh well that's good then. Still think you would need to have it at the point of entry though

I don't think the rules state that you need the money at point of entry. The requirement for leave to enter (ie cross the border) are:
The financial requirements are requirements to obtain Entry Clearance, not entry. Realisitically it's probably safer to have the money when you cross the border but unless you are very unlucky or do something very stupid you're not going to have anyone check anything other than the passport and the passport stamp when you come in. Even if they did my layman's opinion is that the rules don't need the money to still be liquid - if it was a loan and you'd claimed it as a gift and given it back before arriving that woudl be different but if it's your savings and you are using it to support yourselves while you are here (by putting a deposit on a house) then that should be OK. Honestly though - you're not going to get that far through the house purchase without being resident, you can start but by the time money changes hands you'll probably need to be here

Just an off-the-wall question but do the regulations specify net savings? From reading on here, they don't, for example, count a house loan against you ... so I'm wondering if the OP could request an extension of credit on the family credit card and pay it all on the CC (so the savings are all in the bank when they enter the UK) ... then pay off the credit card once everyone is in the UK?

dunroving - they require you declare the source:
Later they then state:
But paragprahs 13-16 only mention savings:
- to exclude them from combination with self-employment income
- to exclude double counting of joint savings
- to exclude them from being used to increase the previous 6/12 months income for those returning to the UK (ie us) but allow them to be used to increase the income from the UK job offer.

The most likely point for refusal would be to consider a bank loan to be 3rd party support and therefore covered by:
Lots of speculation - no real answer.

Reading through this, it seems to say you can't take out a loan in order to have sufficient savings (so you can't take out a £86k loan, put it in the bank and say you have £86k "savings").

This seems different from having £86k in the bank and at the same time, having a mortgage on a property.

My suggestion wasn't to use the credit card to put money in the bank, it was to use the CC in order not to draw down savings in the bank - I realise that these are financially equivalent, but then in other respects, the regulations do not seem to recognise them as equivalent.

For one thing, owning a UK house mortgage-free is not counted in your favour (less earnings needed), neither is there anything to stop someone taking out a mortgage after they come back, as long as they maintain the savings/earnings level - so owing money does not seem to be counted per se as "negative equity" so to speak ... they seem primarily to be saying you can't use a loan to put money in the bank, or use a loan as a source of income (your pasted text). Neither of these covers what I described. It's worth the OP looking into the fine print regarding this, I think.

We won't be purchasing a house for quite some time, as we'll need to determine exactly where we want to finally settle based on work, schools etc.

Yeah, you hit my point on the head!

I literally just need to figure out how best to 'juggle' our resources to make this happen. On paper we have enough $$, but having it all in the right place, at the right time, and making sure we only use the $ available to us at that moment (e.g. not drawing down the 'magical' savings account and then finding that ooops, we should have kept it there just a couple days longer) is a little confusing.

For example, if necessary I could take a distribution from my IRA to cover those last-minute US expenses and then roll it back in once we have the visa and are free to start using our savings account - but rollovers have to be made within 60 days and so timing all of this just right so that I don't accidentally take a taxable distribution from an IRA, is a nightmare!

And just in time to make this even more confusing, the rules are being changed again.............

To allow for savings to be held in other forms in investment for less than six months. The savings must be in the form of cash at the time of visa application. But if you can prove a paper trail, they are going to allow people to keep their money invested instead of parking it in a unprofitable savings account for six months.

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publica...&pubID=1159111

This is all very well but we will be using part of the sale of our house to satisfy the 62K. And frankly, for 6 months, I'd rather just keep it liquid in case they change the rules again We'll invest the rest and what we get from the sale of our biz. Actually, what I am waiting to see is a change in the requirement to keep all 62K for 2.5 years, so that we can keep all the rest invested and not have to use it to live on in the meantime

Wow, what a concession!
Could this be a sign there be other changes in the wind? Are they beginning to understand how unfair some of their strict nit-picky requirements are?

They've had complaints from the wealthy about the "nit picky requirements".

For now, I think the rest of us are still screwed.

just to be clear its pounds and not dollars that 62k needs to be in.