Financial requirement question

As I mentioned in another post, I had plans of applying for my spouse visa in October, but we were delayed due to trouble getting the letter about his employment/payslips verification.

Now, my husband's base salary as a security concierge is around £18,200 per year. However, he has been working overtime and usually earns over £1550 (£18,600/12) per month. I mentioned to him last night that he should probably get his bank statements for November-December, as the ones he has are from April-October. He then mentioned that he did not get paid for any overtime in November, as the extra hours he worked were late in the month and went into December's pay. So, he earned £1525 for the month of November. Now I am worrying and panicking that we will get rejected over a mere £25. He went to the Citizens Advice Bureau last month and spoke to an immigration lawyer. The lawyer said he was worried about my husband's income, and that we would need to explicitly state that he consistently earns over his salary (which I had intended to do in a letter anyway). And now he is £25 short for November. We don't want to have to wait another 6 months to apply. Do you think they will deny us over £25? His P60 even says he earned over £19,000 in the past year.

Unfortunately, for Category A, if he is salaried (fixed annual salary), and he earned less than £1,550 before tax on ANY payslip from the last 6 months, then the visa will be refused.

The reason is because for salaried employment, they calculate whether or not you meet the requirement by taking the LOWEST payslip from the last 6 months and multiplying it by 12. So, if his lowest payslip was £1,525, they will calculate the salary that can be used for the visa as £1,525 x 12 = £18,300. As this is lower than £18,600, you will not qualify.

One alternative would be to apply for the visa under Category B, using the last 12 months of his income... if he can show TOTAL pre-tax earnings of £18,600 from the last 12 months AND he shows that he is guaranteed to earn at least £18,600 in the NEXT 12 months, then you might qualify

HOWEVER, overtime can only be used for previous income and not future income, so if his base salary is only £18,200, his income won't qualify for the visa anyway UNLESS his employer can guarantee in writing that he will also earn the overtime in the future, thereby bringing his future earnings up above £18,600 over the next 12 months.

So, in summary, for salaried employment:

Category A:
- his lowest payslip from the last 6 months MUST be at least £1,525 before tax
AND
- his employer must be able to guarantee in writing that the overtime will continue so that he will earn at least £18,600 (£1,550 per month) in the next 12 months as well

Category B:
- his total earnings from the last 12 months MUST be at least £18,600 before tax
AND
- his employer must be able to guarantee in writing that the overtime will continue so that he will earn at least £18,600 (£1,550 per month) in the next 12 months as well

*Sighs* This is ridiculous. Thank you so much for the info though. It's better to know than for us to jump through all these hoops and apply, only to be rejected.

From what I understand, you can also use cash savings of £16,000 to help meet the financial requirement? I don't have that amount, but I do have $16000 USD in the bank. So if I scrape together another 5 or 6k and keep it in the bank for 6 months, would that work? And is it okay if it's a US bank?

In order to use savings, the first £16,000 are not counted and then you need 2.5 times the difference between his salary and £18,600 to meet the requirement, held in full for at least 6 months.

So, if his base salary is £18,200, you would need in savings:
£16,000 + (2.5 x £400) = £17,000. With today’s Oanda exchange rate, that would be $22,829.20.

And the savings cannot drop below £17,000 for even 1 day during the 6 months.

If the savings are held in US dollars, they will use the closing exchange rate on Oanda.com on the date of application, so you’d likely want at least a couple of thousand extra in leeway in case the rate changes (I.e. back in March, £17,000 was only $20,800... now it’s  $22,800).


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Okay, thank you very much.