Mortgage advisor warns people to not write joke references when transferring money to friends

Sometimes the funniest jokes with our mates are the stupidest ones.

This can include sending them a tenner for covering the taxi into town and labelling it something stupid rather than, well, 'taxi'.

We're all still kids at heart after all.

While this seems like a fairly harmless thing to do, it seems there's always someone on the internet ready to teach us differently.

According to a mortgage advisor, when we transfer money, we should be writing exactly what we're doing it for.

In other words, a jokey 'drugs' is out and 'birthday meal' is in.

Taking to TikTok, mortgage and protection specialists KAG Financial explained that when you want to get on the property ladder, your transactions are combed through.

The expert explained that this is the best way to avoid feeling embarrassed when trying to land a mortgage.

"Remember the money you transferred your pal? We see it and so does the lender," the TikToker said.

"'Money for drugs' is probably not the best thing to use..."

"This is actually tame compared to what we see. Avoid joke references," she warned.

Ultimately, silly bank references may lead to additional, awkward questions from lenders and delay the process your mortgage application process. Nobody wants that, do they?

One viewer commented to ask how far back mortgage advisors and lenders look in a person's bank statements.

KAG replied: "Most of the time it's three months, your application is also only affected if it's something illegal."

Sigh of relief...

It seems that this practice is more common than we could have ever imagined.

One person commented: "I send myself money. And say things like... Bribe money. Hush money. Never even considered this."

Another said: "I sent my bff money all the time and I said all the time SUGAR DADDY."

A third asked: "Can't have a sense of humour if you want a mortgage then?"

Things might not be as bad as they seem.

As it always the case online, there's another expert waiting to say 'well, actually...'.

Daniel Bailey, mortgage broker at Middleton Finance, told the Financial Times that the main thing is that payments are legitimate.

"The reality is that they are looking for whether your payslips are real or not," he said.

"They want to know whether the money is really coming in, and they check that carefully. I've had clients with loans from friends and family, and they scrutinise them for things like that, but I've never seen anyone scrutinised for bad language."

To be on the safe side, it's probably best to just avoid.