My fight to get my life back!

pebbles88 · 3 January 2009 at 2:36AM

hello all.

i would appreciate any help/advice extremely gratefully.

not really sure where to start. approx 3 years ago, i bought the house in which i live from my mum for a modest amount, the house was mortgage free following the death of my father several yrs ago. however at the time that i bought it, my mum also had a loan on it, for approx £12'000, spanning several years, trying to provide for the both of us following his death.

The purpose of me buying the house was also to ensure what she could live with us til the end of her days, as i did not wasn’t her to ever to have to go into a home as such. At present she still lives with us and also pays for the gas/electric (on staywarm) and contributes to the phone bill and food shopping also.

so on purchasing the house, i paid off this loan, and a few of my own debts.

however, fast forward to the present day, and following a new central heating system and a re-wire (both of which were unavoidable) we are now in dire straights.

i suffer from an as yet un diagnosed RSI disorder. i could list the symptoms but it would take all day, to put it bluntly, i have have had several tests, and operation, and even more tests, yet am in more pain than before.
my work were very good but they re-deployed me and gave me ample choice to try and continue my work, but unfortunately this did not work. .

so since feb this year, i have been on incapacity benefit, however following my PCA, i was turned down and am now on JSA. (i am appealing this decision)

my DH has been nothing short of wonderful, he works as many hours as he physically can, but we are still short of approx £500 a month. I have appealed against my incapacity benefit decision but regardless of that and regardless of my pain and possibility of my injuring myself even more i have no choice but to go for full time employment to just barely make ends meet.

On Monday coming, i am going to speak to CCCS, we had submitted an online app, but have not heard anything back yet, i think we must have made an error somewhere.

I have cut everything back as much as we can, yes we have mobiles, and i have checked with them and we cannot cut the contracts down until later on in the year, which we will be doing as soon as possible.

The same goes with our sky tv, although my mum who still lives with us helps us out an awful lot with this and the phone etc.

Whilst i would say our mortgage is manageable, our cc debts and personal loan debt isn’t, it amounts to approximately £43.000 (which includes, our credit cards, a personal loan which we needed to complete emergency work on the re-wire of our house), a small amount for catalogues, and finally our car, which we need for my OH to get to work as no public transport gets there, also due to the hours he works) most of these have been run up by extra work on the house and also naivety on our part following me resigning on my bad health.

If anyone has any help i would very much appreciate it.

Bestthingsinlifearefree · 3 January 2009 at 2:46AM

Hi Pebbles,

I am sure there is a way forward. Could you post a statement of affairs (all incomings / out goings)?

This is probably a silly qu, but if the house was mortgage free and you bought it from your mum presumably she has the money that you paid for it i.e = to the mortgage?

Probably another silly qu but with RSI is there other work you can do that will not further the injury (or am I wrong in associating RSI just with typing etc)

Best,

10past6 · 3 January 2009 at 2:51AM

Hi Pebbles

Sorry to hear of your situation, what I suggest you do, send the following letter to your creditors and seek there advice, you could also include your seeking advice from CCCS / PAyplan, include token payments of £1.00 until your DMP is up and running, any remaining money you would have used pay it towards your priority debts.

The letter below has two benefits, it informs your creditors of your current situation, should they reply, hopefully you can use it for any defence should any creditor decide to take legal action at any stage i.e you followed the advice they gave.

Date

Dear Sir/Madam
Re:− Account/Reference Number

I would like to inform you that I am having difficulties raising the monthly repayment of XXX due to our PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES.

I am seeking help from DEBT CHARITY NAME and intend to shortly produce a statement of affairs / repayment plan.

While I seek advice can I ask you to suspend enforcement action on this account for at least 28 days, and also charges and interest?

I am aware that you have a good reputation for going beyond the Banking Codes minimum requirements to deal sympathetically with individuals in trouble.

Can you also send me any policy documents / information leaflets etc you produce for someone in my circumstances?

Yours Faithfully

XXXX (type don't sign)

pebbles88 · 3 January 2009 at 6:11PM

10past6 wrote: »

Hi Pebbles

Sorry to hear of your situation, what I suggest you do, send the following letter to your creditors and seek there advice, you could also include your seeking advice from CCCS / PAyplan, include token payments of £1.00 until your DMP is up and running, any remaining money you would have used pay it towards your priority debts.

The letter below has two benefits, it informs your creditors of your current situation, should they reply, hopefully you can use it for any defence should any creditor decide to take legal action at any stage i.e you followed the advice they gave.

Date

Dear Sir/Madam
Re:− Account/Reference Number

I would like to inform you that I am having difficulties raising the monthly repayment of XXX due to our PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES.

I am seeking help from DEBT CHARITY NAME and intend to shortly produce a statement of affairs / repayment plan.

While I seek advice can I ask you to suspend enforcement action on this account for at least 28 days, and also charges and interest?

I am aware that you have a good reputation for going beyond the Banking Codes minimum requirements to deal sympathetically with individuals in trouble.

Can you also send me any policy documents / information leaflets etc you produce for someone in my circumstances?

Yours Faithfully

XXXX (type don't sign)

hi

thankyou very much for your advice, can i just check one thing though, when you say, type dont sign... do you mean do not sign the letter, but simply type my name instead??

bestthingsinlifearefree: i am looking for alternative work, my injury affects from my fingers on my right arm right up to my neck. i struggle with daily tasks so it is proving a bit tricky to find something, but at the moment i am resigned to the fact that i will have to just find A job and try and cope with my medication etc until i can find something more suitable.

as for my mum haivng the money from the mortgage, one of the reasons we bought the house was to pay off the loan she had and use the rest for the improvement needed on the house, so it all got swallowed up, its amzing how you do one job which shows up even more work needed!!

i will get my husband to help my do a SOA as the software i use to use a pc keeps going funny when i try and complete it.

thanks

MrsTinks · 3 January 2009 at 6:31PM

Depeding on how "liberally" minded you are there are things you can do that doesn't require you to use your right arm at all

If it's not for you that's fine! It's not for everyone but i do know someone who makes a nice living from it

Basically talking naughty on the phone... You'd need to register as selfemployed I think (if you want to know more let me know and I can ask her) for tax returns etc but on the other hand you can then claim back things for tax like heating at home as this is where you work from, phone line costs, internet etc etc
Just a suggestion and I do know it's not for everyone! But it would mean talking on the phone and not typing or using your hands which might be ideal for you

MrsTinks · 3 January 2009 at 6:32PM

And yes 10past6 really means do not sign the letter - some (few it has to be said) creditors will use your signature to fill in blanks if they don't have the correctly signed forms from when you took out the agreement - no need to make life easy for them after all

pebbles88 · 3 January 2009 at 9:46PM

MrsTine wrote: »

And yes 10past6 really means do not sign the letter - some (few it has to be said) creditors will use your signature to fill in blanks if they don't have the correctly signed forms from when you took out the agreement - no need to make life easy for them after all

good god, i had no idea they would sink to that level! :eek: thanks for letting me know!!

pebbles88 · 8 January 2009 at 10:25PM

Hi,

an update. My mil is going to give us our early inheritance so to speak of £10000. She said she would rather do that than us go down the route of missing payments or anything that would affect our credit file.

we are both extremely grateful for this. and after having a family friend look through everything for us it turns out our sums were wrong and that we only actually owe £33000 approx, which is still a horrid amount but better than the original figure, I am still looking for work and have applied for several things so hopefully will start to hear things back soon.

what i wanted to ask is. Has anyone ever wrote to their credit card companies and asked them to freeze interest whilst we effectively do our own debt management plan??

We are going to continue the minimum payments and as each card gets paid off we will continue to 'snowball' that payment onto another one and so on.

we have also been advised to include a budget sheet so that they can see we are stuggling at the moment.

so my question is?? has anyone done this and if so do they have a template of the letter they used???

fingers crossed!

motorguy · 8 January 2009 at 10:34PM

whats the situation with your car?

is there scope for selling it and buying a cheaper one for cash?

For example, if its worth £4000 and you owe £3000, then you could buy a very reasonable car these days for that £1000 cash?

pebbles88 · 8 January 2009 at 11:02PM

pgilc1 wrote: »

whats the situation with your car?

is there scope for selling it and buying a cheaper one for cash?

For example, if its worth £4000 and you owe £3000, then you could buy a very reasonable car these days for that £1000 cash?

hi,

we did contact the company about this, we have had it a year and even if we tried to sell it the fees we would incur for early repayment are disgusting. so at present we are stuck. Thank you very much anyway.

fatbelly · 9 January 2009 at 1:00AM

We could still do with a SoA

This would help us to best advise where to apply the £10k lump sum.

I'm thinking either (a) reduce mortgage or (b) full & final settlement of the non-priority debts.

Bear in mind that if the catalogue debts pre-date April 2007 and don't have a signed consumer credit act agreement (cca), and many didn't, then they are unenforceable and may be persuaded not to pursue.

It wouldn't do any harm to request this from all your creditors but it's particularly appropriate with catalogues. JD Williams group and Shop Direct Group are probably the easiest, Studio the hardest.

My fight to get my life back!

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