My story/I mean it this time..

Hello all,

I very new to this forum, only really started looking around yesterday. Boy, I wish I had found this a long time ago! There are some inspirational stories, and wonderfully helpful people on here

I know everyone says this, but "sorry for the long post", but mine WILL be long, lol. I will try to condense it down as much as possible. I am honestly not trying to feed you a sob-story at the start, but it is relevant to what happens in the story.

Rewind to 2003. Fiancee and I are living in rented accommodation. We have about £7k in savings, which are partly for the wedding, and partly for a deposit on a house (when we find one to buy).

I start to have health issues in Summer of 2003. Various trips to and from doctors in October 2003, and then eventually hospitals, and BOOM- I fin dout I have Cancer. A very rare form of Cancer, which has spread a long way up my body (we caught it before it reached my brain, thank goodness).

Aside from the obvious "am I going to survive" questions, and dealing with the upset of such a huge illness, we also have to think practically about whether we will still be able to get married (arranged for July 2004), and whether I will be able to keep my job.

Well my job said I could have up to a year off, with full pay. Phew. And the doctors said it is up to us regarding the wedding, but we decided to stick to the schedule.

So I go through about 7 months of Chemo and surgery. it is tough as you can imagine, there are some dicey moments. But the finances are still intact at this point. Just before I am due to go back to work, there is a mass redundancy! So I only go back for a month or so before I start a new job (lower pay). But I did get another £4k or so in redundancy money. Very handy, as quite a bit of our savings have gone into the wedding.

We get married! I was fine on the day, and my hair had grown back curly! :eek:

We then went ahead and bought a house for the first time (November 2004). We were very happy about this, but the deposit, stamp duty etc swallowed up every last penny of savings we had.

We needed to spend a fair amount on furnishing the house. And thiiiss is where it all began. We had no money but needed to buy things. We had credit cards (which, up until this point, I had normally used but ALWAYS paid off the full balance each month). I basically said to my (now) wife, "use the credit card/s" for any new house stuff, as we can easily pay it back, we always do". :rotfl:

We did that, and continued to pay them off. But because we were paying off higher amounts, we had no money in the bank. You see what is coming here, don't you? We started using them for everything! This continued for a good 18 months or so before I realised the extent of the problem. After discussions with the bank, I decided to get a personal loan (Summer 2006) to help ease the payments, and reduce interest etc. This worked ok ish for a short time.

I had been struggling to settle in a job, and also was having problems in my marriage (not financial related though). These factors, and then finding out that there was a 99% chance I could never have children using my sperm, sent me onto a path of destruction and stupid behaviour. We started abusing drugs alot around 2006-2008, had holidays purely paid for by credit, etc etc. So the credit cards started to spiral out of control again.

If I am honest, at that point it was pretty much a situation of me saying "life is too short and I will do what the heck I want". We used our house as a party place, and had a good old time. But I was not so deep in the fog that I didnt see what was happening, I just didnt pull myself out of it. I topped up the loan to clear the credit cards. So I now have a bigger loan payment each month (I believe this topup was in 2008).

This actually went ok for some time, and in 2008 (despite our worst marital year), we decided to use a sperm donor and go through IVF to try to start us a little family. Financially, this was obviously a very silly thing to do, but I love our daughter (now 4) so much, and don't regret this for one second.

From late 2008 until about early/mid 2010, we made good headway with our debts. We were paying off the loan, not gaining any new credit card debt, and not even using our overdraft!

But then, in 2010- things started to go wrong with just about every appliance, machine you could think of. We had to buy newwashing machine, fridge, TV (not essential I know), carp repairs etc- you name it! So we had to start using credit again. This, in all honesty, we unavoidable.

But then I made same mistake again ("oh well, we have already started using cards, may as well continue"). I was earning more, so was a bit more cocky. STUPID. We booked holidays, trips, gigs, etc- all on the cards. So now we had the loan, and mounting credit cards again.

More marriage problems ensued. I tried to treat my wife like a princess (as could see she was bored, etc etc- and I am always afraid of losing her), and have been buying lots of expensive birthday/xmas gifts, booked hotels, festivals the lot.

I know, I was extremely stupid. But we kept having the attitude of "once the loan is cleared, which is soon (Jan 2014), we can then pay the cards off".

So we are now almost up to date. Our daughter is now school age, and we decided on sending her to a school a few miles away, as we don't live in the best area (our local schools aren't great!).

We would love to move somewhere nice, and know we could get a good mortgage to do so, if he didnt have all this debt, and now possibly a rubbish credit score because of having had so much credit over the years. FYI, we have only ever gone over a limit once, on a credit card. Did a couple of payment breaks on the loan, and thats it.

So, I sit down and work out how long it will take to clear our card debts, once the old loan is finished (last weekend). Oh my goodness. It is going to, realisctially, take 4.5 years or more, and thats with completely changing our lifestyle (which I am of course, prepared to do).

I did a fair bit of reading up/figuring out on what was best for me to do. Eventually I settled on a loan, for £22k, repaying £696 per month over 3 years (total repayable approx £25k). If had gone down the route of paying off my card balances once by one, it would have taken about 18 months longer, and cost about £15k more!

I understand this is a high repayment, but I have carefully figure dout a very realistic monthly budget, which has been agreed with my wife.

So there you have, I am now starting my 'journey' (for the umpteenth time!) but this time, I mean it. I will do it, for the future of my family.

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