cant see the light...

sloggingitout

hello to you all, this is a first post and in some ways a commitment to achiveing a debt free future....hope you will be kind enough to help.

quick bit of background, i run a small business, work, have a dependant ( cracking little fella!) and a mountain of debt, approx 65000k. no house, no credit and seemingly no prospects. living almost out of a bag and in my workshop!

bizarre as i earn a reasonable sum but cannot seem to break the arrears on my debts to gain some negociating stance, currently really fancy rolling over but morally can't really justify it.

any advice is welcome, as i need to reduce my outgoings to achieve some stablity.

i dont drink, smoke and have not taken a holiday in 3 years but seem to always face another personal bill or charge,

would be really grateful for some advice, or even to know i can get myself clear of this.

hope you can help me to steer this though, all comments gratefully recieved.

pineapple_beach

Hi there
welcome to the chat forum. I tink the best bit is that by far the majority of readers/posters have been in debt and know the sinking feeling. You will get help here, but you need to make a start by posting more detail about your situation... there is another thread with advice on what to include, but it basically means include your earnings and your commitments, APRs min payments, how you are coping etc, and everyone will add comments on what you could do.

Good luck - more help will be on the way soon i am sure...

sloggingitout

Thanks for the welcome, i will post a .xls for view asap as compiling now, the main area i can see is to reduce the monthly commitments to repayment down, effecting some breathing space and biulding a buffer that will allow me to kill th emore expensive loans quicklt with additioanl payments, has anyone tried this and what experiances / resistance met with the companies concerned? i guess i need to know what drives the Kpi sets and then maybe gain some insight.

Magentasue

Hello there!
Being in debt is horrible, I'm still climbing out but it's all under control. That has meant a lot of cutbacks and sacrifices although during less lean times we relax a bit. The important thing is to sort your budget and payments so that your situation doesn't get worse and you reduce your debt. Sounds obvious but until you sort it properly it's easy to make headway and then undo it all or worse stand still or go backwards because of interest.

So ... what you need to do is post all your debts, APRs, minimum payments etc. Then all your income and outgoings IN DETAIL. Now this is scary because you feel everybody is going to read it all and judge you. Or you want to hide the worst things because you feel bad about them.

Now I haven't been hanging around this board for a while but when I did, 99%+ of the response to people baring their souls and finance was overwhelmingly supportive. If you look back, you can see stories of desperate people who have climbed out of the mire.

So get the figures down and come back - it can't make things worse and nobody here knows who you are!

sloggingitout

Thanks, will get a detailed post out over the next day when i have confirmed some figures that i have buried!

$17mma

Hey Sloggingitout

Thanks for your post.. dont think that everyone realises that by posting your situ helps other people to take that step in the right direction as well..

I swear by these sites below.. got them off another fab MSE the snowballer is excellent and so is Martins budget thingymjiggy... they help you to prioritise and give you a clear vision of where you are and sometimes it is not as bad as it seems and there is ALWAYS a way out.. may be slow but it is a way out..


http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1089226742,17582,

http://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk/england_wales/debt_advice.php#6

www.whatsthecost.co.uk

Hope this helps

southernscouser

Hi there. Have a look a this thread then post back here and we will see what we can do!

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=107280