Please help, we've hit crisis point

mbaz

PS. when does OH reg fee need to be paid? You need tog et this money together some how. I would ebay as much as you can, car boot etc or can you borrow from a family member? Can his work offer an assistance such as they pay it and then take it from his wages over a few months?

erin_go_bragh

Hi,
Oh registration fee's seem very high, usual cost of annual reregistration with the UKCC is £76 , could he possibly register with an agency or nurse bank for the local hospital or PCT ? it would be well worth looking into and agencies pay weekly. Good luck

rubydoiwannabee

Hi there, very well done for being brave enough to get it all on paper and then posting it here. The one big thing that has helped us a huge amount has been to swap our mortgage to interest only whilst we concentrate on paying our debts off, this has given us the money to live on monthly and pay as much as we can to our debts. Is this something you can consider? It cost us £75 to swap over but it was as easy as a phone call. We don't intend to leave it like it for ever, but when the debts are gone, we will then throw all the money we have been using to pay them to our then repayment mortgage again.

Best of luck and kind regards.

shezza

horsechestnut wrote: »

Can you sell something on eBay to get some ready cash?
Would your mortgage lender let you pay a lower payment for one month only, to pay the nurses registration>

Satellite/cable/ Phone. Can you get a deal on this? I have Virgin for landline and broadband which costs £17 including free calls.

I have sorted out some items to put on e-bay and I will be posting them this week. In respect to the mortgage we have just received the form to take a payment holiday for a month to cover OHs registration

I think we are tied in with Talk Talk at the moment, due to the broadband deal, my OH sorted this out so I am not to sure where we stand.

Milly1974 wrote: »

Just a quick glance, and the one that sticks out most for me is the electric bill. Are you paying off arrears, as £100 a month seems huge.

Our electric is so high as we are predominately electric though the house, we have night storage heaters and an immersion heater for our water. We are doing everything we can to reduce the electric, we have changed all the bulbs to energy saving and we recently found out that our immersion heater timer was set the wrong way round (we thought it was only on for 3 hours a day - 2hrs on economy 7 and 1hr boost in the afternoon, but in reality it was on 21 hrs a day, so that has been changed), I actually don't think our gas and electric together are too bad as we only pay £10 a month for the gas, and in reality the only reason I have kept this going is for the dual fuel discounts that we get, as generally our gas bill is only about £5 to £10 a quarter (we only have the cooker and fire which is gas)

frugallass

shezza wrote: »

Unfortunately OH needs his mobile for his job and I have just started a new contract so I can't cancel without paying a massive penalty.

re the mobile - if he 'needs'a phone for his job then why don't his employers provide the mobile? Or you could get rid of his contract and let him use your phone if he really needs one. £80 a month is a huge amount of money just for a phone and would make quite an impact on paying off the smaller debts.

ameratsu

On paper you actually have enough coming in to cover everything - it won't take much to cut back a bit, plus in 3 months time you will have another £95 a month spare to throw at your egg card ( which has the highest interest ).
Six months of strict budgeting should see you get things under control.
It's surprising how much you can cut down on when you have to - two months ago we were bringing in £2500 a month and spending most of it, now it's less than £1500 a month and we are managing somehow and more importantly, not getting any further in debt - although I am juggling cards a fair bit, we won't owe any more in 6 months than we do already. I've managed to cut down on our spending by £100 a week without too much "sacrificing" too.

Even if you did need a DMP, you could easily pay £600-700 a month to it and pay off your debts within 4/5 years, so your situation's far from critical.

In_Search_Of_Me

Just popping in...I agree with others e looking around and seeing what you can get cheaper elsewhere...elec is very high and you may get a better deal with another provider. Also unsure why oh needs mobile as work should provide one if he needs it for work (health and safety)..regarless its alot. gb can be cut as ouve already recognised as can the gifts etc. You can have great fun being innovative and making things - means much more anyway!!
Looks too like some of your loans are due to finish which will free up extra dosh to pay more than the mins on cc's. Can either of you do extra hours to get more money? Flogging stuff on eby helps as does flogging books on amazon etc plus doing surveys etc and entering comps for freebies! Ring cccs if it helps - at least then you'll get advce on whether to go it alone, do dmp or other...good luck and keep posting!

Sarahsaver

Well done for posting your SOA, and it is NOT all doom and gloom because you are looking to get out of the situation instead of burying your head in the sand (I have known people do that )
You have had good avvice here regarding where to cut back. cut out the cable tv, get a payg mobile (if you ARE tied in at least you can sell the contract phone when the contract DOES end) You can manage on £20 a week for food if its just 2 of you. You should not need your heatng on at this time of year...
If your OH is a nurse, does he have to wash his uniform at home? if so then you get a tax break for that. Not a lot but every little bit helps. Also his registration fee is rather high.
And above all do not put anything else on the credit cards, not a jot. Cut them up.

As you have a loan AND a CC with TSB would they not put the two together at a better rate? I am sure they woul.d rather you pay them off than not? it may be easier to reason with an existing creditor.

Best of luck.

Jacks_xxx

:wave: Hi again my lovely,

Thanks ever so much for posting your SOA - I know it's a big scary thing to do.

The way I see your situation is this:

If next month you are taking a mortgage holiday to fund OH's registration then also get shot of Barclay Card and Fraser card at the same time, cut them up and close the accounts. Then the monthly amounts you have been paying towards them can go onto the next debt to start paying it down faster.

That's two debts gone within weeks! :dance:
(BTW -Is it really that expensive honey?! :eek: I'm sure my friend only pays about £70- maybe I've misunderstood and she pays that quarterly or summat?!)

Then check out The Snowball. It was our saving grace. Pay off the debt with the highest interest first - you pay the minimums on everything and throw any spare at that debt.

http://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx?country=us

I think there is definite scope to save money on the mobile phones - that £960 a year could go a long way towards paying your debts. (We got rid of ours by ringing and telling them that we couldn't afford them any more and we were discussing our options with CCCS who seemed to be leaning towards bankruptcy or a 20 year repayment plan of token amounts....eventually after telling my sad story to several folks I got one who had the power to just close the accounts.)

Also, we found a separate Income Protection Insurance that our mortgage lender was happy with, that cost a lot less than the one they sold us and in a pinch gives the money to us and not our lender so we can choose what to do with it.

After Christmas maybe you could try out for a lower interest CC and do a balance transfer maybe?

Keep your phone, petrol, gas and leccy useage to a minimum and check your gas and leccy DD - we were being over charged and they had to pay us back £1000. (although now it's gone up twice in recent weeks.)

After that it's a case of challenging all of your expenditure and asking yourself why you are spending money out on *this* and not using the money to pay off your debts.

Is the £166 Child support?

Honestly honey I know the situation feels hopeless right now but once you implement a few changes you'll start to see progress and that will spur you on to make more changes which will cause more progress and so on.

The Grocery challenge is a really good move - it changed my life!

It might be worth speaking to CCCS. I found it really helpful to be able to ask questions of "a real person".

http://www.cccs.co.uk/contact/contact.aspx

Big hugs sweetie - you'll feel better once you start taking positive action I promise.

Love Jacks xxx

Bismarck

lots of help there.... all I can suggest is that you need to pay the registration fees no matter what. With the income you have, there should be a way out- it's just a case of turning the tide. Good luck and take care.