Serious help needed...

Miss_Bibble

Hi All,

Totally new to the forum as had quite a shocking weekend..!

Looking for initially assistance with just coming to terms with the fact that my mother (63) has finally admitted to me that she is in debt to the tune of £55,000. Just typing that has made me come out in a cold sweat.

The debts are spread over various places - overdraft, personal loan, credit cards (2), dentist bill (!!), business overdraft. It soon all adds up.

We did a review over the weekend and we realised that some of her creditors have frozen interest (thankfully), but others are still racking it up. Her overdraft is accruing £175/ month in interest alone and she hasn't paid anything into the account in quite some time...

She has a pension of £1200 a month (state + private) and it doesn't even start to touch her debt. The only thing that is being regurarly paid is the personal loan (around £250/month). I don't know how long that loan has left to run or what the interest rate is.

She owns her house and has no mortgage or debt secured against it. She is open to the thought of selling and moving elsewhere but a) not too sure that will happen in this current market and b) although that is a "decent" answer to her issues I'm worried about the affect this may have on her.

She is only just starting to stick her out OUT of the sand and I need advice as to how I can help her with the next steps - it's just too big of a problem to tackle alone. I have no spare finances with which to help her, I would if I could!!

So...anyone else had this type of shock or can people just throw lifelines in my general direction so I can start gathering as much information as possible?

lunar

Can you sit down with her and write out a statement of affairs, this is a list of incomings, outgoings, debts and the APR she is paying. that way you can both get a picture of what is happening every month. If you post it on here you will get loads of advice on her individual situation.

Good luck with it, keep on posting and you will get loads of good advice for your mum.

lkk88

Hi, my mum was kind of in a similar situation a few years ago when the family found out my grandfather (mums father) was in quite a bit of debt to the point people would soon be knocking to recover the debts.

At the time my mum volunteered at the local CAB office and she managed to get advice and help from them....not sure the ins and outs as i was young at the time but they managed to get repayment plans worked out and stopped the baliffs etc from getting involved. I'm sorry I dont know exactly what they done but it might be worth you and your mother going down your local citizens advice to see if they can help, especially as your mothers income cannot touch the debts. Good luck!

GeorgeUK

Hi Miss Bibble

As suggested, the first thing you need to do is sit down and go over all her finances with her. She should work out her income, monthly expenditure and debts (with APR's). From this you should be able to see what she has available to put towards the debts each month.

You can post that statement of affairs (SOA) here so we can see if there are any savings to be made.
https://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

There are free Debt charities that will be able to advise or even set up repayment plans with her creditors if required. There are many people on debt management plans (DMP's) on this board so there is lots of advice available.

Professional, free and impartial advice on debt problems can be obtained from several charitable and 'not for profit' organisations. They never make a penny from the advice they give, which means it will be given with only your best interests at heart. You can contact:

Your local CAB Office and ask to speak to a 'money advisor'
The Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS) - Tel: 0800 138 1111
National Debtline - Tel: 0808 808 4000
Payplan - Tel: 0800 917 7823

She can also use the snowball calculator to see when she may become debt free - many on this site use it as a guide and a challenge to improve on the date.
https://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx

Miss_Bibble

Hi and thanks for the replies.

The SOA looks like a good place to start - need to get a proper understanding of what the situation is. I'll sit down with her tonight and go over it. It can be very frustrating as she'll only go so far before she clams up. At this stage it's a bit by bit approach.

Hopefully once we've done and I've posted again here she can start to see that there are options available to her. At the moment I think she's just staring into a deep, dark black hole.

I'll also check out the advice links posted.

Thanks again.

Miss_Bibble

Have done two things tonight.

First I sat Mum down and started her off on a SOA. Whilst she was doing that I called and had a chat with a very nice chap at the National Debtline. He was perfectly happy talking to me, at this stage, on behalf of my mum and had some great initial advice. We went through everything on the phone and he covered the basics. He's going to send out some info in the post.

As soon as that arrives Mum and I are going to sit down and go over her SOA (I'll post it on here too) and work out the best plan of attack. The advice from National Debtline was to either do a self-negotiation with the companies or go for a debt management plan - I'm going to see how Mum "copes" with putting together a plan herself to start with. She's very proud and wants to sort things out herself...however, it's got to the stage now where she seriously needs help and I can only go so far.

Today has certainly ended far better than it start though! Thanks again for the pointers!

tealady

Hi. Can't add much without seeing your mums SOA but how about showing her this site, if she sees that we are friendly and anonymous she may not feel alone (and possibly guilty). Tell your mum that we all understand about wanting to do things herself, however you could try telling her that coming on here is just a form of business advice (bit like an accountant or bank manager) but we are friendlier and there is someone here outside office hours.
However the most important thing is that your mum realises that asking for help is sometimes necessary and nothing to be ashamed of, after all as my dear old dad used to say "He who has never made a mistake has never made anything"
Good luck.