S.o.a.

supportive_wife

:embarasse Due to the current housing market my husbands business is no longer viable- we have spent the past 5 months with no income, and he has now started a new job, which means his business has closed doors. his company is registered as a limited company- which we nievely thought would offer us more protection- but my husband signed a personal guarentee on the business overdraft and the office lease leaving us with around £30k of debt. We have fallen behind with our personal credit card repayments, and now have defaults on our credit file. We have managed to pay our household bills- but once these are paid we have very little left for food, petrol, unexpected expences etc. Our current mortgage deal ends next year, and there is no equity in our home.
We also have a £17k debt to family members- which my husband borrowed to set up the business 18 months ago.
My husband is becoming increasingly stressed and depressed by the whole situation- and has even said that our 2 year old son and I would be better off if he were dead!
I work part- time and do extra hours when I can, but it is very difficult with a 2 year old child.

We have spoken to several debt advice agencies- but they say they can't help us because they deal with either personal or business debt and ours are interlinked.

Any help or advie would be very gratefully received.

bargainbetty

Hello and welcome,

First things first, did you speak to a charitable debt agency or a commercial one? If you haven't tried CCCS or the National Debt helpline, please try them. They should be able to help.

There are template letters on here to send to creditors explaining the situation, and asking them to freeze interest charges and accept a payment plan. If you complete a statement of accounts (SOA) you are given allowances for living, eating, clothing etc, and your creditors get a share of what is left, not the other way around.

As you clear each debt, you can throw more at the others!

There are threads on here about making money through surveys, reward schemes and cashback sites like Quidco.com. If you can make money while you spend on essential things, it mounts up quite quickly!

Loads of people here will give you good advice - take heart, you're not alone.

If you put up a SOA, I'm sure people will give advice on where to savemoney quite quickly, and the experts can advise on handling creditors. Start with the CCCS.

Good luck x

tyllwyd

I'm a bit confused when you say that the debt advice charities can't help because you have both personal and business debt - if your business has folded, and left you with a personal liability, then hasn't that debt now become a personal debt?

But if they can't help, I guess you will have to take things one step at a time and work your way through it. You could try setting up your own debt management plan by writing to creditors and offering a token payment (there are template letters available, which someone here should be able to point you towards). But if you have no equity in your home, I wonder if bankruptcy might be the best way forwards, so that you can draw a line under things and move forwards. The biggest problem there would be the money owed to family, because I assume you wouldn't be allowed to treat them more favourably than your other creditors during your bankruptcy.

Don't give up! The next thing to do is to find out as much as you can about DMPs, IVAs and bankruptcy, to decide what is going to be the best route for you. Good luck with everything.

whitewing

I agree that you shouldn't be giving up on speaking with the debt charities. I would also suggest that your husband starts looking through the main site.

Are you entitled to/getting tax credits?

It concerns me that your husband mentions being better off dead. In the past I have had intrusive thoughts like that even when I seemed to be handling situations well. He needs to understand that he is providing for his family by having his new job, and also by being around for you on a daily basis. I think he may find it helpful to sit down with you and make a task list of things that need to be done to get you guys through each day. It then doesn't matter which of you two does it. My husband rarely touches anything financial but he supports me indirectly with such simple gestures as sitting next to me, or making cups of tea, and generally being loving.

You both need to be there for each other, and be grateful to each other, and protect each other from the buffeting of the outside world.

How are the family members who the money was borrowed from reacting? Are they supportive or giving lots of grief? At some point, but probably not right now, you need to come up with a plan of how to handle this aspect.

supportive_wife

a massive thanks to all of you that have responded to my post.
I'm going to get my husband to read through them when he gets home tonight, and hopefully he will see that there is help and support out there for him. :beer:

The family we owe money to are being supportive- which is such a blessing, and i'm going to look at doing a full S.O.A breakdown of our finances to send to our creditors. I'll post it here to- so any advice on cutting our bills would be fantastic!

Going off on a tangent- is any one else angry with the government for spending billions of our money bailing out the banks- but offer no help to small businesses that are folding due to the credit crunch?
Our business overdraft is with RBS, they have offered to turn it into a loan so we can pay it back, but the interest rate they would give us is extortinate!
They know they have us over a barrel!

whitewing

Nice to see you back, I was wondering about you both.

Don't do anything about restructuring your finances until you've done your SOA as the experienced folks on here will look at the big picture, and may think of things that aren't so obvious.

SOA can be found on www.makesenseofcards.co.uk ( I think I've got the web address right)