absolute rock bottom!

beanielou

Just wanted to say I think you are doing so well.
Take care.
Can you get your local CAB to help with the Lloyds thing at all?

moo_cow

hi guys, things took an unexpected twist on wednesday. recieved a phone call in the afternoon from a very nice lady at lloyds. have to tell the truth. she genuinely was very nice. she upped my overdraft. NOT TO SPEND! but to wipe out any further charges and asked me if I could afford to repay a small amount each month on it and how much. she then asked me what a realistic figure was i could afford to pay and then took that down by a further £6 on top of the £100 reduction i'd asked for. She then asked if there was anything further she could help me with and I said as a matter of a fact there was and explained that hubby was also struggling to repay his loan with them. she then asked him to phone her when he comes in which he did. the result? his loan also went down to under half. They have agreed this for 6 months and said if need be they will extend until things improved. she actually agreed with me that it was better to accept reduced payments than get nothing back at all. I was gobsmacked. okay, still struggling. but it's a more realistic struggle.and a great deal of the pressure has been removed.
have also been suffering anxiety/depression for most of my life so any help really does help. when i'm up i'm up. but when i'm down i'm rock bottom. and this board is amazing! so many wonderful people. thanks beanielou & shenunn.

moo_cow

***sorry £100 reduction was on my personal loan with them.*** forgot to put that bit in.

laura2481

glad things are looking better ((hugs))

smarties84

Hello, what a tough time you are having at the moment, bless you. I am pleased Lloyds have started to help you. Don't give up, chin up - something good will happen, you just watch this space. xxx

chevalier

really glad to see that something is going right for you. fingers crossed it is the start of a trend...
chev

methusala_2

swalec charging you 150 per month ??? what the heck for ?? swalec are your electricity suppliers ?? If that is the case request a pre-paid meter installation, they can recover their costs over a very long period then as you will be on prepayment.

Meth

moo_cow

hi methusala, thanks for bringing that point up. it's awful isn't it? the swalec thing started when no one was taking responsibility for our meter. then they both were (british gas & swalec), then neither one was again. by the time it was sorted I had a huge debt. I paid that off but they kept estimating bills. I knew they were well out, but because at the time I was still paying off the old leccy debt I kept 'deferring' it in my head. and then eventually the meter got read and I owed well over 1k. I have managed to pay some off and was doing okay but then we had the big hikes. and basically they've decided that they'd like their money back ASAP so have set it at a whopping £150 a month. When I asked if they could bring it down they said only if I have a prepayment meter. They wanted to set that at a recovery rate of £15 per week (?????). we calculated my usage (which is a hell of a lot less since we don't have a tumble drier) and it made a difference of about £20 a month which to be honest isn't worth it because as we live out in the sticks a bit we don't have any local shops whatsoever and it would be just too much hassle. also have been on a pre payment before in my old house and it was a nightmare. I suffer from anxiety/depression and can get obsessive about things. the time spent with one before used to stress me out as I was constantly checking and calculating whether we'd have enough. also if things got too tight we'd very often run out of electricity. we then found ourselves in that trap of having to put x amount in to cover the emergency before we could get going again. (being paid monthly doesn't help in that respect) I have another payment going out in 2 weeks which will take me down to £680 debt. I'm going to contact them then and see if they'll reduce the payments a little more. it's a millstone around my neck.
p.s how do you get cheaper electricity? i'm on the better plan thing. I have a gadget showing my useage daily, now have no drier, go around switching things off yet still have an average bill of £200+ every quarter.

Huge thanks also to LAURA2481, SMARTIES84 AND CHEVALIER for your support and kind words. It makes all the difference!

methusala_2

Hi Moo-cow,
200+ per quarter is definitely too high. Whilst your switching off and not using a dryer something else is missing. Freezers ?? running more than 1 is not good. Older freezers can be very expensive to run without realizing it. Running a freezer with little in it or in need of defrosting is wasteful. Fill a freezer excess space with convenient sized boxes full of scrunched up newspaper and defrosting monthly can save quite a bit. Is someone sneaking on an electric heater somewhere, any form of heat generation is the most expensive way to use electricity. Use free cycle to obtain a gas cooker and use a bottle of gas to cook on if you use an electric cooker. I would expect my electricity bill to be under 130 per quarter and if not i wanna know why not.

Meth

moo_cow

hi meth, we do have an electric cooker. My oven is on twice a day as hubby and son work very different hours. freezer thing, yes, you're right. it's not very old (about 3 years) but is a medium sized chest freezer. and is in dire need of defrosting. being totally honest (expecting to get told off big style here) it hasn't been defrosted for 12 months. we only ever do it just before xmas. no heater on. have noticed though through the swalec gadget thingy they sent me that the telly uses loads. so I tend to switch it off a lot now whereas i used to have it on for background noise even if i wasn't watching it. I sleep with an air cooler on at night. i'm not aware of it using much electricity but I keep it on for the noise. as we live in the sticks if it goes deathly quiet I wake up. and as I don't sleep much anyway I have to grab all the hours I can. apart from that i don't know what else could be causing it. we have energy saving bulbs in all rooms except living room which is on a dimmer and we dim down low to reuce consumption. and my bedroom is on a dimmer also but is off for 23 out of 24 hours anyway. son is running laptop, telly and games console and his light. but he's only home for a couple of hours a day. the shower is also on twice a day (hubby and son) I have taken to filling the sink and washing in an attempt to save money.
I seem to use an awful lot. my consumption was never this high before. maybe I should go round switching things off one by one to see if I can identify the culprit. (why have I not thought of that before?)