Finally facing up to the possibility of Bankruptcy

umgeni

Hi everyone, I've been reading this forum for a while now and I know there's lots of good advice here, I think it's time to look at my options.

A brief recap of where I am financially.

I ran a mail order business some years ago and due to a few bad decisions, bad luck and lack of finance to get over my problems I had to put the (ltd) company into insolvency.
Now one thing to get out of the way, is that I am useless when it comes to looking after money, probably one of the main reasons the company failed.
I sought the advice of an insolvency practitioner, paid an absolute fortune to get the company wound up (£5000) and thought that would be including my personal debt (which was a result of propping up the business). It didn't and I have a pesonal debt which has been hanging over me since then, which was in April 2005.

The debt includes about 5 credit cards with a total debt of approx £30K, A business overdraft which I had to personally guarantee of £25K and other loans and outstanding bank ODs of approx £25K, so in total I owe approx £80,000, of which 95% was taken out for the business.

Now what I find absolutely amazing, is that no one from the debtors have made any strong efforts to recover their debts. I receive a letter occasionally from a debt collection agency (I think most of the credit card debts have been sold on) and I have numerous CCJs relating to the above debts.
If I ever receive a letter I completely ignore it, there have been numerous threats of bailiffs but I've never had a knock on the door or even a phone call.

I live in rented accommodation and normally move every 2 years or so so they may have problems tracing me?

The bottom line is I need to move forward and do something about this. I seem to now live a separate life where I have a bank account (no credit cards or loans, but at the moment I don't need them) I live quite a decent lifestyle and have a very good job, but I feel I need to get rid of these debts, I'm not sure everyone would agree with this, but I feel as these debts were linked to the business, I would like to try and wipe the slate clean.

I really need some advice on what to do I would happily pay for professional advice but I don't know where to start with that and who to ask?

I see my options are - do nothing - carry on as I have been (I'm going to start another thread on this elsewhere - is it true that your debts cannot be pursued after 6 years?)
Other option is to go for bankruptcy, I have no dicsernable assets, the things I really need to know is how will this affect me in the long term, getting a mortgage etc, but also the other things I've been trying to find out - would it affect you emigrating to certain countries, even going on holiday to certain countries?
Also does anyone know if it could affect membership to professional institutions (I'm a civil engineer and know that the ICE will basically kick you out if you are chartered, but if you are a a discharged bankrupt could you become a member of these sorts of organisations) I guess not for anything linked to financial institutions.

There are a lot of questions here that need to be answered and sorry if this is a bit of a rambling post, but if anyone could point me in the right direction I'd be very grateful.

Sean