Would like to move debts from Baines & Ernst and sort ourselves - advice please..

just-a-thought_4

Hi all,

I need some advice and wonder if someone can help.

About 5 years ago we started putting all of our debts though Baines & Ernst - debt at that time was around £32,000. At the time it was easier for us, we had a very messy custody battle going on, then I had 2 babies, now I want to take control of things and get back to where we started. I wonder if anyone can advise me.

We are with B&E but want to start going through other means to get our debts sorted out and doing it through someone else or ourselves.

A little bit of background. Having left work to have the kids, custody battle was over (didn't win) and then had a baby, then another, during this time started my own business which was going really well. We started from nothing (struggled to find the first £750 for stock) and as we made money we bought stock and then come last July had massive supplier problems, no stock for months and had to sell almost everything we had, having resolved these issues and finally got stock now everyone else is on eBay selling the same stuff so we have to start over again and the stock we have we cannot shift for peanuts, we lost £2500 over Xmas because of listing fees, we have no money, just stock, but are finding it hard to clear so no 'guarenteed income' as such. My year end is end of March, but have £4,000 overdraft. If I can clear stock I can pay this but if I do not then I can't. If I make 4k then I'll go over the VAT threshold so holding off on this as we will make nothing like this amount next year, so can't really sell too much for the next few weeks. Does that make sense.

I have also started selling at a Saturday Market but this time of year is not good and am losing more that I am making but we have to go this time of year to secure a pitch for the summer when we should get busier.

To put a spanner in the works my husband is about to lose his job. He has occuaptional asthma and just waiting for a confirmed diagnosis of the things he is allergic to from the hospital in a couple of weeks time and then he will be paid off to leave his job as it is work that has given it to him. Others in his position have got around 16k but we cannot bank on him getting this money. He also has to have some sort of retraining as he will be limited as to where he can go because of the atmosphere he can work in. So, everything is going to change for us financially within the next 2 months for sure. As his job where he is now is very well paid for what he does, when he actually can find something this the wage he will earn half of what he is earning now but not too worried as we'll get topped up with Family Tax Credits anyhow to what he was earning before.

IF he gets the settlement money now we will be asking our creditors for some sort of settlement first, this will help our debts and clearing our overdrafts as well as the other remaining debts we have now (car and catalogue), but we are not banking on getting this and it could be a 4-5 year fight for something as he has been doing this job for 14 years and it is neglect of H&S issues that have caused the illness. I have started doing a Saturday market but now is very quiet (losing not making) but we need to get sorted out and start again. It would be great if we could get rid of some debts but this cannot be guarenteed so it seems silly to be paying B&E their 'fee' from now on if the money can go to better use (no lectures please, I know how money I have wasted, this option has just been easier for us in the past as it is always me that has to deal with the money in the house and with 2 babies and a business to run I have not had time to deal with it).

Please would someone help point me in the right direction of who I need to contact (CCCS for example) and what they would do, what do they need, would they make us give stuff up, we have a timeshare for example and a car, would we have to sell these? I don't want to end up getting further into it than we already are as we do not have a great deal to pay off on what we do not have through B&E at the moment and I feel things are pretty much in our control finiances wise, even if hubby was to lose his job. Would you recommend dealing with creditors yourselves or not? I don't even know who we owe the money to really as we very rarely get any hassle from most of the companies, they are quite happy to accept the monthly payments as we send them and as the debts have since been sold on I do not know who too but don't know where to go for help. I thought if I stopped the payments then they would soon write to me - or is this not a good idea. I get a statement each month with account numbers on - I guess this maybe would be a good place to start.

Any help to point us in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

luckyfool

The CCCS (https://www.cccs.co.uk) and payplan (https://www.payplan.co.uk) will both do virtually the same thing Baines and Ernst have done, but for nothing. I would give them both a call and see which you prefer.

just-a-thought_4

Many thanks luckyfool for the recommendations of those sites, I will have a look at these and go from there.

Thanks again.