Any ideas

tesuhoha

alecpr wrote:

I only get your debt at 27K+"High ammount"... your total says 179K?
with a "Do I need?" one.

Thanks for pointing out mistake. Pressed the 8 by accident. Our total debt is 17,900 approx.

tesuhoha

I havent actually spent anything on the 0% cards. They were only taken out to pay off debt (£26,000 last year now decreased to £17,900) i dont use a cc, only my OH but we pay that one off in full each month.

Madstuthe1st

I don't think Tes and others are looking for sympathy, they are looking for help to find a way out of their problems.

MrsTinks

Firstly take a deep breath We do all care here and I think we're trying to bombard you with stuff to make that little lightbulb flick on like it has for the rest of us

I am not saying you need to take all the advise here, but you need to understand the TRUE cost of what is going on initially the house move could look like a guaranteed money maker, but in reality once you pay for moving and repairing and so on you might have made very littl emoney for a LOT of work... If this is what you want to do then only you and your hubby can make that choice, it is after all YOUR lives

We want to make sure you realise how much the various things are cosing you and ultimately how much stress and so on you could save yourself AND you hubby if you got your finances sorted and he could start thinking about not working sundays to start with

If you feel that this house is the way to go then so be it. Just make sure that you appreciate the true costs the cost of the house is not the buying price BUT the total amount that house will cost you interest included! Not to mention renovation costs etc I'm not saying that we are the best people to advise you as no doubt we only have part of the facts and figures etc as we are looking at only part of a story here. We base our advise on what you tell usso we might not be right

I really really would say that you need to try and cut down on what you spend and try to give yourselves a bit of a break. Not saying don't work to pay of your debts but make life a little easier for yourselves by dropping a few luxuries

Shall I mention the kids again? In case it's of help then my parents after I left home paid for my school but everything else I paid for... they matched the grant I got from the danish government which gave me a couple of hundred a month total to pay rent from and contribute towards food, car and petrol. Amazingly we managed to get by back then by living with my boyfriends parent (we paid rent and our share of the food) and by fixing things ourselves and having old cars, clothes from charity shops and having saturday jobs as well as fulltime jobs we managed to get by between us. I think your son neds a harsh wake up call and to get out and find a job! Stop subsidising him the second he leaves school. The week after I left my A-level equivalent I had a full time job (I couldn't afford not to!) and I don't feel hugely scarred by the experience

Your daughter also needs to wake up and start pulling her weight. I grant you that their education is important but that is not to say that you have to pay for everything to try and ensure they get the best you can give them. How woudl they feel if they found out that their dad ended up seriously ill to pay for their mobile phone bills and concert tickets?

My advise? Sit down tonight with a good bottle of wine and talk things over. Decide on what it is you wish to acchieve between you as a family. Your kids won't starve to death, but a little cutting back will not hurt them. You can probably cut back on things yourselves and I would say only initially do the work you really need to to live in the new house if you still want to go ahead with that.

And remember we're always here if you struggle with advice and help. I appologise if thewakeup calls here were a tad harsh but I think they were needed?

Rachman_2

New to this place - so will try to be fair.

Fromyour own numbers you bought your house for £50K in 1987 and now owe £100K on a mortgage (£668 a month - assume repayment over 25 years).

You also collected £26K of debt that you seem to say you have not spent.

WIth respect, I think it's not just now you have been living beyond your means - it's your life and I am sure there are good reasons for that debt being collected, but in cold hard cash, you seem to have spent a lot of someone else's money so that you know owe £70odd grand more than when you started nearly 20 years ago - and the property market has rocketed and your husband is a builder..... - I find that very difficult to accept that all things being equal, a builder's family have mismanaged things so badly. However, ours is NOT to reason why - you asked for suggestions.

Your son failed his GCSE's I gather, so you have paid out £10K or thereabouts to get him through a resit year. I don't mean to be awful as he's your son and I am sure he's the best kid in the world, but if he's smart enough he could get an apprenticeship and get a trade and a skill and actually start earning his own wedge - I take it from the fact you give him noney he's not working particularly hard or learning the value of either effort or money (you are giving him a second chance and giving him money when he's old enough to earn his own).

your daughter is mainly enjoying herself on your cash - many of us have been to university, it's a very rare (and usually less than capable) student that spends all their time working on academics and so can't make their own ends meet - plus what about summers - you arrive home on Sunday you get a job Monday to pay for next year's drinking. If she's not done that, you've again not taught her the value of anything. I appreciate this is someone else's kids I am talking about and I am sure you want to do your best for them - but at the moment, I fear you are being taken advantage of (willingly or otherwise). Paying for a mobile, concert tickets and a savings account - do you think she would rather have £2K in a bank account or have two parents who have not had heart attacks ?

AS for the rest of your debt, whilst I don't think you are being totally straight woth yourself how you got yourself into it - getting out of it is relatively simple, stop spending more than you earn or earn more. As your husband is working flat out, the latter's out of the window and working even harder is a great way to an early grave [my own father had a heart attack in his late 30's doing just that].

So where do you save - sell your current home - the market's still hanging on in places. If you are convinced the new place is a runner, buy it BUT don't start spending on it till you KNOW you can afford to - i.e. spend your own earnings on it - not the bank's money. That means living in it for a year and a half to two years whilst you stop paying son's fees, you stop paying for daughter (over and above rent if you think she really can't survive) - make your son get a job if he wants money - like the rest of us and make your daughter work in the holidays (and maybe a couple of nights a week at university). Pay down your unsecured debt - with hindsight you probably boobed in taking a mortgage over such a short term as 9 years - if you have a debt issue now, talk to the lender and try to get them to change it - it will cost them more long term to deal with you if you default and it's easier to simply try to change it now before you start paying it (it CAN be done without cost to you as well if you persevere).

Then pay the 'saved' outgoings off your debt (after cutting up the damned cards and cancelling them as they get paid off) and have a holiday planned for the month you clear the unsecured debt - then come back and save for three months to get some cash into start doing up the house you have bought and been living in. By then your daughter will be in a graduate job, your son will be on his own two feet and the £17K albatross will have gone and your husband can work a little less hard and live a little longer.

Good luck and sorry for going on a bit...

Broken_hearted

I dont think they will ever be able to accept that the children are taking them for a ride and will become spoilt brats, who will end up in a ton of debt because they have no respect for money. Again expecting parents to bail them out.

tesuhoha

Thank you. I didnt want sympathy, just ideas what we should do, and youve certainly given me those. I know weve been foolish with money. You say we've been spending someone else's money, well yes we have, and we've been paying that someone the interest too. I think things are getting a bit confused, we dont owe £100k on our mortgage. We did borrow money for the flat, which took our mortgage up to £65k but that was three years ago and we now owe £49,000 on the mortgage. Eurows obviously despises anyone with a bit of enterprise and seems to be full of hate. When we bought the flat we were in a much better position but it was the flat that caused some of our problems. We actually sold the flat at £15,000 below the amount it was valued at to a first time buyer, so we didnt do that much harm to ftbs in the scheme of things. The flat was bought at £60,000 and sold at £65,000, i think that is still well in the range of FTBs. We have worked all our lives, both come from working class backgrounds, neither of us have any educational qs and no one has ever given us a penny and we have not expected it. We will neither of us ever inherit any money, so we tried to make something of ourselves. I daresay eurows has had a little inheritance or help from his/her parents, or at least a decent education. Muppets like us make him sick. Well all I can say is that pompous, self satisfied, opinionated people like Eurows have obviously not experienced any difficulty in their lives whatsoever and dont understand people that have.

Rachman_2

Like I said, good luck - from your figures you need to get the expensive costs down - and being honest the most expensive things you have are also your two most precious - but they are NOT pulling their weight - I know it's preferable to look after them and provide and hard to see them go without (as they see it), but it's not doing them (or you) any favours.

My own parents told me straight, if you want pocket money, get a paper round - so I did and it taught me about the price and cost of everything....

I really do wonder whether you need to look at how your repayments are structured. A respite on your cheapest debt (which will be your mortgage when the 0% come to an end (remember many 0% providers now charge fees to transfer)) may be prudent - 9 years is awfully short to repay a mortgage on 'normal' wages - and practically impossible with paying for two other 'adults' as well.

I presume the satellite goes when you move (keep the box and the dish just in case !), I presume the van payments have to continue as it earns money with your husband's work.... - if you have a car, think long and hard, do you actually NEED it or do you just want to have it - depends on how you get to work and what time of day - they are bloody expensive to run.

I would sit down and agree the day to start work on the new house (as you seem 110% committed to it) is the day after you come back off holiday after paying off the unsecured debt - resist the urge to keep flipping it without reducing the balance. Put it this way, if you do the house up now, it's going to have had a couple of years of wear into the renovations when you may be forced to sell if you take on more debt - what do you actually gain in that time - nothing till you sell it but it costs you. If the market rises, you still share in that upside, if the worst happens, you have lost less if it gets repossessed (scary word I know). If easy credit tightens, you are getting your own position better each month by paying down the unsecured..... which puts you in a better position and helps you sleep more soundly.

if you wait that couple of years, the price of the materials won't have risen much (if at all) and you will have a freshly done house and NO unsecured debt and a lot more of your sanity left a year after that.

tesuhoha

Thanks Rachman for taking so much trouble over me. The van is necessary and has only a couple more years to run, we get tax back on it anyway. The car is a workhorse and is very economical to run. I need it for work, there is no direct public transport to my job and it is too far to walk. I am definitely going to put a hold on the work on this house but we want to move out of this place because of the vandals terrorising us. I am trying to switch around the 0% as much as i can but might get a life of balance card for some of it. The Barclaycard I can actually pay off within the special offer period if I pay £130 pm. We can afford the mortgage payments quite easily its only £300 pm more than we are paying at present and if we rented a house round here it would be £600-£700 anyway. We only owe money on CCs we have never ever missed a mortgage payment or council tax, apart from the flat we bought when we were left with unpaid arrears and the vendor who sold it to us did a runner. We tried to get out of paying it but were threatened with a summons so paid up. We also inherited a £5000 roof bill, which is one of the reasons for our debt today. Anyway, I appreciate all your help and hope that if we do the wrong thing in your eyes that you will not abandon me because I am going to need your advice more than ever. I am definitely owed £535 on my gas bill and I am going to pay that off my debts and also if I get the £535 (same amount) repayment of bank charges, that will already be £1000 off.

tesuhoha

Daughter is going to get part time job next term and we are going to sort the boy out in June after his exams.