Help scared and worried

kissjenn

Have you double checked your contract about redundancy. I know you're not entitled to statutory but my last contract guaranteed everyone, regardless of length of service, 3 months salary. This is very common in the finance sector at management level.

Your husband's contract should include the redundancy terms. Worth checking this to get an approximate idea of how much you're looking at eg is it about a £1k, £10k or £100k. That ballpark will let you start realistically planning.

Also you will be entitled to some form of minimum notice, holiday pay etc unless the firm has gone under. You shouldn't just go from salary to zero without a period of notice.

Double check the HP agreements, credit cards and loans for payment protection insurance. You may well have redundancy cover built in. Also the mortgage, they may have included it with such a high LTV as a safeguard for them.

Holiday - do you have everything including spending money you need or will it cost you more to go? Do they have a cancellation clause for redundancy?

Jesthar

Hey SnS,

Well done for not running away! Some people would when faced with this!

A few more thoughts below:

SkintNScared wrote: »

Hi. Thanks for some of the pointers, I will do my best to answer some of the things that came up. Feel a bit calmer now

Mortgage is repayment, we cannot go to interest only as the lender (Halifax) has said the LTV is too much for an IO mortgage? This was before my husband was made redundant though so not sure if they will be able to do something now we are in dire straights.

We now only need one car. However, cars are both on HP agreements and both worth less than what we still owe on them. I think one is £25k value and £32k owed, the other is £15k value with about £20k owed
You may have to let them both go and get a small runabout for now - cheaper to insure too. I know nothing about HP, though (I believe in COD - Cash On Delivery ), so I've no idea whether or not you can just say 'can't afford this any more, come and get the cars' or not.

We're tied into our Internet/Sky/Mobile packages for a while yet, although it is fair to say we dont need nor can afford them at the moment.
Call them up anyway and see what they will do - you should at least be able to reduce Sky to the minimum packages, or if you say you are going to leave they might give you a few months free or soemthing.

Clothing budget is approx, its not £600 every month. Sometimes nothing, sometimes £2k in one hit. This is my vice and I will try to stop this now.
Sorry, hon, there is no 'try' about this one - you HAVE to stop. Heck, I don't think I've spent £600 on clothes in the last two years, and I have plenty to choose from (not all Primark etc, either, good quality high street stuff). Go shopping in your wardrobe and see what you find you haven't seen for months. And when you find stuff you won't wear again, stick it on eBay and get some cash back for it.

Holiday is booked and paid for. Won't be putting aside any more money for holidays now.
OK...

Entertainment - roughtly half me and half my partner. Includes his golf membership, and general socialising. Could cut this down to about £300 a month but we both still have memberships that can't really be stopped until the min term is up.
For now, EVERYTHING except the memberships you can't cancel needs to go...

Partner is going to get a redundancy figure, but this has not been calculated yet. I did not get any redundancy as I moved to the firm 18 months ago.
You need to put this on one side to pay the priority bills (mortgage, utilities, food) for the next few months. Anything unsecured or non essential needs to go by the board at this point. If you don't need it to live, you can't afford it right now.

We are looking at downsizing the house now and I have already made an appointment for an estate agent to come and have a look around tomorrow. Our house is wonderful but I realise we can't afford it :rolleyes:
:TWell done! Thats a big and brave admission and step to make...

Hope that helps,

~Jes

GeorgeUK

One of the main things you should be looking at is to see if there was Payment Protection Insurance on the cards, loans HP and mortgage.

If there was, you may be covered for payments for up to a year.
I would cotanct the debt agencies mentioned above and look out the documentation.

If there is no way for you to sell the cars then you may want to consider a voluntary termination - this means you are liable for only 50% of the cost and not the full amount. Might also be worth checking with nationaldebtline to confirm this as i'm not sure what the maximum amount that the CCA covered would have been when you made the agreements. You may have gone over the limit that the CCA74 deals with.

RAS

The Consumer Credit Act covers unsecured credit agreements up to £25,000.

kissjenn

Sorry, it's a "while I remember" post.

Cars on HP don't belong to you, they belong to the Finance Company. You cannot sell or dispose of it without their express agreement and you will become immediately liable for any outstanding money. So if HP outstanding is £10,000 and you sell the car for £8,000 - they will immediately expect you to pay the shortfall of £2,000 as the asset the loan is secured on has now gone.

It's exactly the same principle as selling a house in negative equity.

Oh now "and another thing" post.

If the house is beautiful would it rent well. Would someone pay £3k a month to live there? You may find one massive debt reducing option would be to rent it and move somewhere cheap and cheerful until you get back on your feet. SOmeone else would effectively pay your mortage for 6 months or a year and when you're more financial stable again you get your house back Tough emotionally but a short term sacrifice for a long term gain perhaps?

GeorgeUK

Thanks RAS - i knew it had changed recently with the latest lot of amendments, but couldn't remember what from or to.

grahamlaw

Sorry I know this is a money website but there are other things to consider here as well. There are some questions you need to ask yourself. You spend a lot of money on clothes, food and the gym. Why do you do that?

I have this picture in my head of a massive wardrobe full of top brand clothes still with their tags on. Your freezer is maybe full up with organic, sugar free ice cream. What's in the fridge? I bet everything is M&S or Waitrose organic ready meals and bags of asparagus. I bet one or even both of you is vegan. Why do you need expensive haircuts?

I don't want to sound horrible, in fact I am also in debt and jobless. You say you want to try and cut back on clothes but you have to stop. Why do you need them?

slowlygoingcrazy37

new to the sight, only joined a few days ago, but i think its pretty cool the way people have tried to help skintnscared. hope you get yourself sorted. Also, read about the online survey sites- how does this affect you if you are on benefits, does anyone know?

GeorgeUK

Graham, you're quite right. Unfortunately most people don't notice this until they need to take a good look at their finances. Getting out of debt is about a lifestyle change as well as changing how you think about money.

You spent the money - you were entitled to. You had a good wage and were managing your payments. Now though we need to help you sort out the next steps until you have a wage coming in and can get the minimum payments sorted.

You will need to find out what benefits you can claim as a matter of urgency.

grahamlaw

GeorgeUK wrote: »

Graham, you're quite right. Unfortunately most people don't notice this until they need to take a good look at their finances. Getting out of debt is about a lifestyle change as well as changing how you think about money.

You spent the money - you were entitled to. You had a good wage and were managing your payments. Now though we need to help you sort out the next steps until you have a wage coming in and can get the minimum payments sorted.

You will need to find out what benefits you can claim as a matter of urgency.

I didn't mean it to sound so harsh though, sorry!

And you are right as well. After being un-employed for so long I will never take any salary for granted ever again.