General advise on bankruptcy

warren100uk_2

Hi all,

Hope you are all well.

We just wanted some views on the best course of action.

Myself and girlfriend cant carry on with the debts we have, we cant afford to eat but are just about paying all our debts. Iam suffereing with depression with it all and a year and half ago tried killing myself to stop it all. I now realise how stupid it was to do that.

We own our house, have a secured loan on it, a personal loan and 3 credit cards, in 4 years my girlfriend has lost 2 jobs because the companys have shut down.

We are thinking of going bankrupt, the main question i have is, can we still be working if we do, iam finding working very hard due to my depression and am only there because if i wasnt we would lose the house, but i think my health is more important than the house. We cant sell the house because we have a loan with Firstplus, worst mistake we ever made going with them, and we couldnt get enough to clear the mortgage and the loan. We want out, and have gone past caring about our credit rating as its shot because of my girlfriend being out of work twice so thing didnt get paid for months.

Can anyone offer any advise, we know we need to get professional advise but would like other opinions to.

Thanks

Mark and Jo

fiveyearplan

Hi and welcome warren100uk. I'm glad you realised that the debts aren't worth sacrificing your health. The first port of call should be to one of the debt charities like CCCS, CAB or National Debtline. You need to speak to a bankruptcy/debt specialist.

Would you like to keep your house? How much is the house worth, how much is the mortgage and secured loan? For bankruptcy it doesn't matter if you are working or not. If you did go bankrupt you could include the house and secured loan and start with a clean slate, rent somewhere and even get housing benefit if you are not working.

warren100uk_2

Hi,

We dont want to keep the house. Its worth £135000, we have a mortgage of £128000 and to paid the loan of is around £40000. So cant sell because of the loan.

We need a clean start, and will rent but plan on living with parents till we get on our feet again. Do we have to be in arrears to file for bankruptcy, as i said work is really affecting me as for one i hate it, have tried to find something else but cant get the same money which i need to keep up with payments and two am finding it hard with my depression, and would like to find something else.

halifax71

Google Firstpluscomplaints and join the merry band. There are hundreds of us who are complaining about PPi, Interest Rates, Commissions.

Many questions need answering

Number 1 is do you have PPI. If so it was mis sold. Reclaim it.

Reduce your payments in line with what you think you should be paying as they haven't passed on any of the recent reductions. E.g if your debt is circa £50k you wil be paying about £170 per month more than if Firstplus had reduced rates in line with Bank of England reductions.

It's not as bad as you might think - there are many who are in the same boat.

fiveyearplan

If you do intend on going bankrupt stop paying all except your priority debts. This money can pay your fees and in any event if you keep paying it is just dead money that you could be saving for a rental deposit or living expenses or BR fees.

MicheH

As for the arrears side of it no you don't have to be in arrears to file for bankruptcy. We had both worked and have done all our adult life, we saved so we could have a second child, I would leave work to be a childminder but very quickly realised that due to the current climate childminders were not in demand simply because so many people know an unemployed family member of friend or family just had to step in to help out reduce living costs.

We very quickly had to use all our savings just to make sure everything was paid and when we got down to our last £1000 we knew we needed this to file for bankruptcy, the plan had failed and failed badly.

We never missed a payment when we filed for bankruptcy but had no way of finding the money to make the payments from then on.