Brand new to this and need help!

CASR25

My husband and I are hoping you people on this site will be able to help us. We are in a rather bad situation and have finally realised it and so really need to sort it. But, we need help/advice?!

We are having to put food and general living expenses on credit cards each month, all of our income is accounted for before it enters our accounts - we have a problem. It is entirely our fault - for years we've lived as though we earn 60k between us and now we nearly do we can't use it - the live for now pay for it later group I suppose.

I'm about to go on maternity leave with our second child. I'm a teacher and earn £32k my husband earns £25k (basic he does get commision but we don't rely on it and have often paid some debt off if he's earned a bit more than we need to live on!). I'm having to go back as soon as mat pay ends, after 4mths, which is so early in my opinion - but our fault I suppose!)

So this is where we're at....

We have 3 un-secured loans, with 40k remaining on them. We pay back 700 a mth and the latest one to end is in 7years.

We have 9 credit cards with 31k on them, pay back 1000 a mth. 2 are 0% but most are just the normal high rates! We've tried to get more 0% but have been declined.

I checked my credit rating this time last year and it was poor my husband's is excellent - most of the debt is in my name as I have always earned more and have been in work for longer. (we don't have any ccjs or anything like that, and no missed payments int he last year I'm certain - i think mine was low as I'd forgotten to pay a card that we'd yet to put on dd and because i've so much debt in my name)

We bought our house for 130k, paid 10% deposit - 3 years ago - have bought it back to life, it was a wreck, it was valued at 155k 2 years ago. However, I rang our mortgage people, nationwide, last week to see if we could do a mortgage break while i'm on maternity and they said the house was in neg equity, worth only 123k! They calculate this using the market situation and houses that have sold on the street recently (2 yes - both needed central heating putting in before habitable!!!) Anyway... so we're in neg equity.

What should we do???? We thought...

A 31k loan over 7years, paying back 500 a mth. That would mean after 7years we'll be debt free an we'll have 500 per mth to live on.
Ideally that would clear the cc debt.

But, where do we start to look? We had a fab ind financial advisior who got us our mortgage, do we call him? Do we go secured?????? What on earth should we do. We really don't want to go to iva or bankrupcy stage - but is that out only option now????

My husband and I hope some of you lovely people on this site could give us some pointers????

We've got ourselves into this stupid situation and need to get out, I'm panicing.

Could you help?

Thanks,

Cx

stephane_2

Sorry to hear about your financial hardship but to be honest with £70K of unsecured debt + a mortgage of £110K you need to seek professional help to discuss your option (i.e CAB). In my own opinion taking some sort of other loan to re-pay your existing ones is not an option or you could be paying that back for the next 25 years.

CASR25

Thanks for your swift reply...

What's a CAB?

Do you think there's a chance of getting a loan for just 7years?

CLAPTON

you are best to post over on the debt free wannabe board...
you need to address the issue of spending as well as debt

try this calculator
http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html
and post the results over there.

there are three main free debt help organaisations
CCCS, Payplan and CAB (citizens advice bureau)

stephane_2

CAB is the Citizen Advice Bureau, as regarding the loan, lenders don't offer loan of £31k unsecured, the maximum is £25K. What a lender will look out is that you already have £70K worth of unsecured debt and my asking for an extra £31K does not give him any guarantee that you will actually pay off your credit cards & not spend on it in the future.

KiKi

Hi CASR25

Please post this over on the Debt-Free Wannabe board - they will be able to best advise on your whole situation regarding the debt, not just about a loan.

Cheers
KiKi

CASR25

Many thanks to all of your reply.