Help, the inevitable has happened (long post)

mrcow

Hi

For sure get some applications off tonight for a couple of 0% cards to cover as much of what you owe as you can. Have a look at Quidco for any cashback offers on 0% offers, (I know that Marbles have a £20 offer, but am not sure how long the 0% lasts for, I think it's 9 months).

Call up your bank and complain about the £125 fees. See if they will reduce them (what bank is it btw?) and then look at consumeractiongroup.com on advice about getting the balance back from them (they are illegal in case you've missed the other threads ref this) and any other charges they have imposed....it's all extra income.

The main thing that you need to do is get yourself a job ASAP. You need a letter from your employer detailing when your job is to finish and take it down the job centre and see what you'll be entitled to whilst you're looking for work.

Get your cv looking as hot as possible and register with as many agencies as possible and get as many interviews as you can. I personally can't see how you owe your current employer anything, as they've just sacked you, and they haven't even paid you for the last month. If it were me, I'd be invoicing them for the charges that I'd incurred from their failure to pay me on time!

Are you going to get another lodger? As this is also going to really help your income in the short term. Once you've secured your new job, then you can always give notice if you want, but in the meantime, you should be looking really.

As far as your SOA is concerned, it's a worthy exercise at any point in time.

Another method of creating income is to sell some of your stuff (Ebay etc.) it's not instant, but every little helps. Do you have a car? Can you do without for a while if it's going to solve some of your problems, or even downsize for a while? I assume any sales job offering £30k basic is going to chuck in a car allowance anyway, so you can look at buying a replayment then?

Take care

alias_debt_boy

OK, a summary reply to all your kind posts. First off thanks you all for your interesting, helpful and insightful comments. Some initial answers to your advice;

1. Doing some shuffling. I have already done this tonight and applied for a new credit card to move the £1000 Egg debt and the £7000 HSBC debt, both of which are 15.9% (I think, will call in morning and find out). If I get it, the new card will be 12 months interest free. I am also going to apply to Egg to invoke their 3 month payment holiday, while I get sorted job-wise (I know this is lazy and the interest will increase, and i'll listen if anyone thinks this shoud not be done). Still have another card to sort out, more of that on the SOA.

2. Disputing bank charges. You bet I will be getting those reduced. For those who asked I bank with HSBC, and while these charges are absolutely unforgivable, I must say that until now they have been pretty good to me. I have dipped over by a few hundred quid here and there over the last few months and they have not charged me anything over and above my agreed overdraft rate before. But even so, I will be doing what I can to reverse those charges ASAP. Thank you for the links and advice.

3. Raising cash with eBay sales. I am selling off all manner of gadgets etc, made about £300 last month and am listing my XDA Exec which should go for £200 odd, and some other stuff which will raise another £300 or so, so £500 this month.

4. Car. I paid £700 for my car 2 years ago. Until then I had only ever driven brand new company cars worth £30k plus, quite an experience (I almost died when I got my first ever insurance quote with zero no claims and 9 points, all for speeding to appointments). It doesn't seem worth getting rid of it until I get a car with a new job, considering I will need to get to interviews etc (i'm not really able to do buses, i'll tell you why if you are really interested). When I do get rid (to the scrapyard no doubt), I will also save road tax and insurance payments.

Jobwise, I have nothing lined up, but I have to be confident that I can organise something. I have spent the last 5 hours tarting up my CV, and making a shortlist of agencies to email and phone tomorrow. I have a pretty impressive job history, and £30k would be a minimum for a sales job (+ comm of course, which would possibly guaranteed for 3-6 months). Payment from my old company will arrive, they have been late before and there's not a lot I can do about it. They have also said that if I can close some business over the next month they will pay me on a fixed rate per sale (£150 per sale, and I will aim to do 5 sales between job hunting and writing long essays on there)

One more thing, for those of you who are interested or just plain nosy! Why did I get to this point? Well I don't really know. I started out in sales 10 years ago, and have always done well without working too hard, have eanred between £30k and £100k every year since then until 2 years ago when I just dropped out of normal life, kept up appearances with this awful job, and funded the difference through credit cards. I have had problems with anxiety and depression, and though it sounds very shallow, I felt I had to keep up with friends who have high incomes even when I had no money. If they knew i'd been doing that they would be very upset with me, as I know they'd still be friends whatever I did, but there we go, they will find out soon enough, and now i've had my lightbulb moment I know they will all be very supportive. I do know they are very worried about me in general, so my first steps towards sorting my life out will be welcome.

Anyway, to the SOA but that's for the next post!

alias_debt_boy

Mortgage £512 (interest only til 2007 then £700)
Car Insurance £45
Water £19
Council tax £64
Mobile £30
3g card for laptop £17.50
Gas/ Elec £83
House and contents £23.40
Gas cover £20
TV license £11
Phone/ Broadband/TV £30
Food £200
Petrol £80

£1134

Debts (estimated % til I phone)

HSBC £6516 @ 15.9%
Virgin £7215 @ 0% til next month then 15.9%
Egg £910 @ 15.9%
Egg loan £8500 @ 7.9%
O/D £1700 @ 14% (after wages go in, mortgage comes out, and egg payment comes out)

Total £24841- min payments about £500 a month, will work it out tomorrow when I am more awake)

Some notes

Car Insurance lowest quote after a day on the web, and 2 days in and out of brokers, not bad for 2 years no claims and 9 points (now 6)

Council tax currently £83 but will be 25% lower when lodger moves out

Mobile- I have a sim only deal as I refused to sign up for 12 or 18 months in case I needed to drop line due to money issues. Am using an old phone (major pain for a gadget freak like me!). Can cancel with one month notice- is 400 minutes any network which I don't go over

3g card. Took out a data tarriff due to a grabbit (doh!), on an 02 XDA Exec. Am selling the XDA Exec on ebay and have bought a second hand 3g card as I might as well use the data allowance as I am committed to 12 months rental now. XDA will go for £200+, which will cover the line rental

Gas/Elec is high due to my lodger leaving the heating on all winter and even now, one reason why i've asked her to move out (she was paying £275 inc all bills). My last bill was so high I phoned Powergen who said it was equivilent to a 6 bed detached house av usage (I live in a 2 bed victorian terrace!). Have checked on uswitch and PG still the best deal.

Phone/ Broadband/TV. Don't tell anyone but I have got a 10mb (yeah 10mb!) line, phone and essential TV (ie one up from starter) for £30 a month, which if you are on Telewest you will know is incredible. I only got it after swearing on my life not to tell anyone, and flirting with the retentions bird for at least 45 minutes. It's up in 6 months and I will have to renegotiate then.

Food is an estimate. I eat a lot. Anyone who is my height does

Petrol is also an estimate. I travel around a lot as I have friends in London, but I tend to get the cheap deals on national express (£10 return). Don't talk to me about Megabus, see my point in my last post about doing buses, aint going to happen!

Hope that's enough, look forward to a disection. To be honest it doesn't say a lot as on the face of it i'm quite a careful person. What that SOA doesn't reveal is my compulsive shopping habits for random stuff, recent quest for maing money on the web which has consisted of buying loads of ebooks etc, and high Amazon habit, due to ability to read books in one sitting coupled with local library having appeared to replace all those old fashioned books and replace them with some PCs and a cafe.

One more thing. I'm single. I don't drink much (few pints here and there), don't do expensive drugs (any more), have stopped gambling (recently), and stopped smoking 8 months ago almost to the day. Ha, i've gone from being a beer swilling, heavy smoking, womanising, recreational drug taking dynamo who had load of cash in the bank to a clean living, modest spending, gentle guy with huge debt problems. How weird life is sometimes!

Hope you enjoy my story, and can cope with my excessive ramblings.

ADB

PS- Something else to bear in mind. I don't actually want to be a salesman, I want to go to London and be an apprentice for my friend who owns a video production company. One option is to sell my house, use the £20k equity to pay off most of my debts and go to London where even on a starting salary of £15k a year or £1k a month after tax I can rent a room at £400 inc bills where I used to live in Muswell Hill, pay £100 a month for a zone 1-3 travelcard, not need a car, and have £500 left over for food/ents/living life with no debts at all. If the job worked out I would be earning £30k plus within 2 years, doing something I love and eventually would be able to work towards buying another house (hopefully after the cyclical price crash!) Tempting but can't decide whether thats a cop out, or a just plain bad idea. While I have to make my own decisons, those older and wiser are welcome to make comments

moozie_2

Hello alias_debt_boy and welcome to this forum

I am finding your thread very interesting. You have clearly come a long way already. I hope you continue fighting your demons and you enjoy being this 'reformed' guy!

I was going to comment on your gas/elec and food but you've explained why they are so high. Hopefully the bills will go down after the lodger goes.

Are you going to have another lodger? It would give you some income while you are picking yourself up.

Good luck with the jobs - current and future. Also good luck with the transfers. I look forward to the next update and keep your chin up

alias_debt_boy

Thanks for your thougts and good wishes. I'm glad you find my thread interesting, I love to write and i've found some other threads on this board inspirational in the past. I'm an unusual case, no-one can quite work me out, i'm just a weird muddle of enormous potential mixed with huge self-doubt and under-achievement, which can be a killer. Friends tend to respect me as a source of knowledge and advice, in business and sometimes in life, but my actual business and personal lives tend to be a total disaster. I just need to practice what I preach and have the guts to make some decisons and live by them. I know i'll be fine, and i've pulled myself out of a situation like this before, but never have I sat down and realised I am completely stuck.

The next few months are what I need help with, once I am earning again in a real job I can start to repair the damage and make some changes. Til then, way over my overdraft, keen not to tell my parents (who would undoubtably bail me out but on whom I don't want to rely on at my age), I just don't know what to do. I don't have any money for anything and even with money due in I will still have nothing. What a mess!

ADB

lynzpower

ADB

Any chance of any bits of temp work over the next few weeks? Even if its not what you are used to ( telesales, or admin etc or even factory work) it will bring some money in while you are looking for something else)

Do look for another lodger ( ive got a contract you can have if you are interested) and stipulate in it stuff like heating off in the summer as I have in mine. Pm me if you want a copy.

Let me tell you 500 a month "spare" in london goes nowhere, hence why Im here I would say, if you can wait to move here, do it when you are not servicing any debts, wish I could have waited a bit more...

Why not join in with the grocery challenge on Old style? Cutting back here, using clubcard & other vouchers reaps quite big rewards. As you can see from my sig we've got it right down from 75 a week for 2, and im sure with a bit of tweaking you can too.

Great to have you on board

scorpio_biker

Hi,

I wanted to make a personal comment on your job situation (can't help with the finances, struggling with my own at the moment!).

If you have the opportunity to do something you really want to, just do it.

When I left college I drifted into my current job (IT) although what I really wanted to do was work in a nature oriented occupation. I'm still in IT, and although I find the job easy to do (must be my logical brain!!!) I'm trapped by my high salary that I need to pay my outgoings. But its not what I want to be doing (oh how I'd love to be a gardener) and the minute I get the chance to change I will.

My OH was in a position many years ago to try his hand at being a motorcycle dispatch rider and he loved it. As it was it didn't work out long term for various reasons, but to this day he doesn't regret trying it.

You've obviously thought about the apprenticeship and how you can do it, pratically and financially, so if its what you want to do then go for it. If it doesn't work out, so what you can go back to sales but at least you tried. And if it does then you'll be doing a job you love.

Just my two penny worth.

Good luck with everything.

library_lady_2

Welcome a-d-b what a thread, just the thing to while a way a quiet 10 minutes at work. You are certainly thorough and very clear so I can understand your friends coming to you for advice! My gut feeling is go with your instinct, if your job desires is in London go for it, I'm 41 and about to start a degree, leaving work after 25 years is sooo scary, but I figure this is my chance to do what I want so I'm going for it and sod (or suffer??) the consequences. We have one shot at life and no rehersals and putting off till tomorrow means nothing ever happens and before we know it we're 90 (if we're lucky) and regretting all those things we didn't do. DO WHAT YOU WANT FOR YOU. Keep posting.