Please cheer me up !!!

Credo33

Not sure this is in the right place but at least it feels good to be sharing this. Maybe no magic solutions but would really appreciate some advice so that I can at least see a chink of light at the end of the tunnel.

Personal circumstances are married with three kids, all at secondary school. Own house worth c.£250,000 and have mortgage of around £140,000. Have credit card debts of around £12,000 and bank overdrafts pushing their limits at c.£5,000 in total. All the normal bills you would associate with a large'ish family but no real luxuries or silly spend.

I'm self employed in a fairly safe market where income is holding steady at c.£24,000 and the wife earns around £12,000. My value in the market place would be lower than what I earn in self employment so no beneficial option to seek employment.

In short, income is barely matching outgoings - if it is at all. We have no savings to fall back on and we are terrified of suddenly finding ourselves in need of money urgently as we have none available. My income is seasonal to a large degree and we also live in real fear of a bad month causing us to suddenly hit "empty".

Also concerned about mortgage as it is only partly covered by old, poorly performing, endowments and unless we somehow add more funds then there is no way that we'll be able to pay it off when it ends in around 10 years time. We keep promising that we'll address that "next year" but there is never any spare income to do so.

Need to know what options we might have as I'd like to start sleeping at night and feeling back in control !

Our main asset is the house but is there anything that we can do with that to keep our heads above water ?

misspoppy

Hi

Firstly start with a statement of affiars you can complete one here http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

Then post it up and we'll be back to see where you can make savings and suggest other options of how to help you.

Tixy

Hi Credo and Welcome

The good news seems to be that you are just about managing at the moment but it sounds like now might be a good time to take better control of your finances so that you don't have the constant worry.

Have you done a detailed household budget recently? This is a really useful starting point as it will allow you to assess your true current position. You say you are barely matching your outgoings - if you write everything down then you will see for certain whether you are having to use credit each month just to make ends meet.
Once you have prepared an income & expenditure account you can could start to look if there are savings that could be made from your outgoings, these could then allow you to start repaying your debts or build up a small savings cushion - which is important for everyone but especially so for the self-employed.

We recommend this calculator as a starting point - http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html.
Then look through every item of expense and see whether it can be reduced. Check you are using the cheapest supplier for gas & elec, check your insurances are competative, check your telephone/internet/sky are the cheapest on offer (bundles from a single provider usually work out much cheaper). Look at your mobile tariffs and consider switching etc etc.
Also are your credit cards on competative interest rates?

If you havn't looked at these items for 12months you are unlikely to be in the best deals as new deals come out all the time.

If you post your SoA on here (use format for MSE at the bottom of the calculator) then you will get other ideas as to what you could change and then hopefully some advice as to what your options are.

Hope this helps.