despairing....

dippy-dora_2

Hi In Hellin, don't feel stupid, it's all easily done.
I'm from south shields btw and like you live far from home and no no-one so i can understand that that alone can cause much depression, and in a smaller place than you're at.
Just don't let your education go to waste and if you can make some friends about the place and keep posting here eve if it's just to let it all out, without wanting actual suggestions.

in*the*red_6

Hi there In Hell

One thing I would say (and it may have already been said by someone else) -if you're not happy with your CAB adviser, call them, ask them for your paperwork to be returned and then get in touch with either Payplan or CCCS straight away. Both are charities, very experienced and very supportive.

I hope things start to look up for you soon.

Best wishes

ITR

earwig

sorry presed the thanks button on a d post by mistake

Rachman_2

Here's a question - how much equity do you have in your house ? Please don't post unless you want to, but assuming that you have now had 3 homes in the recent past and you have borrowed £25K to do them up surely you have got north of £50K in it. Otherwise what was the point ?

I don't mean that the wrong way, but from what you have posted, you try very hard but don't sit back and see the wood. Borrowing cash to do up houses is ONLY worth it if you make money doing it - otherwise it's an expensive way to torture yourself. Allowing for moving costs and the increased cost of interest over renting (likely in today's Britain), they owe you about £40K so you need to have made a profit.

Assuming you have the equity in it, if you sold, could you pay off the bills - you say you have a £1,500 early repayment charge - what's your sanity worth ? Surely you could also find a property somewhere else for the £91K mortgage (back in NE, perhaps) and avoid it ?

chivers1977

Good morning

Another suggestion would be: os your mortgage "portable". this means that you can move house and take the mortgage with you - therefore not incurring the Early repayment Charge. If you were to move back to the north-east, where I assume there are more jobs so long as you are living reasonably near a city, you could then both work. some lenders, will allow you to complete on a new property up to six months after the old one was sold so you could move in with friends/family whilst househunting. I just can't quite get to grips with what your OH, I am sure I that I read that you have said he works for the council and is in finance..... If you only spend £10 per wk on food for yourself and "household" is £250 per month, how much exactly are you spending on pets and cleaning??

In_Search_Of_Me

Hi in hell...agree with above suggestion to ring CCCS etc - if you ring today you will get an appointment but I know from recent experence that there is a waiting list for the long call. From all you have said part of the problem (in my hunble opinion) are your sence of isolation & lonliness which I suspect helped the debt on the first place? Not judging you on this but recognise it from little old me!! Do think aboit moving somewhere where (a) there are more jobs (but agree with others that any job is better than no job...I've had some really crap ones in my time but they paid the rent!) (b) You're less isolated...on an entirely nosy point (being an animal lover!) what oets do you have? Sounds (from the food list!!) that there may be snakes in there somewhere?!! PLEASE phone CCCS TODAY it will be a weight off if nothing else & by the time you get the file back from CAB you'll have your long phone call. Meanwhile, have a hug! And a footnote to those still bickering & swapping insults cant you do it by PM from now on ...hasnt in hell got enough to deal with?

skintchick

Just come on to give you more hugs.

(((hugs)))

(((hugs)))

(((hugs)))

Eager_Elephant

This has turned into a mega long post – my apologies.


Hi InHell,

I am sorry about the petty squabbling on this board.

I hope I can reassure you a bit, I am training to be a Money Advisor with a charity similar to CAB.

Firstly don’t panic, remember Rome was not built in a day. Also it did not take a few weeks to build the debt up so don’t expect it to be paid back quickly.

Small steady steps are what we need.

I cannot believe that CAB are pushing an IVA, one of the reasons for taking an IVA is that you have an asset to protect, granted you do have your house but I am unsure of the amount of equity. It is not as easy as saying go for an IVA there are a lot of figures which they should have done first.

Looking at your SOA it shows £65 per month left to pay your creditors, an IVA typically lasts 5 years which would make £3900. This is less than 10p in the pound. A lot of creditors are looking for an IVA that will give them more back than they would get if you went bankrupt. Typical figures I have seen are at least 50p in the £1. To be honest if all you could offer was that then the creditors would prefer bankruptcy, the time taken on paperwork would not be worth the money they would get. In some IVA’s they do have a clause that you will release equity in year 4, if you own your home then they will expect that. The problem with this is that if you remortgaged then it is likely you would not be able to afford the increased mortgage payments.

If you are not happy with the level of advice received then I would put in a formal complaint, our job as advisers is to obviously give advice to suit the client but also to only do what the client instructs. This means that although CAB would like you to do an IVA they should be able to help you if you don’t.

Thinking out loud here I wonder if they are pushing for an IVA because they would not control it, an Insolvency Practitioner would, this would then save time and money their end because they do not have to do paperwork and negotiations.

If you were my client this is what I would recommend:

Although Hp is not a priority debt in the true sense of the word it can be made a priority if your circumstances dictate, such as if the only way to get to work is by car and that car is on Hp then people are allowed to continue with this as if they didn’t work the creditors would not get any money.

In your situation if you are not using the motorbike and it appears that in the near future you will not be able to afford to have it lowered and thus start using it, I would say it is better for you to hand the motorbike back to the Hp company and then any money outstanding can become a non-priority creditor and you can pay them a pro-rata amount along with your other creditors. Please read the agreement, there will be a section in there about handing back the vehicle after you have paid x amount, if you have paid x amount then normally you can hand it back without anything being owed but in your case where you have only had it since Nov I doubt this is true.

I would take the hit and free up the £121 per month. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES sell the motor bike, it is not your property; it remains the property of the Hp Company until all monies have been paid. If you were to sell it and then pay off some of the loan and then default on the rest, when they come to repossess it won’t be there and in my eyes that is theft. Also there have been cases where the buyer of the bike has had it repossessed so they are the loser.

Have you considered how much you would get for the bike if you sold it in the open market, this is because if you can sell it for £3000 then of course that would pay of the loan and you would have nothing to worry about.

Going back to the £121 we have managed to free up, this along with the £65 makes a nice sum for Payplan to take you on.

Payplan offer their services for free, they do not charge the client. They are not a charity but a commercial organisation. If you want to know more on how this works fire away.

If you go with Payplan you will be entering into a Debt Management Plan, the criteria for this is you must have £100 at least per month to pay your creditors which you do. If you contacted them they would run through a financial statement and would account for expenditure we would never think off.

Once this has been done they will advise what they think is best, possibly bankruptcy but in my opinion you could pay your creditors say £150pm pro-rata and then when you get a job with more hours this payment could be increased and so take less time. I think Payplan work on the theory that if a DMP will take more than 6 years then it is better to go bankrupt unless your job forbids it which presumably this does.

You say that your husband works in finance and then mentioned local council, can you confirm if the works in the finance department and so gets to number crunch all day or does he actually physically deal with money?

This would have a huge bearing on whether he would be allowed to go bankrupt.

The last thing I will say in this post is that if you have 2 loans of over £10,000 then there is always the possibility that one of the creditors could make you bankrupt. It costs £750 for a creditor to make someone bankrupt and if they thought you had equity in your home then it would be worth it as they have first pick after the mortgage company to the money.

Try to keep all lines of communication open, if CAB have not yet written to your creditors then I would do a simple letter explaining the problems and also start sending in £1 per month to all your creditors. This will show that you are willing to work this out. My worry is that if CAB aren’t doing anything then the creditors may start getting impatient.

On my next post I will give you the web address of another discussion forum where you can talk this through with other people. We are not as judgemental on that board.

If you can answer the questions raised that will be great, I am popping out for a few hours but will be back this afternoon if you have any questions.

EE

nadnad

"Here's a question - how much equity do you have in your house ? Please don't post unless you want to, but assuming that you have now had 3 homes in the recent past and you have borrowed £25K to do them up surely you have got north of £50K in it. Otherwise what was the point ?"

she has a one bed terrace and I've already asked how much equity in it and haven't been answered.
I've also asked why doesn't she lower the bike allowing her to work further away.
I've made suggestions such as bar work,cleaning work, any work as long as its more than 2 hours a day.
We've asked where she is exactly in the country, to get an idea of where she could go for work.
None of this has been answered.
She also just said "I am not looking for advice, just I don't really have any friends down here as we live in such a remote area- my friends were all back in Nothern England so all I have down here are my parents who don't understand. I just wanted someone to tell. I feel so stupid " .

Inhell you may not be looking for advice but you need it. People here want to help - hence thats why we post, but you have to be more transparant, you have to reply to suggestions either with a yes I could do that or no i bloomin well can't and if you can't we'll look for another solution.

It is nice to come on here and vent a bit and tell everyone your frustrations, but you need to listen to the advice that people are giving you, otherwise those that are trying to help get frustrated. In your situation unless you do something NOW you are going to end up bankrupt and your OH will then lose his job. You need to get yourself a job and everyone here is trying to buoy you up, to make you feel a bit better and to be able to see the light to enable you to do that. The only way you are going to get out of this mess is if YOU do something YOU have to get a job, your OH is working 3 jobs already.

You did a good thing by coming on here and writing your woes down, but if you don't take something from it then its been a waste of time for everyone. Everyone can probably sense from your posts that you're in a very negative mood, "i can't i can't I can't" but that doesn't help you - its making things worse. No fairy is going to come down and make it all go away.

You said "basically we got into this mess I WANT to be able to pay it off in FULL, even if it does mean I am working 10/15 years past retirement age"
that is the attitude to have unfortunately it doesn't quite ring true.

Please post back having read all our suggestions and tell us one way or another that yes thats a good idea or not its not, answer all the questions that you've been asked. At least this gives us something to go on and shows that you are willing to help yourself.

Please don't take this post in the wrong way, I'm speaking to you plainly so that you can understand why people are judging you negatively, and why they don't believe you. Now all you have to do is come back and show them that you do mean what you say. Once you've done this you will receive so much support and kindness from people on this forum, and hopefully then you will be able to help yourself. :T

Eager_Elephant

Hi InHell,

https://www.fool.co.uk

This is the website i frequent a lot of the time. Go to Discussion Boards on the left hand side, then Managing Your Finances, then Dealing With Debt.

You will have to join but it is free, weekends are a bit quiet because most people are on-line at work. But you should still get some replies.


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Just checked who has posted since I typed my huge post and I see that people are recommending CCCS, they offer the same services as Payplan but they are a charity.

Having only dealt on a business level with them I cannot say who is better, but I would say they will give very similar advice. Do not waste your time or there's by ringing both. They are extremely busy at the moment.

EE