I belive in myself but dont think my bank do!

Bright_side_2

Hi All

Looking for a bit of help and advise, I’ve looked through many of the posts on here and know there’s many knowledgeable and supportive people so hoping someone can help me with my specific issues.

My partner and I moved house earlier on this year we extended our mortgage and bought a new property and all the trappings that go with it, as a result I went from a situation of having a lot of disposable income to paying a large mortgage, at the same time my partner fell pregnant – good times!

Unfortunately I didn’t cope very well with my drop in disposable income, at the same time we put a plan in place to cope with the drop in income that would happen as a result of my wife taking extended maternity leave. We’re fortunate we both earn reasonable wages but I’ve gotten into a small amount of trouble and I need to nip this in the bud before it gets worse.

So in Aug I ran out of any savings I had, and I my bank account sat at zero, and I was late with a couple of payments, last month I made the payments I was late with plus this months and unfortunately I had a couple of direct debits bounce, three of these were with Direct Line who subsequently tried again two weeks later to take the money, at this point I’d had six attempts from one company to take money that wasn’t there, Natwest (my bank) charged me £38 per returned DD so in total missing the Direct Line payment cost me £228, there was also another unpaid item fee at £35 so in total £263.

I’ve tried hard to resolve this issue, and thought I was on track this month with the DD’s until Natwest charged me the £263, no I have an overdraft which I’ve used up and this charge took me to £255 over drawn. This month Natwest are charging me for going overdrawn, but also as a result of the charge, the cash I had to put into my account to cover the remaining DDs has made little impact and some further DDs have bounced – natwest will not charge me over £350 in charges for this month.

I spoke to the bank about this, there not prepared to extend my overdraft, but they suggested a re-finance option, I was ok with this I currently have a bank loan that I pay £201.66 per month on, and refinancing all my debt (loan, OD and charges) would extend this loan by 2yrs but would clear this issue and its marginally cheaper than what I’m paying. However I phoned Natwest on Tuesday and they advised that the loan had been refused based on affordability, I know times have changes but surely if I’m paying £201.66 on a current loan I can afford repayments on a new loan at £200.04.

My salary hits my account on Friday and I’m already £600 down before I begin. I can’t see how I can get out of this situation, last month I cut out all spend that I could, all money I had was used to pay off debt or bills. I cant see without the help from the bank how I can make this right and return to normality, its been a tough learning curve for me but I know that if I can get my head back above water I can sort this out, I just struggle to believe the bank wont throw me a life vest.

Any ideas….

Nargleblast

Suggest you draw up a Statement of Affairs (ie summary of monthly income and expenditure plus debts details) using the SOA calculator at the top of the forum (on a Sticky). Then if you post it on here we will be able to see where you are financially and suggest an appropriate course of action. Maybe a little cost cutting is all that is required, or maybe you have to hold your hands up and admit you are in debt crisis. Either way we (and you) need the figures down in black and white in order to make an assessment of how deep in the brown stuff you are. Don't panic about it, lots of people on here are in similiar or even worse situations, and there is plenty of help available from those of us who have been there, done that, written the book, starred in the film and thrown up over the teeshirt. This can be sorted, you will see.

GeorgeUK

As Nargeblast says, your best bet is to complete a SOA and post it here for us to see if there are any savings you can make in your expenditure. Possibly changing utility providers or taking lunches to work may help although that may be more on a long-term saving.
http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

For now, is there anything you can sell on e-bay, possibly old books etc that you no longer need? Things you look on as clutter may actually be sellable.