Credit Cards/secured loan

redrolo

Hi all, just looking for a steer on an issue that my wife has just shared with me. We have seperate accounts and have always done so, I pay the mortgage and household bills and my wife pays for shopping, childcare, clothes for kids. This arrangement has always worked fine, until yesterday she confessed that she had amassed circa £10k across 3 credit cards, and was paying interest charges of £300 plus £300 payment on them. The debt was racked up during 12 months maternity and I knew she had put some money on a card, but no where near this amount.
She looked at a loan but has a poor credit rating. This has been explained as the uptake of debt versus available debt percentage is too high, and this has been due to buying a car on one of those PCP's. The value of the car and interest is added to the amount of debt my wife has. This has never previously an issue, but now it is.

Any advice as to what to do, the interest charges make it difficult to stomach it. Would anyone look to a secure loan, as she was refused an unsecured loan. My wife is in a stable job (if there is such as thing) bringing home around £2k per month. I have just started a new job, so will need time to establish better credit history, although at present it rates as I am 960 but my wife is 609. The advice we have been given is to ride the storm, but with £3000 plus a year in interest the voyage may be a long one.

Thanks for reading

CLAPTON

It would seem the debt was accrued on family spending.
People on maternity leave don't usually have a very high income.

Maybe you need to sit down together and work out a proper budget taking your new family situation into account.
as good format is here
http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html
the above will also help work out how much to can afford to repay the debt.

The lowest APR loan will probably be one secured on the house... you could try your mortgage company and see what they say
You could try to see if the mortgage company offer payment holidays to help you pay more off the CC debts
You could try to get low life of balance CC and transfer the debts over (probably best for you to do this as your credit rating is better.
And/or try for an unsecured loan.

In any event make sure you pay the minimum payment allowed on each debt except the one with the highest APR..on that pay as much as posssible as this will mean the lowest interest paid and the debt settled the earliest.