Please Help

austmanic

I currently have 2 loans, one with cahoot which is flexible for £6500 paying back £150 (13.9% is think) a month but always end up taking out about £60 each month (balance is still £6500) as we dont always have enough money to pay all the bills.
The other is a car loan which i owe £5453.12 (11.9%) & at the end of the loan i will have to pay a final payment of £2143.70 which i pay £147.70 a month.

My partner doesnt have a great credit rating & i only have 2 occacsions where i have gone about 1-2 months behind on my credit card.  We werent sure if it would be a good idea to join the loans together & wether this would free up some cash each month by doing so??

We have other things we need to look at to like the credit cards. Halifax One at 12.9% has around £2950 on it & at the limit & a Mint card at 10.9% with nearly £6000.  I have one overdraft with the halifax at the limit of £475 & one with Cahoot at the limit at £500.

We have just found out i am pregnent & not having much money with just the 2 of us is making me worry & isnt helping things. We both work full time & come home with about £1400 but that covers all the credit payments & sometimes all the food & bills.  It doesnt help with the interst rate going up & the mortgage has gone up from £365 to £430 in the last 4 months.

If anyone can help or suggest anything i would really appreciate it.

Thank you is advance
K xx

DiggingOut

Joining the loans won't really help, and you are likely to have penalties if you pay off the car loan early, anyway.

No easy solutions here, especially if you don't have clean credit records. How much credit card debt do you have, and at what interest rate?

austmanic

Thanks for replying. I have added all our debts since you replied i think the only interest rates i havent put on there are the ones for the overdraft i think they are something like 5% on the halifax & im not to sure about the cahoot overdraftpossibly 6% if not more.

DiggingOut

There is nothing that jumps out at me as far as things you can do with switching debt around to help, here. Do you have any other credit cards that don't have any debt on them that you haven't been using?

The key thing is you have to change the balance between what is coming in and what you spend. Use this site, and the budgeting spreadsheet, to see where you can save, where the money is going, and search for places to cut back. Very simply, you are spending more than you can afford.

Do you smoke? That is poison to baby, to you, and to your budget.

Can you remortgage and get a cheaper mortgage, or are you tied in? Have you checked to see if you can get cheaper gas/electricity?

If you can't find a way to either increase your income somehow or decrease your spending, I think I would consider a visit to CAB or CCCS. They may be able to help you target other areas of savings.

Stop using your credit cards. If you don't have cash, don't buy. Everything you buy on the credit card you immediately start paying interest that you can't afford.

Even though the overdraft is not your most expensive debt, try to get it down a little so you don't accidentally go over the limit and have to pay outrageous fees.

austmanic

Thank you for your help.

We have been thinking about changing the mortgage but we dont really know where to start the mortgage we are on was our first & to be honest i think we took the wrong advise from an advisor & took out a flexible on but she said it was the only one we would get.

I found that hard to beleive but i thought she would know better than me.

We are with northern rock currently the rate is 6.01% but that will go up again at the end of the month with the interest rise last week. We were told we have no tie in just have to pay £95 to get out of this contract. The house we are in though is worth £54 & we borrowed £58k as it needs a lot of work doing on it.
We were also accepted for a grant from the council to help with the work but they have now said they cant pay us till next year so we're in a shell of a house which doesnt help with my mood swings....i'll get over that.

We couldnt afford to pay for any additional costs if we did change mortgages & that was one reason we had stayed with northern rock.

My partner smokes but since we found out about the pregnancy i have been trying to get him to stop because it is dead money.

Thanks for oyu help & suggestions.

Ket xxx

DiggingOut

Contact a fees-free mortgage broker. Check out the mortgages board. Payless and MortgageMan are both brokers who answer a lot of questions and would be able to help you. I think they are both on holiday right now, though, but I don't think your case is urgent.

There's a new guy, MortageXclusive (or something like that), his name's Simon, and he seems very helpful and seems to know his stuff as well. His link is in his signature line.

Frankly, I don't know whether you will be able to remortgage from what you've said, with the amount of debt you have, etc. The other thing you could do is just call your existing borrower, and say, "We are thinking about remortgaging, but wonder what you could offer us, because we've not had any problems with our current mortgage and we would be happy to stay if you can offer us a better deal than we have now."

They might not offer you their best deal for new customers, but they might give you something that would save you some money right now. And any fees would likely be minimal. Worth a try, anyway.

Yes, cigs are "dead money" in more ways than one. ;D I hope he quits.

Good luck, keep us posted, and if you have any questions, just ask.

jackdog

Hi Ket,

If its any help to you Northern Rock offer a mortgage review to their existing customers http://www.northernrock.co.uk/html/mortgages/generic/mortgage_review.asp

They might be able to help you, its worth a try.

M

austmanic

Thanks for that link, i'll have a look.

I did call them up a week ago to see if there was anything they could do as we're on the together variable mortgage & they said we would need to get the house price up to £62k before we could change mortgages. I didnt know they did a together fixed one though & they chap i spoke to didnt mention it either so i think i'll give them a ring about that.

Im going to ring the council up today about the grant & tell them that we are expecting in march & can they not at least help pay for a new roof. At the minute with the rain being as bad as it is we have a huge puddle in the attic & it has leaked through to our bedroom which will soon be the babies room. Im just hoping there is something they can do as the pg hormones arent remaining calm at the minute & its all getting on top of me.

Thanks again for you help & advise & if there is anything else you can think of please let me know.
Ket xxx

busted_2

Contact an independent and free financial adviser. They will look at a re-mortgage and will get you one, all be it from a limited pool of companies. The mortgage will not be ideal, but once your debts are cleared you will then be able to look at a better one, which your financial adviser will do for you if you ask.

You can add the cost of the survey for the mortgage to your new mortgage total but the financial adviser will advise you there.

I can't stress enough how useful the Consumer Credit Counselling Service are. They will be able to negotiate payments with your creditors for you and reduce your outgoings by doing so. Please contact them, they will help.
http://www.cccs.co.uk