A long journey ahead

bobthecat_2

Hi,

I’ve been reading posts on here for some time now and thought it was maybe time to start my own thread as a bit of a motivator.

I apologise if there are a few gaps in the story or if I ramble on too much but this is pretty complicated to explain.


In the grand scheme of things I personally don’t have a massive amount of unsecured debt. My OH debt is another story completely.

I’ll start from the beginning and try and explain the best I can.

I met my OH in Dec 2008 and since then we haven’t spend a day apart, it sounds very cheesy but I have met my soul mate and he has met his in me ( I needed to add this in because as you read on you will probably wonder why I am doing all of this).

He had recently left his wife (this was down to various reasons but mainly finances). He had always allowed her to control the finances as admits he is pretty shocking when it comes to budgeting etc. As it turned out she was pretty bad at it too. Anyway to cut a long story short the mortgage wasn’t paid for 18 months and the first he knew about it was the day the house was going to be repossessed. Fortunately for the both of them his dad stumped up £16,000 to pay the mortgage company so they could keep the house. This then opened a whole new can of worms… it turned out no bills had been paid for some time and he still doesn’t know to this day where all the money has gone. I know a lot of people will say he must have known what was going on but how could he if he never saw any paperwork and was lead to believe that all was fine. They had a joint account that both their wages we’re paid into. He eventually found all the bills and demanding letters hidden under the stairs. He tried to make their relationship work for the next year and managed to get on top of paying the bills. But I suppose after being kept in the dark for so long he felt he couldn’t carry on.

He is now kicking himself because he wasn’t involved in the finances. But he has taken control now and knows exactly when money goes in or out of his account.

They both moved out of their house soon after splitting and put it on the market. The OH was paying roughly £780 a month to his ex to cover the mortgage, secured loan, debt management plan and bills and she was paying the same. He took this opportunity to be more involved in finding out if things were being paid. After the house being on the market for 12 months there was no sign of it selling. And in that time his ex again missed payments on the mortgage and secured loan.

It got to September 2009 and we had some serious thinking to do. I already have a mortgage on my house which I lived in with lodgers and eventually with the OH moved in too. His house was sitting there empty eating away at their money each month. My OH didn’t really want to sell it either because with their past record he would find it very difficult to get a mortgage in the future plus after all the debt against the house was paid off they wouldn’t be left with very much equity. It was obvious his ex couldn’t afford to keep paying for half of everything so he asked her whether she would be happy to just take her debt (roughly £30000 that he knows about) and he would take the rest. This includes; £70,000 mortgage, £25000 secured loan, £16000 owed to his dad and his credit card debt (roughly £30000 at the time). We would then move into his (don’t judge please) and I would rent my house as it can bring in more rent. He spoke to his mortgage company but they wouldn’t change the mortgage until 6 months had passed with no missed payments.

So we have a hard slog ahead. With my OH paying for everything on the house and paying a small amount into a joint account we had set up for bills, food & petrol etc he is left with no money at the end of the month. He isn’t happy with this and it has been getting him down a lot, but the way I see it is that it’s not forever. It has now been 6 months since he has been paying the mortgage on his own and an appointment has been booked for the beginning of April to see the mortgage company to see what they can do. He is resting on them trying to sort something as he wants to borrow more on the mortgage to pay off the secured loan then he can really get down to paying off the credit cards. As it stands at the moment he is only paying £220 a month off nearly £30000 worth of debt. He has set up payment plans with each of the creditors so the interest has been frozen.

I’ll explain the figures now.

His debt:

Lloyds Credit Card: £10,040 - £70 a month
Lloyds Loan: £9,500 – £70 a month
Egg Card: £3892 - £40 a month
Goldfish: £1610 - £20 a month
Barclaycard: £2191 - £20 a month
Car loan from Dad: £1100 - £100 a month (He is trying to pay this off quickly as his dad has already lent him £16,000 for the house and it was only a short term loan as my OH needed a car to get to work)
Total: £28,333

My Debt:

Argos Card: £907 - This is on interest free for 6 months but I have a plan in place to pay this off before then.
Overdraft: £870 - I’m trying to get this down each month by not spending as much
Total: £1777

As you can see if he carries on paying at this rate it will take a long time for it all to be paid off.

The reason I’m on here really is that we both want to be debt free and I have worked out that when we are we will have over £1000 each month left over after everything has been paid. This is a lot of money and it would be great to start saving eventually and have a bit of security. I believe this is the place to get motivation for us both


Thanks

Laura

elsie52

Good luck to you both. Its a hard journey, but you will do it. The pull of having £1000 each month spare is a great motivation.

We started off owing £74k of debt, that was 2 years ago, and we are now down to £34k. It's been hard work, and we don't have a lot of luxuries, but neither do we go without anything. It's just very careful spending and saving which enables us to have got this far. We have another 23 months to go and then we will have £1500 a month spare, and that is our great motivation.

Keep posting on the boards and you will get inspiration and help from the great people on here.