Need to reduce my loan repayments

KoZeN

Afternoon people.

I'll do my best to keep this as concise as possible.

My partner & I have been living in the UK for just over a year (from Ireland originally) and we intend on staying here for at least another 10 to 15 years. We are renting and are registered on the local electoral roll.

We have an outstanding loan from a credit union in Ireland which has £4k left to be repayed and we pay £150 every two weeks to this loan.
When we arrived in the UK we struggled a bit and made the stupid mistake of getting caught up in payday loans.

We have four payday loans outstanding totalling approximately £2k.
I can't afford to pay off the payday loans so I keep deferring them which costs me about £400 per month and makes zero difference to the outstanding amount, that payment simply buys me another month.

Our monthly income is approximately £2400 after tax. We are renting currently and pay £725 per month.
It was a real struggle to stay on top of our finances up until now but my partner gave birth to a beautiful baby boy three weeks ago so as you can imagine there is an even bigger strain on our finances all of a sudden.

The issue I have is this, we pay at least £700 per month on loans and it is simply crippling us.
We can't restructure the Irish credit union loan as they have an archaic system that requires you to attend the branch in person to make any changes to your repayments.

My dream situation is this: Get a loan for approx £10k, clear the credit union & the payday loans and buy & insure a car with the remainder. We can comfortably afford to repay £300 per month on a loan which would mean we won't have to worry about if there will be enough money in the account at the end of the month.

We bank with Natwest and are not able to get a loan through them for at least another three months due to the fact that we incurred a penalty charge for going below our overdraft limit (despite rectifying the situation the very same day).

I am open to all suggestions as my partner is starting to really stress over our finances and she has enough to deal with as it is with the new baby. The sooner we sort this the better as we can't afford to wait another three months.

Fire away.

dancingfairy

Have you tried a british credit union? they each have different criteria and there may not be one near you but worth a look? some do require you to save an amount with them before you borrow money from them though.
df

dancingfairy

Have you checked to see if you are getting all the benefits you are entitled to now that you have new little one - check the entitled to website - although I'm not sure what the rules are as you are originally from Ireland.
It might also be worth getting in touch with a debt charity place and see if they ave any suggestions - try CCCS or National Debtline.
df