SOA - gambling addict at rock bottom

drchump

Hi all,

First time posting to the site, and coincidentally the first time I have owned up to myself about the state of my finances and how I need to get them sorted. Apologies if any forum etiquette is broken, have only just found the site.

I guess a little background may be of interest. I took up gambling for fun about 8 years ago, got smart taking advantage of all the free signups etc, and then got hooked. Wont go into a long and drawn out story about it but suffice it to say that I am living proof that it could happen to anyone. I have a PhD in psychology, am an expert in how people interact with computers, taught probability and statistics for a living, am not a strong believer in any religion and yet still managed to fall into all the classic mistakes of a gambling addict. I have lied, hidden, stolen from my partner and now jeopardised everything.

Listen kids, Gambling is bad for you. Be very careful not to slip into it...

Anyway, abuse welcome, sympathy not deserved, practical help required. The good news is that I imagine this case study presents an interesting challenge for all of you experts out there. I just hope its not an insurmountable one!

So here goes with my SOA:

Summary:
We bought our house in joint names 2 years ago. For much of that time I was only temporarily employed and was not contirbuting to bills (in actual fact I was of course actively destroying our savings and getting us into debt). However, I am not sure if this can be easily evidenced, though it would be fairer and better if the house was owned solely by my wife.

We purchased the house for 140,000 and it is probably of similar value now.

Our mortgage was for £100,000 and six months ago I put an additional secured loan with the same company over 5 years on it, which makes my present mortgage payment actually a combination of the mortgage and secured loan. We are due to remortgage at the 1st November.

We have a 15,000 overdraft in joint names, and I have credit cards totalling around 31,000, loans to 11,000 (ending end of next year) and overdrafts to 5,700. This is all unsecured.

Complications are:

1. my wife has only just found out about all this and is understandably concerned about allowing herself to be put any further at risk.

2. We had planned on having a baby soon and my wife would like to stop working in about a year to do so (debt is not time dependent but biology is). At this point I would become the sole earner.

3. We are needing to move house within the next 4 months.

4. I already have a poor credit rating and cannot open any new credit accounts.

Income (Monthly):
My salary: 2500
Wifes salary: 2000

Outgoings (estimated and rounded):
Mortgage (including additional loan): 900
Council tax: 100
Food: 200
Broadband: 16
BT Phone: 35
Moble Phones: 90
TV licence: 15
House insurance: 25
Travel insurance: 5
Water: 15
Car Insurance: 50
Car tax: 15
Car repairs: 20
Pets: 25
Petrol: 250
Travel: 350 (just me getting to work)
Recreation: 100
Clothes: 100
Health: 25
Misc: 200

Total = 2531 (feel free to point out things I have missed).


Debts:

joint:
Mortgage: 100,000 (ends November 2034)
Additional secured loan (ends April 2011): 20 000
Overdraft: 15,000 (APR: 14%?)

personal:
Loans:
Smile: 3900, (320 pcm until Sep 07)
Egg: 7300, (470 pcm until Dec 07)

Overdrafts:
Smile: 500 (interest FREE)
First Direct: 200 (APR: 10.9%)
NatWest: 5000 (APR: 15%)

Credit Cards (min payment):
Halifax: 11,000 (250)
Goldfish: 2,100 (50)
NatWest: 2,800 (100)
Smile: 4,722 (100)
Abbey: 2,800 (100)
MBNA: 4,100 (100)
Capital One: 3,100 (100)

There is no more than £500 available credit in any of these accounts.

Debt repayments:

At the moment everyone is charging interest, and I am only making minimum payments. These roughly equate to 800 per month + 800 to the loans.

FINAL SUMMARY:

Ok, at this point it is over to you. I understand that my wife is not legally obliged to contribute towards my personal unsecured debt, and that when presenting a budget to my creditors I can show what costs are mine. I imagine there are a few ways to go, have been listening to info on IVAs and Debt Management Plans but am unclear of the best solution. Number 1 is I need to somehow get the interest stopped.

I hope this is an appropriate post for this board, it took long enough to write! Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any comments or helpful advice you can provide.

Cheers,

DrChump

PS. I start GA meetings on Thursday, and have already taken practical steps to avoid relapse.

PPS. If anyone reading this is in a similar position but is still keeping things secret feel free to drop me a line. It really is a bad place to be.

PPPS. My Wife and family are the best in the world.

DizzyAng

Just wanted to say welcome. You will receive valuable advise from more experienced msers very soon. Well done on admitting the problems - you are almost half way there already! Good luck :j

Tashja

Hi

I am not really to good with these things but someone who knows more will be along to help soon I am sure ((hugs))

Just a couple of bits from me :-

1) Travel £5 - Is this necessary or can it be cancelled save £60 per year
2) What is covered in the £200 misc each month ??
3) Are the mobile phones PAYG or are you tied to a contract ??
4) Do you know the %rates for your CC's ??
5) Is the £350.00 for public transport !?!

T xx

kickingkay

hey drchump,
neing a gambler myself i know your situation well, however im not in a posisition to tell you the best way to shuffle or reduce your debt and to be honest my concern or feeling would be you can not gamble at the moment due to not having spare funds????? i know a very good fellow gambler friend has
the theroy
remove any one of the following:
place money or time
you can stop but when you have all 3 again the temptation is always there, it is for me and it always will be, but you are going to GA so good luck there
have you tried contacting the credit card companies askiing for a payment break for the time being asking for lower % rates the other thing i did was contatc my mortgage company and change from a repayment to an % only for the time being this saved me 200 quid a month
anyway welcome and stick around there are some very clever people who can best advise with your SOA
klare xx

Whits

I understand that you look at all the figures and start panicking but I really don't think it's all that bad.

I think the biggest problem is that you have a fairly high income and consequently, you have been living to your means.

Congratulate yourself on realising and owning up to your problems and congratulations to your wife for not killing you

I would agree with the monthly cost of mobile phones, it seems very high.

Petrol and travel expenses at £600 seems way over the top, could you give more details.

And most of all, we are all here to support so good luck.

Let's face things, we're all here due to money issues, you're not alone.

lynzpower

hi there and welcome :wave:

Without the APRs on the cards its difficult to be able to advice on these, however,

Outgoings (estimated and rounded):
Mortgage (including additional loan): 900
Council tax: 100
Food: 200 ( for 2? you can cut this down to 100 pcm with some effort have a look at Old Style board for cooking & cleaning on the cheap)
Broadband: 16
BT Phone: 35 ( does this have a call package? Cancel, take to land line only then try Primus 2 (free evening & weekend calls to LL'S, for free! )
Moble Phones: 90 ( these need to be pulled to the smallest package available if you cant go onto PAYG)
TV licence: 15 ( this is more like 11)
House insurance: 25
Travel insurance: 5( do you need this right now?)
Water: 15
Car Insurance: 50 ( HAVE YOU CHEcked this is cheapest )
Car tax: 15
Car repairs: 20
Pets: 25 ( per month? What have you got?)
Petrol: 250 ( :eek: OMG this is SO high. At the very least i hope you are getting clubcard points by buying petrol at tescos, but think about every journey, consider whether you HAVE to drive can you walk/ take coach etc)
Travel: 350 (just me getting to work) ( on trains??!! :eek:)
Recreation: 100 ( tihs might have to stop im afraid)
Clothes: 100 ( this is a bit muhc too for th time being)
Health: 25 ( prescriptions?)
Misc: 200 ( whats this for)

youll be as well starting a spend diary, write down every penny you spend, you should see where the money goes.

southernscouser

Yo doc! Well done for facing up to your problems! :T

My advice would be to speak to someone like the CCCS. Contact details can be found at the bottom of this thread.

Just quickly glancing over your figures there are a few savings to make.

Your food costs can be cut in half. Have a look through the oldstyle board. The peeps over there know every trick in the trade for squeezing every extra penny out of your shopping bill!

Mobiles £90! :eek: Are you on the most efficient price plans? Getting the most free minutes and texts? Are these business related? If not it should be feasible to cut these in half! :think:

BT phone £35! If your getting the best deal on your mobile you should really be able to use them instead of the land line. Have a look on the home phones board for ways of making cheaper calls though!

Your travel and petrol come to £600 a month! Might be a daft question but is there no way of cutting one or the other?

Recreation/clothes/misc £400 a month! Hope this doesn't sound too harsh but this has to be cut back! Ideally by half again if not more! The misc I'm presuming is what you can't account for. Start a spending diary. Every day note down every single penny you spend and on what. I've been doing it for 10 months now and is a real eye opener. Also after a year it gives you a good idea of how to budget properly. Even when I'm debt free I'm gonna carry on with it as it's a great way to check what your money goes on. The problem with bank statements is it only says ATM - £50! What it doesn't tell you is it's £1 on a coffee here, £3 on an overpriced sandwich there! :rolleyes:

Are you tied in to your boradband contract? If not you can get it cheaper. It might only be by a pound or two but it all adds up.

moozie_2

Hi there and welcome

Just wanted to say well done on facing your issues and seeking help. It may get harder before it gets easier but you have your wife and family around you which is very important.

Some great suggestions already, hope you decide what's useful for you. I would suggest contact Payplan, national debt line or CCCS, they are charities dedicated to help people in financial difficulties. They don't charge and they are able to make negotiations with your creditors. Their contact details are here
http://www.payplan.com/
http://www.cccs.co.uk/
http://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk/

Best of luck and keep us posted

drchump

Hi Folks,

Wow - 50 views in less than 50 mins! Now if I only I had a pound for every...

Seriously - thanks for all the kind words.

Anyway. Some quick answers before I read all those posts in detail.

Travel is ridiculously expensive: presently I live in York but work in London. Hence the need to move house. I am now going to be crashing at friends but will still need some sort of commute. Petrol is mainly my wifes commute, which is about 40 miles each way, plus general car use. So these figures are real guesses right now, although at the moment if I was to get a monthly train ticket to my place of work it would be 1200 pounds per month.

Mobile phones. We both have contract mobiles with about 9months to run. Mine is actually on a 12mth cashback offer so providing I can follow the terms correctly I should receive a rebate of £480 over the year. I think my wifes is actually lower than stated but it is probably not far off at the moment.

Misc etc. Until I have done a full monthly budget for a couple of months then I cant be sure what I have forgotten or missed out. I figured it would be better to look on the down side and hopefully get a nice surprise.

CLAPTON

from your figures :

income = 4,500

spending = 2,351

amount available for debt repayment = 2,149 per month

debt repayment =800+800 =1,600 per month

so after spending and minimum debt repayment you have £549 per month spare.

the first thing is this actually what happens? if it does then you can simply pay your debts using this money and by reducing your spending

if, in practice you dont have 500 spare at the end of the month then you need to find out why;

a. start a spending diary (both your and OH) and write down everything you spend.... at the moment all your spends are round figures so are presumably guesses but you can improve on this.... fortunately there is lots of spare in your budget

b. also think about all the yearly, one offs you spend.

c. you have made no provision for repaying the overdrafts ... allowing say 2% per month will add about 450 to debt repayments


Things you can cut down on :
mobile phones at 90 is huge should easily be able to reduce this
recreation at 100 is quite generous
clothes at 100 is excessive and both of you must have a fairly full wardrobe already..surely you could easily half this
what does miscellaneous at 200 include...you need to itemise this.

things you may have left out : gas/electricity, holidays, presents etc although your 200 miscellaneous may contain some of this .

based on the information supplied it seems that you can afford to repay your debts. you need to review your budget carefully and reduce un- necessary spending.

PeachPickle

Hi drchump

I'm a bit lacking in advice I'm afraid, but I'll echo everyone about the spending diary - it's a bit ridiculous how useful that is! Makes you think about everything you buy!

Well done for taking the first step :T