When is it time to say enough is enough?

Ellieseleven

For the last 4 years my OH has been trying to build a gardening business but for the last 2 years we have had the most horrendous time due to recession and a family member who came into the business to help out and then became greedier and greedier before baling out on us. We found ourselves living on credit cards hoping that things would get better and we would be able to re-pay them ROFL!

For the last few months OH's business has started to take some money but we are struggling to meet our commitments each month and not having a steady income is putting a huge burden on us.

I have managed to make minimum payments on all our CC's so far and we are not in arrears with anything but I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this up.

With the help of this forum I have cut back everywhere I can, e-bayed everything in the house worth e-baying until we now have no luxuries or treats.

This is so depressing and my emotions are all over the place, I can't concentrate on work, don't feel like doing anything and just want to find a way out.

I have written down all the payments that I have made over the last 6 months and the amount of interest applied and on one card we have paid £700 but only £80 has come off the balance!

I am very tempted to go down the DMP route but our stumbling block is the business account and whether we can move this as well as our current account.

Also we want to sell our house and downsize but now is not the time to do it and we will lose a lot of money if we do it now but what happens if you are on a DMP and need another mortgage?

Sorry for waffling but I'm trying to find the best way to get our life back

Thanks

claudia123

Hi there....and welcome.....my hubby too is a Landscape Gardener and i know how rough it has been ....we too lived like that and have had to enter a dmp with Payplan......i will try and give you advise as best i can

1. if you enter into a dmp, your credit rating will go bang and you will probably find it hard to get a new mortgage...my mortgage is up for renewal in Feb 2011 and we will have to just stay with the mortgage lender that we are with at the moment

2. I have found that my hubbys business account has escaped the vultures and seems to be seperate. although i can only comment on my own experience..we business bank with abbey and we also have debts with them......i paid in a small amount of money first to test it and since then ive paid quite a lot in and theyve never touched it



Hope this helps

Fitzer2000

Hi Ellies, I'm afrain I can't answer the business account query but with regards to the cc debt, when did you take the cc out? If it was before April 2007 then there may you may be able to go down the "Unenforcibility" route. If you get a chance take a look at Never In Doubts "Unenforcibility & Templates" thread and see if any of the process flows relate to you! Good luck and thanks for posting!

Ellieseleven

Oh Claudia, Thank you! We also business bank with the Abbey and it is this that has put me off moving our account.

We currently live in a 4 bedroom house which is now too big for us and we will need to downsize at some point so I'm not sure if we will be stuck here in the future if we can't get a mortgage

Ellieseleven

Thank you for your reply Fitzer, we have had most of our credit cards for a long time and used to use them sensibly! I will certainly look down the un-enforceability route

Thanks again