Advice Needed!

whitey1984

Hi there, I am new to this site and was looking for a bit of advice with my debt problems!

I am currently paying out around £500 per month to different companies for loans, credit cards and other sorts of finance i have borrowed. Can any one suggest a way of either consolidating all my payments and reducing them without affecting my credit rating?

I have looked at different options such as IVA's on debt free websites but am not too sure how these work and the implications of these?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

southernscouser

Hi whitey and welcome to MSE! :beer:

Can I ask firstly why you want to consolidate them into a smaller monthly payment?

Is it because you are struggling each month to pay or is it to free up more money for you to enjoy yourself? :think:

There are pro's and con's to consolidation but in my opinion the cons outweigh the pro's more than 95% of the time. By getting a consolidation loan you aren't identifying where the problem lies. I must have done that route about 3 or 4 times and each time I did it I simply ran up the credit carda again. Why? Simply because I never actually figured that I was spending more than I earn. :doh:

Also you will almost certainly end up paying more in the long run!

Why not post a SOA on here (see this thread for a guide) and we can get a clearer picture of your situation.

Also take a look at this snowballing calculator. It's a great bit of kit that tells you how long it would take you to become debt free depending on how much you paid each month to your debts.

Jolinar

Take a look at this thread:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=107280

If you post a statement of affairs (SOA) as detailed in the above thread then people will be able to offer some advice to you and your particular situation. In general though the advice will be do not consolidate, I managed to consolidate my way to over £30000 worth of debt.

Hope that helps!