I know it's late but...

lynzpower

IS there any reason why your wife doenst work? A part time job would really help you out here,

Additionally, look at those APRs, I suggest you amalgamate your cards into a Low life of balance CC. Its no wonder you feel you are getting nowhere, that interest is sky high!

What have you got to sell? Do ebay or a car boot, and get some extra pennies coming in and pay them off your credit cards!

earwig

hi dont add to your mortages why turn unsecured debt into secured debt rember when the rates go up on your mortage which they will it will be harder to pay off try and find out whats happen with the 5 hundred pounds you have left each month and see if you can pay more of your debts this way remortgaging is no differnt to a secured loan and we all know what a bad idea that is and also if house prices drop could you then be left with a mortage worth more than your house

tyllwyd

Looking at the situation you are in, with four small children, I can understand completely why your wife would find it difficult to work, and £599 doesn't look like much to buy food, clothes etc for everybody.

If it was me, I would agree with the advice to look at your mortgage. If you can extend the term to bring down the monthly payments, OK you will pay more on the mortgage overall, but since you have huge credit card debts sitting there already, if you can bring those down more quickly then that will balance out some of the extra interest on the mortgage.

lynzpower

guess the lightbulb moment occurred about a year ago: hopefully you can see from the numbers below that we have since trimmed out all the excessive expenditure (SKY etc, big mobile bills) since then. However debt has risen to a max in July and now only slowly decreasing. We badly need some advice on being debt free asap.

Hi there this also worries me, in that you say that debt has recently risen to as max. Why is this? ONly I wouldnt be securing the debt, unless I was ABSOLUTELY certain that debt wouldnt be run up again.

Little_Miss_Winner

Hi and welcome.:hello:

People on these boards generally don't advise to consolidate loans onto your mortgage reasons being that you must be overspending in certains areas to accumulate the debt you have. By adding these debt to your mortage you generally wont be better off (ok yes per month) but not in the long term as you wouldnt have addressed why/where the money was spent. Thus turning into one viscious circle. you consolidate, you spend. You end up back in debt witin a couple of years, and back to square one, with huge cc's and loans.
Most of us have been there done that, got the tshirt......

BUT:-
I have just fed all your monthly payments, amouts outstanding, and aprs into the snowball calculator and here is the result!;-

It will take you 75 months to pay off these debts if you snowball correctly. During that time, you'll pay £22,730.00 in interest.

£22k is a hell of a lot of money to spend in interest, but staying as you are and meeting all the minimum payments will take 6 and a quarter years.

Try messing about with the calculator, for example i have just tried adding an extra £100 per month between your debt and it knocks you time down to 62 months, and takes about 5k off the interest.

https://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx

As long as you are armed with all the knowledge you can get, re; snowballing, 0% credit cards, ?adding to mortgage.
It is then you will reach a decision.

I do agree that you should also keep an eye on your £599 to see where it goes each month.

Hth
pot

gallygirl

If you can't get a lower APR from a new lender you'll just have to get one from your existing cards. There is a forum on here for people who have done just that - sorry, can't find link at the mo. Basically you just phone them up, say you're thinking of changing - they won't know the truth..... and ask what they can do.

Remortgaging would be the easiest option - but potentially most dangerous - would you trust yourself to cut up cards & never get in same state again? Would you overpay to reduce mortgage etc?

If I was you I'd try the reduced rate option, wait 6 months then apply for a new card. BTW have you checked your credit rating recently? May be useful.

Galeboy

Thanks Pania.....

pania wrote:

Hi Galeboy,

you're existing mortgage repayment sounds incredibly high to me. did you have credit problems that meant you had to go to an adverse lender or have you left the mortgage running a long time?

xx

No. It's C&G running at 5.75%.

Galeboy

Hi Lynz,

lynzpower wrote:

IS there any reason why your wife doenst work? A part time job would really help you out here,

Additionally, look at those APRs, I suggest you amalgamate your cards into a Low life of balance CC. Its no wonder you feel you are getting nowhere, that interest is sky high!

What have you got to sell? Do ebay or a car boot, and get some extra pennies coming in and pay them off your credit cards!

Reason wife doesn't work is 4 kids under 5 years of age!!!


The low life of balance rate sounds great...but it is going to be impossible to get one with the level of outstanding credit I have. It's a viscious circle....companies won't take on a risk like this at low APR's.

Galeboy

Thanks tyllwyd (and everyone else!),

I think that extending the term of the mortgage but not increasing the level of secured debt is maybe the best way. I can then use the extra money per month to snowball into the highest interest debts. The (comparatively) short duration of the mortgage was when I had this vision of being mortgage free.....but there's not much point being mortgage free if you CC debts are as big as a mortgage!


I also have some assets (second car, which is off the road) worth about £3k, which I will throw at the Marbles CC.

Thanks again everyone....I will keep you all posted.
G.

CFC

Galeboy wrote:

Thanks tyllwyd (and everyone else!),

I think that extending the term of the mortgage but not increasing the level of secured debt is maybe the best way. I can then use the extra money per month to snowball into the highest interest debts. The (comparatively) short duration of the mortgage was when I had this vision of being mortgage free.....but there's not much point being mortgage free if you CC debts are as big as a mortgage!


I also have some assets (second car, which is off the road) worth about £3k, which I will throw at the Marbles CC.

Thanks again everyone....I will keep you all posted.
G.

I'm in total agreement with this. Extend the mortgage term, do not take out more money to pay off the ccs, but use the extra money to kill off those loans.
A vision of being mortgage free, is quite honestly with the level of earnings you have, and presumably wanting a reasonable standard of living (hence the use of ccs) is just a dream. And to be frank, once you've paid off your CCs, it will probably stay a dream with a young family.

Once the ccs start coming down, stop and think. Hey, it's time to do some financial planning! That means you and your best beloved sit down and talk about what you both want out of life, what your ambitions are - and then design your finances around that. If you both have the dream of being mortgage free, and cutting down working when you're 53, and you're willing to live like a family of poverty-struck cats in order to get there, you can remortgage again with a shorter term. If you want to bring your children up to have particular family experiences, you can budget how much you're going to need for that and organise your finances around that instead. If you want a midlife crisis sports car and several exotic holidays when you have your mid life crises, you can plan for that.

This way your dreams will have a basis in reality and you can make them come true.