Mama's getting her groove back...

jodes

Hi, everyone!
I'm Jodes, I'm 31 and live with my husband, my two kids (DS is 8 and DD is 4), my mum, and our 4 dogs :eek:.
The past year has been tough, my dad had a horrible illness and during his 4 months in hospital, I struggled to cope with juggling everything, so signed up to a DMP with Gregory Pennington.
My dad sadly died in April last year, and we immediately put our house on the market as my mum wanted us to live with her. She borrowed £46k to build an extension so we could all have our own bedrooms. We're paying the full amount of this loan.
Anyway, we just sold our house after 8 months on the market, and had to accept a fair bit less than what it's worth (£15k less, which I'm led to believe is quite good in the current market). We were hoping that after clearing our mortgage and fees, we'd have enough to clear our DMP so that we could work on starting to pay off the mortgage at mum's.
It turns out that although I've been with GP for a year (and given them £300 a month for that year), my debt has only reduced by £1k :eek:.
I'm hoping that they will negotiate to get some percentage of my debts written off, so that my tiny profit from the house sale will reduce the debt a good amount. Then I think I will leave them and take on the rest of the debt myself. I'm so inspired by diaries and the PAD thread on here, that I'm certain I can get myself debt free much quicker than they can!

Anyhoo, here's to my debt free journey, wish me luck! :beer:

jodes

Note to self - don't start a diary at midnight, too tired and missed out loads of info!

ABOUT ME

I'm about to start a new job, working 20 hours a week in supported accomodation. My husband works full time as an engineer. My mum is retired.
Our debt is currently sitting at approx £15k, and is in the hands of Gregory Pennington.
The mortgage on our sold house is £144k, and we've been on interest only for a year, so the balance hasn't come down any.
The mortgage on my mum's house (extension only) is £46k, the rest of the house is owned outright.

We sold our house for £155k, so after paying off the mortgage and £4k legal fees, we'll be left with about £7k to pay off debts.
My husband's car is about to be sold, and we figure we'll get about £4k for that, so that gives us £11k to chuck at the debt.

After that, any debt that is left, I'm planning to take on by myself. Once we've paid off the credit card debt, I'm going to start saving hard to get the mortgage at my mum's paid off as quick as we can. I'm aiming for 5 years.

It's hard to do a proper SOA at the moment because we're so in the middle of everything. My new job doesn't start until next month, the house is handed over on 1st April, so we won't have the funds to pay our debt until then, and for the next 2 months, we still have expenses such as mortgage, house insurance, phone, electric and gas etc at the old house, as well as paying our way at my mum's.

We do all our banking with Thinkbanking, who are owned by Gregory Pennington. They charge me £20 per month for the pleasure of banking with them :mad:

Just opened two new accounts, both with Bank of Scotland. One will be a joint current account, and one will be a joint savings account. The plan will be for my wages to be paid directly into the savings account, and for us to live off hubby's wage. I'll also use internet banking to make a PAD into the savings account, which I'll use at the end of each month to throw at the debt.

Like I say, it's hard to have a proper plan at the moment because everything is so up in the air, but for the time being, we're just spending as little as possible and biding our time until we can get a solid plan in action.