Anyone fancy a mutual support partner?

I_was_a_fool

Welcome poppy39! This is a great site , with great people & advice and Im sure in a few months you will be well on the road to being debt free. There are ups and downs to begin with, but so long as you start to feel in control, you will get through it.

Hugs, talk soon

Sharon

I_was_a_fool

Congratulations Tracey, that is great news!!

XXX

Sharon

JoJo_Sparkly

OOoO Tracey What Fantastic News!

CONGRATULATIONS

Jojo

JoJo_Sparkly

Hi Poppy

Welcome aboard, I'm sure you'll get plenty of support here and no matter how bad the situation seems - you know that the hardest bit has happened and you've woken up to debt and are determined to do something about- Go for it girl!

Good luck with the big picture - and no matter how awful it may seem - there's always someone who owes more!!!!!

Look forward to hearing how you get on.

Good luck

Jojo

Poppy39_2

Congratulations TinyToy

Right, I've started writing down the debts (very scary), have bought a book to keep as a spending diary and a folder to put all the threatening letters in. Before I post it all on here, is there a magic formula for working out the debt free date?

I've not budgeted since I was a teenager and I'm gutted I'm back in the position that I need to now. Last year was a bad year which has resulted in our current mess (two businesses went under, one our fault, one not our fault).

I'm quite looking forward to keeping an eye on what we spend... in a sadistic sort of way

Once I've worked out all the debts, and debt free date, do I just put the details in my signature and change them as I go along?

Many thanks for the support

Poppy39 x

tinytot143

Poppy

You can do a SOA (State of affairs) which i think you can find here

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

The snowball website is also on there which works out your debt free date!!!!!!
You can do it on here and then we can all try to help you with your current situation.

Don't let it get you down. You can sort it x x x :grouphug: and were all here to help you along the way x x x

Tracey x x

hypno06

Congratulations Tracey :T - when is the baby due?

Welcome Poppy, we will support you as much as we can!

hope everyone else is ok - I paid £100 from ebaying bits off our debt today so that felt good. Have amended my signature accordingly and so far everything is going according to plan. I am just wondering how I can keep the momentum going.

DD is starting to eat again and we got her to Karate last night, although she complained of pain in her legs which I had to explain was due to the lack of food. Still, small steps in the right direction.

Jo Jo, have you made any progress regarding the remortgage? Although our fixed rate doesn't come to an end for ages, I am interested to know whether you hit any stumbling blocks.

Have a good day all! Waiting for the snow to arrive here!

Poppy39_2

Wow! After months and months of nasty letters, I just phoned Abbey and told them I couldn't pay... they've accepted £30 per month and have freezed all the charges and interest! If only I'd done that in September I'd have saved hundreds of pounds in interest and charges...

I've filled in most of the Snowball spreadsheet - amazing at the amount of interest I'll be paying

I know this probably isn't the 'done' thing, but I haven't included any secured loans in my calculation. I can't overpay on the secured loans so I'm concentrating on the expensive things first that I can do something about. Hope that makes sense?

So, based on the approx figures I have £37k of debt and will be debt free in 2014. With secured loans this figure is over 60k but I'm going to do this in two stages as I said.

Once you sit down and decide on doing something it's amazing how much more positive you feel isn't it? I think I might be going OTT though... I've done a spreadsheet for food shopping - including menus

Many thanks for your help and support. If anyone is reading this and feeling as low and desperate as I have for the last few months then register and join in

P x

tinytot143

Hiya Hypno06 - Not sure when baby is due!!!!! August /sept I think
wE HAVE SAVED LOADS OF STUFF FROM WHEN HAD LITTLE GIRL 3 YEARS AGO SO WILL BE SAVING A BIT OF MONEY THERE BUT HUSBAND WANTS A NEW PRAM!!!!

SORRY MY CAPS LOCK IS STUCK!!!!

JoJo_Sparkly

Hi There Gang

Hope everyone's well and staying positive.

Tiny Tot there's nothing as exciting as new baby news - good luck to you and your other half - what a lovely event to look forward to - we'll be with you all the way!

Hypno - great news on the ebay stuff - it's so good to see that debt figure going down isn't it? As to my re-mortgage enquiries; well I'm quite up beat about it at the mo - I got in touch with a mortgage broker that deals with debtors etc and told them the full gory picture. I had a telephone appointment on Monday night to go through my SOA and debts etc and she was really confident that there were plenty of good deals available at that my prospects were pretty good- I do have about 40K equity in the house and could release some of that to reduce the scary figure on my dmp and that way I could either change to an IVA or reduce many of the years on my DMP. I'm waiting to hear back from then in the next couple of days to get firm figures etc so fingers crossed on that one.

Poppy, I'm really pleased you've had an early success with Abbey - it really spurs you on to going for it when ccs are reasonable. What a great start. I think you're right about secured loans -as long as you are meeting payments they stay out of the picture and you work on all the other bits.

Sharon - How's you Olympic Challenge?

I finally heard back from the Woolwich today regarding bank charges . I had an account with them throughout the 90's and switched to First Direct in 2004. I thought they had charged me about £400 but the letter today shows that the charges were actually over £1000 I'm gobsmacked So first thing tomorrow they're getting the next letter in the claim back your bank charges steps and I'm going to charge interest on the amount as well - as they were really horrid when I moved to another bank.

Finally got paid for my mystery shopping, so the kids will be able to eat again! and managed to pick up another job for next month - though there's not much around at the mo.

Have got a few bits on ebay this week - but only small things - still every little helps.

Catch you all later

Jojo