Please help, I am so stressed out

dancingfairy

I suggest thinking carefully about your housing situation - at the moment you are in about 15k negative equity. The reason I say this is if you can do a dmp and clear the debts but if you wanted to move in the next few years then you will have the 15k negative equity to deal with ontop -now you may be able to turn that into an unsecured loan and come to some arrangement with your lender, you may not. If you were to go bankrupt and gave the house up then the negative equity would be unsecured and would fall into your bankruptcy. Now clearly I don't have a crystal ball and have no idea a) what house prices are likely to do over the next few years and b) obviously what your intentions are regarding housing and the like over the next say 5/6 years while doing the dmp and what the corresponding rent would cost you-obviously if you plan to stay in the house long term or you get on really well with a dmp and start making great inroads into the debts then it matters a lot less. I appreciate it a big decision and has a lot of variables and far reaching complications which is why you may prefer to do a dmp while you think through the bigger picture.
Certainly there are some due to personal preference/job issues that have paid off a large amount of debt with a dmp so it's very much a personal decision - just get as much info as you can regarding the various options.
Best of Luck
df

mogsi80

Thanks for the suggestions, I think we will crack on with the dmp and see how it pans out, we have no plans to move in the next 5+yrs so the negative equity is not the biggest issue for us... Plus we have a dog so not sure if we could bring him with us too..

Let's see how it all goes

mogsi80

Big OD is not far from limit, nothing on the lowest, just need to get the 350 to 300 then no charges on that one.

summerstreetallotments

I would say...be careful about the bankruptcy option...se the article in yesterday's "Guardian money" supplement...peopl are really getting a hard time on this now and your daughter will be aware of it

curlytop12

good luck with the DMP.
don't blame you wanting to hang on to the house.
have you thought any more about cutting your budget re,satellite/phones/insurances/groceries etc?
come over to the OLD STYLE BOARD sometime

mogsi80

Thanks for the comments everyone really helps having people to talk to, I would never speak to my family about this!! On the plus side my OH has got a 2nd job!! So we have another £250 to throw at our debts and if the creditors agree and freeze the interest we could have it cleared in under 4yrs.. Do people have any bad experiences with Halifax and Barclays? This is where a lot of our debt is with... Plus I can imagine that MBNA are going to be complete pigs because they are with everything else!! They certainly screwed me over on my card, never missed a payment or overlimit and they jumped my rate from 12.9 to 34.9 soon as I got near my limit, and because of this I spent a yr over my limit, thrown £4000 in payments and I've only managed to drop the card by £300.. I know I used the card but they can't do this to people can they??? Sorry rant over, bit off track there

gettingbackontrack

Hi

Glad to hear you feel better about things. I wish I'd been on this site when I finally started to tackle my debts - the support is amazing.

I can't speak for Barclays or Halifax but MBNA I can. They've been the least helpful of my credit card creditors, to be honest. I wish i'd been more on the ball - contacting them earlier, before I couldn't make the payments. They also will ring and ring you, so make sure you insist on written contact only. But, at the end of the day, I pay 0% on both accounts so I 'm pleased about that!

mogsi80

Thanks for the help I can well imagine that they would be awful, I've taken off my work and home numbers from my information and was going to ask everyone for written correspondence only as I don't think my OH would cope with constant calls.. As yet we're still making normal payments and will be til the new account is sorted (forms filled and sent today).. Then the offers will come out, tbh MBNA are only going to get £90 less than normal still getting £160 which if they kept the rates as they were then my payment would probably be this anyway!!!

snookey

Hi how about using your sales background and sell some things on ebay,car boots. Hold a clothing party with other parents and swop clothes that no longer fit your dd. Other things you could do is sell for the likes of avon, body shop ect.
Do you have a spare room to rent out. How about overseas students.

mogsi80

Hi there, we've sold quite a lot of things on eBay to help, sort of running out of things!! I thought about kleeneze or betterware but you have to pay for the books so not keen on shelling out for things, plus there seems to be a lot that come round here too, so I don't know how viable this is? I've got lots of videos that I could sell so thought about carboot sale, sold some old broken gold too but I'm at a loss at what else to sell!