Where the hell do we start?!

livingabroadverystressed

Hi,

I'm a newbie on here, and taking the first step to sorting out the mess we are in.
We moved to Australia last year, we have a mortgage on a house in the UK and have tenants paying rent, which covers the mortgage and also the loan we have with Halifax. We also have about 8k in credit card debts which we thought we'd be able to cover minimum payments from here, but due to job issues, etc, we are behind with everything.
The bank don't know we are over here, we have missed a couple of mortgage payments (caught up again) and now its all getting really stressful. I don't know where to start getting us out of this.
By the end of next month we will be in a position to cover everything as my DH has just found another (better paid) job but in the meantime what do we do?
We can't sell the house because its in negative equity so we would still have debt to pay off, so don't see the point. Its so frustrating because we waited years to get here, and now we can't fully enjoy it because this is hanging over our heads.
Can anyone advise me where to start? I can get figures later but I'm at work at the moment and this post is very much a "right, just sort it" action! We're definitely not looking at not paying back, morally its not an option.
Thanks

FOURCANDLES_2

Simple pay your mortgage and as you have said your husband starts a new job in a month offer reduced payments on your credit cards until sorted I assume you are not using the cards now you live in aus ? so they cant be increasing through spending.

mi_jardin

You say your husbands salary is going to increase soon, so all you can do until then is keep as up to date as you can. If your house is in negative equity, and you don't want to sell up now, then surely you have no choice but to carry on as you are, ie renting it out. How long does the loan have left to run? When his salary rises are you able to overpay the loan just to get rid of it sooner, or are there penalties?

isy1011

I feel for you. We were looking at emigrating to Oz but in the end decided that we were not in a good enough financial position to do it. Once we started to look into the extras we would have to pay for health insurance, fees towards schools etc etc even the fact that we would both get paid more didnt make up for it. We have 100K equity in our house so I cant help but feel that maybe you were running away in part hoping your new life was a clean slate.
I read on expat forums about lots of people doing exactly the same. I cant blame you but I do feel that maybe you need to sort out business here before starting a new life there even though you have waited years.
The good thing about Oz is there are jobs. As long as you have reliable tenants in your UK house then you are ok. I think you just need to plough money into debts and clear them, dont get sucked into that expat thing of getting a big car cos you are in a big country. Good luck.