Debt, Marriage and Life

xkronix

Hello all!!

Im new on here, but I've been browsing aroud the sit for a few weeks now. I was just wondering if you could help me out with any tips/suggestions? Im £2772 in debt, I'm getting married on August 16th 2008 and Im only earning £100 per week.

The figures below seem quite small because me and my fiance halve all the bills, and as it's my debt, it's not fair on her if i asked her to help me out.

Monthly Incomings:

My salary - £430
Benefits - £0

Total - £430

Monthly Outgoings:

Mortgage/Rent - £145
Council Tax - £17
Gas - £0
Electric - £40
TV License - £12
Sky £0
Phone - £0
Food - £100
Car Insurance - £0
Petrol - £40
Life Insurance £0

Total: £354

Debt was from loan with HSBC, now passed onto creditors- £2772
not paying back debt yet as dont have the money

lynzpower

a few things
why are you on such a low income

can you get benefits to top up? I would have thought youd be able to get HB or working tax credit?

xkronix

My dad has a business that i help run too but recently i've had to reduce my hours from 5days to 3 per week because of lack of money. I've been down my local job-center, looked in the local papers and around town for part time jobs but there are NONE at the moment.

I'm not claiming benefits at the moment because me and my fiance live together and including her income, we are over the threshhold for claiming council-tax/rent rebate.

lynzpower

are there any full time jobs going, and could you carry on working for your dad part time ( evenings/ weekends)

xkronix

I think I might have to, it's just I hate working for other people and so I came on here to see if anyone had any alternative ideas for getting income. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm lazy, I just don't like being told what to do all the time and doing the same thing day after day.

tyllwyd

To be perfectly honest, if you are only earning £430 per month for three days per week, my best advice would be to cut your losses and look for a new job. If you were working five days, that's still only £716 per month , which really isn't much to live on nowadays. If you desperately want to work in your family business, are you organising some kind of marketing campaign to try to get more business?

What sort of work are you qualified to do/interested in?

xkronix

we have acctually, this week got someone in to do the marketing for us to bring in more work. Currently Im designing a contacts manager for us to market and sell when it's complete, which when it's done will bring us in BIG money and I'm not talking just £1,000/£2,000 like we get for the other work either, so if I cut my losses and do something else I'll be at quite a disadvantage in the future.

chevalier

There are some sources of income on the web. If you only work 3 days, then you could try mystery shopping. There is a thread on here called 'got my first 2 mystery shopping assignments today' which has at least one web link in it for this type of work.

There are also online companies who do surveys that either pay in vouchers or money. The voucher ones would not help with your debt per se, but would help to pay for other things and thus free up your money.

Do you have things (especially new at the moment) that you could put on ebay to raise some short term cash.

I am guessing that you do some sort of computer work (?). Could you put an add in the local paper, parish magazine to advertise this to get extra work for the company or for yourself individually?

Ref the actual debt, you can write to them offering a token payment of £1. Keep doing this each month. In that way they cannot claim that you are abandoning the debt.

hope this helps
chev

OneSpike

xkronix wrote:

we have acctually, this week got someone in to do the marketing for us to bring in more work. Currently Im designing a contacts manager for us to market and sell when it's complete, which when it's done will bring us in BIG money and I'm not talking just £1,000/£2,000 like we get for the other work either, so if I cut my losses and do something else I'll be at quite a disadvantage in the future.

Hi xkronix and welcome. I can really relate to your situation above. My husband's business has a higher turnover, but even so we're in the same situation of having the potential to earn megabucks and so reluctant to cut our losses. It's actually quite a successful business at what it does, it just needs to pull in more customers. Unfortunately we can't afford a salesperson but it's exactly what we need.

I should think finding work the other two days would be quite possible. I understand about not wanting to work for other people but there comes a point...

whatatwit

What is the minimum payment on your debt.
based upon your income/outgoings you have got some surplus money to pay each month.

Whilst it is not 'fair' to ask your partner to pay off your debts, as your income has reduced due to no fault of your own, is she not offering to help out?

Does she know how much you owe?

climbgirl

xkronix wrote:

I think I might have to, it's just I hate working for other people and so I came on here to see if anyone had any alternative ideas for getting income. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm lazy, I just don't like being told what to do all the time and doing the same thing day after day.

Not many people do! But that's a fact of life I'm afraid. We'd all love to be doing our dream jobs but reality kicks in and you realise there's bills to pay and you need to be earning money doing something you love a little bit less...

If there's no part-time work around, start looking for full-time work. It's all well and good waiting around for the business potential to kick in, but are you going to incur more debt while you're doing that?

Get onto recruitment agencies, make them do the legwork for you. Picking up mystery shopping etc is good, but it isn't going to raise your income enough for you to live on and pay back debt at the same time.