Thanks to the wife............

full-time-mum

jenchin66 wrote:

Barney, a word of earning with Virgin Vie, it is a bigger cas outlay than you realise at first. I did Virgin about 18 months ago. You buy your kit and insurance, but the kit changes every 3 months and most things only sell if you have the product in your kit. You can win freebies based on what your sales are but I found I was spending more than I was really earning. It looks like you are earning loads but you have to buy everything, catalogues and stationary etc. Also if you are paid by customers by cash/cheque you have to pay with your credit/debit card, then pay it off your credit card statment.:rolleyes:

It also involves lots of meetings.

Good luck with sorting everything out.

Jenny

I'd echo this re: The Body Shop at Home.

I originally did Tupperware and then Body Shop. I now have 3 or 4 boxes of costmetic/bath stuff in my garage and 5 or 6 (large) boxes of Tupperware in my loft. I have been gradually selling bits and pieces at cost price but I think that I have now reached the point where I am going to have to car boot it for £1 a time :eek:
I did make some money but only around Xmas and hour for hour, it probably wasn't worth it. There are consultants out there that seem to make loadsadosh but they are very few and far between but they are the most vocal at meetings. I got fed up as I was the only one for miles around and got no support. I found that once you'd exhausted your circle of friends, things dried up.
I found that I'd buy something in for my kit and then it would be sold out and it was worthless. The tupperware wasn't so bad as you could sell your demo stuff on for more or less catalogue prices but the cosmetics, used once and then you can only sell for peanuts as an ex-sample.

One tip, is to wrap all your Xmas gift sets in cellophane so that they don't get damaged and have one product in your kit for each range for smell sampling. At least then, you have gifts at the end of the season that you can sell for a sensible amount and at least re-coup your outlay, if not make a bit of profit too.

I don't want to say don't do it, as it served a purpose for me but just go into it with you eyes open.

southernscouser

Welcome to the board sir! :beer:

Just wanted to throw my thoughts into the ring.

What concerns me is that it looks like your wife is leaving you to deal with this problem. While it's very commendable of you wanting to help her I'm worried that she won't have learnt the true lesson. She needs to herself come to grips with money. Understand budgetting, spending habits, savings, APR's. All that lot.

For me getting out of debt is not just paying off what I've borrowed. It's about taking financial responsibility. Understanding why and where you have been overspending. Learning to make your money work for you. Putting in the time and the effort which makes it so much more satisfying. There is so much to learn about money and I'm worried she will miss all of this and never really 'cure' the problem.

Like I said it's great that you want to help her and she is really going to need your support on this one but I personally think it's something she needs to be taking control of. You need to be there to 'help' her. Not do it for her.

Just my penny's worth though!

Good luck.

jenchin66

Glad it wasn't just me Mum! I sold my kit on ebay and got my money back.

barneybeagle

Thanks for the info.

Today my wife cancelled the PPI on each card so that is an immediate saving of approx. £220.00.

When I get home I will be checking out her bank statements to see how often she has been charged bank charges then I will go about recouping the charges.

Thanks for the info on Virgin Vie, Tupperware, etc. I doubt we will be going down this route. I once got stung myself with a company called Quorum flogging alarms. I made a loss of about £100 or so, which could have been worse, but I got out very early on.

It may sound like I am doing all the running around, but this is because I've always dealt with the finances. In the last few days the missus I would say has learnt a great deal. Basically I'm on the phone to her and directing her in what to do. She is then taking this up with the lenders etc as I am working offshore at present which is quite frustrating.

Today I got a morgage quote from London & Country Mortgages. It went along the lines of £88,000 mortgage (£28,000 existing mortgage + £60,000 wife debt). This means that we will be paying back £136,802.51 back in total with the interest.
I was offered the five year fixed deal that I wanted which includes no penalty on payback of lumpsums up to 10% per year. This was at a rate of 5.10%. This would cost £711.29 per month for 15 years.

However I've done some sums and I think now I can bring the mortgage required down to £83,000 and pay it over 10 or 12 years which will make a monthly payment of between £825 - £960. I've asked the broker to come back with some new figures so I know exactly what we will be paying.

To me this is the simplest method to go about it, but not as I can understand the most cost effective of which I want.

To reiterate I will soon have five debts to pay. The loan which will have £17,982.14 to pay over the next 3.5-4.0 years and four credit cards all around the £9-10,000 mark.

I am good with my money and quite disciplined. Now I'm in a corner I'll be even better as I will have a target, but after reading through all your posts I still cannot really come up with a clear plan apart from the remortgage which will most likely be the dearest of them all.

1. How can I reduce the Barclays loan? Do you think they would reduce the interest payment to 5% or less if I tell them I am moving it elsewhere or paying it off (ie with the remortgage)?

2. Do you think my wife and I could get 2 credit cards each over the next month or so at 0% transfer which would help us get in the swing and give us a lot of breathing/saving space. If not and we can only get two at 0% then what do I do with the amounts we have to pay on the other two. If this is the case then is it not false economy and am I not wiser to go with the remortgage.

Again, I appreciate all of your comments.

Cheers
BB

roswell

If i was you i would go down the life of balance route on credit cards, normaly for every 0% offer there is a 2 or 3 % handleing fee, if your going to move 60 k in 5 k chunks thats going to be a whopping big amount of handeling fees.

Call the credit card companys see if they will lover interest rates, if they say no say you are considering leaving them (even if you cant) they will most likley come up with one offer or another.

Xbigman

So the payments going forward are the loan (I didn't see a payment figure for this) PLUS £950 minimum payments on the cards MINUS £220 PPI on the cards. If her income goes up to 1200 in the near future then she can make all the minimum repayments with a bit to spare if it all goes on debt payments.
Believe it or not that is quite a good position compared to many on here.

You should certainly ask all the credit cards to reduce the interest rate and see what happens. Don't tell them its because she is struggling, say it is because she thinks she could get a better rate elsewhere. Once you have the four answers (be prepared for 4 no's) you (rather than your wife) could apply for one or more 0% cards and try to balance transfer some debt over and then tart that debt around over the coming years. Once some of the debt is on a 0% card in your name she could try to get a 0% card of her own and BT some debt onto it.
Meanwhile throw every spare penny at the highest APR card.

It's going to be quite a long struggle to clear it all but it is achievable if my figures above are correct.
Regards



X

all_hours

Could you ask your bank for an overdraft facility for the next 2 or 3 months while you get your long term plan organised.

The first step is to work out a budget. You need to do this so you and your wife know how much is available to spend on food/clothes/kids related expenses/xmas presents etc. Look at southern scouser's sticky at the top and work out what you spend on each outgoing. There's also a link at the top of the forum for a budget planner spreadsheet that you can download.

Is that £48k more interest on the mortgage to manage £60k of debt? If so that sounds a lot. Snowballing with the current cards and no change in interest you would only pay around £23k interest. Changing just one card to a low life of balance of 6.9% knocks the interest down to £18k, two cards on low LOB it goes down to £14.5k and so on.

At the moment it might seem like you can't afford to cover the minimum amounts but if you post your SOA and give a breakdown of your £1700 and your wife's £400 other posters can make suggestions on how to cut back.

I worked out that your minimum payments would be around £1500. Your joint income will be £3600 in january, so this would leave £2100 for mortgage and bills.

I agree with the above poster that low life of balance transfers would be better if you don't pay a transfer fee. Also you do the transfer, cut up the cards, add it to your monthly budget sheet then set up a direct debit and it's done.

I doubt your wife would get another credit card simply because of the amount of debt she already has.

You aren't going to be able to switch all the debt onto low/0% interest in one go. You'll need to do it in stages.

On the credit card forum those who applied for the M&S card and got the higher limits were getting about £7-8k. So if you were lucky you would need this plus another with around £3-4k to get the ball rolling.

all_hours

xbigman I could have worked it out wrong, but to give 43 months left and with the stated balance and interest rate - the repayments on the loan are around £480 a month.

silvercar

If you intend clearing all the credit cards by increasing the mortgage, surely it is best to ask for full & final settlement figures from the CCs. Reading on this board suggests that most will agree to 80% or less.

Verbatim

If you're negotiating better interest rates with cc co's ask for the closure team. They are authorized to give better deals, in order to retain customers, than the guys who answer the phone (customer service).

I tried this with Nat West and was offered no BT fee and 2 months at 0% as an existing customer.