Countdown to clean credit file...

PiggyBankShaker

Dear wannabeahermit,

I just read your diary and I really feel for you. But you are on the right track and with a little bit of time things will start to get easier.

I sympathise about the ex-OH. Mine had a good job that paid well be he was always in debt and running out of money, so time and again I lent him money from my savings or put things on my credit card for him. He alway promised to pay me back, but he never did. I lost count in the end but it must have been over £3000 I think.

I have just paid off that debt and it feels so good to know that the last tiny connection between is is severed forever. My DH is amazing and he has really helped me through everything.

Keep at the debt busting, every small overpayment is a step towards your goal. It will get easier, I promise!

Good luck

wannabehermit

I've fallen off the wagon a little and I'm feeling very sorry for myself.

Shopping this month is going to be almost £600:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

It's never been that high. I don't know why it's that high. POssibly because we've had no oven for a month so until this week our meals were all over the place. Also possibly because now working in a supermarket means that I see all the good deals (and we have some fantastic deals at the moment!) so I end up buying them. Not sure, but nonetheless that just can't happen and it's knuckling down to the extreme again that is needed.

We've had no money left over this month to overpay on the credit cards, just been juggling from account to account - no wonder with the shopping so high. Plus with solicitors fees on top of that having to go on the CC it's not looking too good.

If the CSA were to pull their finger out then it wouldn't be so bad. It turns out the ex has been working since October, I only found out a couple of months ago and have been onto the CSA since, getting different stories each time I call them. They found out in December that he was no longer claiming benefits and since then have been writing to him, of course with no joy. Then they tell me that he has finally sent in his wage slips, then they tell me he's sent the wrong ones so they're contacting the employer and now they tell me they have no idea who the employer is and are still trying to get hold of him to get his wage slips. Needless to say I had a bit of a go at them, told them that as he's been working for 8 months it was about time they came down on him for evading their contact. He didn't bother telling them he was working, he didn't give them his new address, he's ignored all their calls and correspondence but it seems a joke to them. ANyway after having a bit of a go, telling them that they weren't good enough I did get a call back and I've now been told that they're progressing it to requesting info from Inland Revenue. This is their last chance, otherwise I'm off to my MP to get her help. As much as I can't stand the Tories and would never vote for them she is great. It's annoying becuase I like her as my MP, she's young and approachable, unlike the Labour MP we had in this part of the city for years, and she's very good, gets stuff done and takes you seriously, BUT I could never bring myself to put a tick in the Conservative box no matter how good she is. Anyway, I digress. The boys have been wearing hand-me-downs for years. I dont' mind as it's better clothes that I would buy anyway but there are things I feel that they are missing out on and that's what maintenance is for surely? To support the children, to buy them clothes, food, let them go to clubs etc.

Oh he just annoys me so much. It's silly because to be quite frank I don't want any money off of him, BUT I don't want him having the boys either and so maintenance payments would be some sort of compensation for having to let them go there. For having to deal with the !!!!!! that I have to from him, for the years of hell that he put me through (still is to be honest).

Getting this credit file clean is only one step really. I never realised until yesterday how much of an effect he still has on me. I thought I'd dealt with it and was in control, then a few demanding texts off him yesterday and I'm a mess. Who am I kidding that having a clean credit file is going to make me feel better? 4 years time ds2 will still only be 10, so I'll still be having contact with the to$$er. Sod that, when they get married, when they have children he'll still bloody be there, experian can't sort that!

wannabehermit

Well this diary has become more about my battle with life and the prospect of never having the strability of our own house. It pains us so much. People don't understand how crap it is to rent. We hear the comments about how lucky we are that if something goes wrong we just phone the landlord. Oh if it was that simple. Oh and if only the rent wasn't costing us more than mortgage, insurances & maintenance put together. I think it's worse because we have both had our own houses and had to sell them when splitting up with our exes so we've done both, but everyone we know who owns is lucky enough to be a bit older and been able to live at home to save a small deposit to buy their first home, we haven't got that luxury. Instead if we want to buy a house we need to save over £100,000 for a deposit. That's hardly going to happen is it now. If we were to get the debts all paid off in the next 2 years and then put every penny into saving for a house it's still going to take us over 30 years to save for that deposit. By which time we'll be in our 60s!!!

We live in a street of family homes, but thanks to all the old people hogging the houses the families can't afford them and when they do come on the market (quite a few recently as the old people are either dying or going into homes) they're bought by middle aged couples. Hardly the purpose of these houses now. It hurts as we feel like we can't offer the children the stability that owning a house would bring. The only way we could lose a house that we owned would be our fault for not paying the mortgage, but with renting you never know when the landlord might want the house back. The house is not right for us, it needs so much doing to it, so much that we would love to do, but unless houses drop to £40,000 we're just living in dreamland.

So...as much as we want our own house it's simply not achievable, we can't help feeling crap because of it, feels like it's been rubbed in our face all the time, I feel embarrassed too that we rent, we're adults !!!!!! but house ownership is no longer for normal people, seems higher rate tax payers or empty-nesters are the only ones who can realistically buy houses.

My dad was a postman, my mum never worked, we had a big house in a very good area, had holidays each year, a car, my dad had 3 or 4 motorbikes, my dad paid into several pensions, has allsorts of life insurances scattered about plus was able to put into general savings plus of course bail me and my brother out regularly. How about us. DH is an hgv driver, I also work, yet we can't afford to buy a bedsit in a crap area let alone anything else. We have no provision for the future, and no realistic way of doing so, and what happens when the kids are older? I want to be able to do what our parents have done and be there to help out when they need it, but we're not going to be able to do that, and you know what, it feels !!!!!!.

I don't want a lot, I don't want anything flashy, just some stability for my family would be nice.

wannabehermit

I've not posted for ages, another month down, which brings me in under the 40s woohoo! :j

We're plodding along, credit cards etc are getting lower and we're not struggling which is great. I really want to get the Vanquis cleared and the Cap1 to under £1000 by the end of summer. Don't think it'll happen tbh, but is something to aim for.

I get paid tomorrow, which seems to have come round really quickly and then only a week until DHs wages are paid. Hopefully we should have a little bit in his account to pay a little extra to the Vanquis, even if it's only a couple of quid, any extra is very welcome.

wannabehermit

Just updated sig. Next mini target:

Get debt under £5000 by the end of the month.

wannabehermit

wannabehermit wrote: »

Just updated sig. Next mini target:

Get debt under £5000 by the end of the month.

Target met :j

Next mini target: debt under £4500. Going to give myself 3 months to do that. If I can achieve the target of getting the cards to where I want them to be then that is easily achievable.

wannabehermit

How do you get out of debt once you're in debt?

Looking at my last post 10 months ago it seems a lifetime away. I sounded positive, the debt was going in the right direction, we had less than £5000 to go, it was getting lower and lower each month and things were looking good, we could have been debt free with the final car payment next March, but now we're nearly £10,000 in debt and can only see it going in one direction.

DH changed jobs last year and that meant that we were without any housing benefit for 5 months, the only way to pay the rent was to use the shopping & diesel money, which meant that those had to go on the credit card. By the time the housing benefit was sorted we had a further £3000 added to our debt and repayments we could just about afford.

Then the washing machine needed replacing, no spare cash to get a new one, so got it on the catalogue for the 0% interest, but that put us into a position where our debt repayments meant we had more going out that what we have coming in.

So of course it started with putting a little bit of diesel onto the card to get us through one last week, then of course the shopping had to go that way too and now we can't see a way out of it. Everything is cut down as far as we can possibly get it, we can't cut back any further, our shopping is £35 a week plus about £10 of top ups throughout the week, that's £9 per person including toiletries etc. for a whole week.

And then we have people moaning about the position that they deliberately put themselves in (while they can still save over £1000 a month) and it makes me so angry and upset and I can't see this ever ending unless DH gets a DRO. Then what? In 3 years time I get another one? Where does it end?

What I wouldn't give to be able to pay life insurance to pay into a private pension, to have savings for a rainy day, to be able to help the kids out when they're older, but it's never going to happen. A lottery win seems our most realistic prospect of ever being solvent.

wannabehermit

Feeling a bit more optimistic this week. Last week it just felt like we were getting nowhere and there was no end to it at all, still juggling money, paying bills late even with all the cutbacks. Today though I've made up a new spreadsheet with our predicted balance for the next 3 months. Based on a very low shopping and diesel budget (i.e. using the car only for DH to get to work and to do shopping) and no spending elsewhere apart from essential bills we will have £235 once rent is paid next month, £928 in June and £1300 in July. I keep looking at it thinking I must have gone wrong somewhere but I've accounted for everything we know about.

That is including extra diesel for when we go away and also money for a couple of days out and a couple of meals out (most of the days out have been paid with Clubcard vouchers).

I can't get too excited though, as much as I would love to chuck all that onto the credit cards that would be foolish as 1. I haven't accounted for the cambelt or other repairs as we're not sure yet how much it will cost, DH is convinced the gearbox has had it, I'm staying positive and hoping it's something a lot cheaper. Obviously if it is the gearbox, then that's the £1300 all but gone, plus that takes us to a couple of weeks before the summer holidays when childcare goes up by £100 a week, so the extra money we have left over will need to be put aside to pay for that. Then we get to September and the birthdays start! We're basically in the cheap 1/4 of the year atm so short term looks good and I know longer term is a little different but it makes me feel a whole lot better seeing that we do have money left over some months and with a great deal of budgeting and squirreling away there is money to get through the year without relying on the credit cards.

wannabehermit

Further to that I am inputting my actual amount that I have left in bank accounts & cash every Thursday. Today shows that we are actually about £1 better off than predicted. It's not a lot but it made me feel like I'd achieved something.:D

wannabehermit

Wow! It's been a long time since I last posted, and guess what? Yep, we're further in debt than we were then. We're into 5 figures which is so demoralising. After all the bills, plus shopping, diesel & petrol (yes we now have 2 cars, but it's actually cheaper to run 2 cars than to borrow my dads car in holidays and get the bus in term time) we have £35 per week left over. £10 of this goes into a savings account and stays there so that we can build up money for car repairs when needed and the other £25 goes into a spare account and then anything that isn't any of the above comes out of that account and when the £25 is gone, it's gone until the next Friday. So basically hair, clothes, birthdays, days out, school trips etc etc comes from our £25 a week. This week is only the 4th week of doing it so it's still early days but hopefully that will work to at least keep us breaking even.

On the credit report front, I've only 13 months to go which means by next Christmas we will finally have a joint account and it will be so much easier to be able to keep track of the money as it will all be going in and out of one account. Sounds like heaven!