DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 8

Time_to_face_the_music

Grand_Benders wrote: »

I don't have kids, but I have suffered flooding in 2008 which meant being out of our house for 2 months (till the insurance stopped paying for accommodation) then moving back in to a building site, which lasted almost a year. Our insurance covered the flooding issues, but when floors, etc got ripped up we found rotten joists and all sorts of rot problems so we pretty much had to gut our entire ground floor and pay for lots of repairs and rebuilding ourselves (most of which went on credit cards that we're still paying). Getting house insurance is an expensive business these days. Our existing insurer maintains our policy at £650 a year but most mainstream insurers won't touch us and the odd ones that will are quoting £1100 a year!! :eek:

I had just had to check this post to make sure I never wrote it, then realised it said ground floor. Even so this is really weird and uncanny.

We are here, and in this debt situation, because we had a flood in the bathroom and when the insurance work started, our builder realised the entire first floor of our house, stairs and landings etc were full of rot and had to be ripped out. When he lifted the carpet in one bedroom and the tiles in the bathroom, there was literally huge floors in the floor, it was a miracle, no-one had gone through! The bathroom is above the kitchen and the kitchen ceiling was lath and plaster and this filled with water and collapsed. When this happened, it exposed the fact that when our house had been extended, there were no supporting beams above any of the door ways and the upper floors were just resting on bricks. In addition to the insurance work, we had to pay out £37,000 of our own money and in a very short time, this turned into the £81,306 of debt we started off our DMP with.

How weird is that? :eek:

moohound

Very fed up today, went to supermarket for packed lunch stuff with mini moohound who cried for 20 mins because I couldn't buy him a toy he wanted, he has just turned five and the thing he wanted was £7, and I just can't spare it at the moment.:(

Family illness means I now have to pay for child are which I naively thought would be free forever, at the same time any overtime has dried up so hence the DMP starting at the end of July.

Time_to_face_the_music

Tigsmom wrote: »

Hello everyone (and thank you Time to face the music for redirecting me).

OK, so quick recap.
6 years ago had good full-time well-paid job for 7yrs, had a baby who was born with hole in her heart. Returned to work after 6mths. Asked for part-time hours and was made redundant 3 weeks later
Struggled to get by living off redundancy pay. That ran out. claimed JSA (but discovered going for interviews with a baby wasn't generally acceptable!) they stopped paying this after about 6 months because my credits? ran out (I had worked full time for 20years before then!). Got flooded in 2007. lived in a caravan, got pregnant again and moved back into house a couple of weeks before baby no.2. 6 months later got a part-time job and basic tax credits. Then came the winter of 2010. School closed beacuse heating/roof failed. Had to take days off work unpaid. Still had to pay for childcare even though not using it. In the end it just wasn't financially viable to work. In the meantime got a saturday job (which I still have but it's only min wage). April this year tax credits withdrawn. Everything else gone up except mine and hubbys wages. Now just working to pay debts which seem to be increasing. Poor quality of life. Worrying sick what to do if anything breaks down and how to afford new school uniforms in September. Finally decided that DMP may be only way out.

Hello again Tigsmom :hello:

Am really glad you decided to come and join us

Have just realised you, Grand Benders and me could all start our own flood club! Maybe the other forum members should start building an ark :rotfl:

Time_to_face_the_music

moohound wrote: »

Very fed up today, went to supermarket for packed lunch stuff with mini moohound who cried for 20 mins because I couldn't buy him a toy he wanted, he has just turned five and the thing he wanted was £7, and I just can't spare it at the moment.:(

Family illness means I now have to pay for child are which I naively thought would be free forever, at the same time any overtime has dried up so hence the DMP starting at the end of July.

Oh moohound, the thing I hate most about being on our DMP is not being able to treat our daughter and granddaughter in the way we used to. It's very tough at first but you do find small ways to deal with it

I took granddaughter to Asda last week and she was begging me for a toy, I told her we had no money and she was picking things up that were around the £12 mark. Granddad sneaked off and found some giant bubble stuff which was reduced to 50p and gave it to her when we got outside and she thought it was better than the expensive toy. Yesterday her mum bought her a bike from Gumtree for £15 and she couldn't wait to tell me she has the best bike in the street. I buy her little treats in charity shops and at car boot sales and then present her with them and she is as pleased as punch.

Grand_Benders

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

I had just had to check this post to make sure I never wrote it, then realised it said ground floor. Even so this is really weird and uncanny.
...

How weird is that? :eek:

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

Have just realised you, Grand Benders and me could all start our own flood club! Maybe the other forum members should start building an ark :rotfl:

Hahaha I know, right!?

I think I saw your post earlier in the thread about your flooding and rotten joists etc and was sitting nodding along with all you were saying. The annoying thing for us is that most of the stuff we had to fix was botch-job house-that-jack-built repairs and building that the previous owner did, coupled with long-term neglect before he left, and who now lives next door. :mad: It's REALLY hard not to swear at him every time we see him.

Time_to_face_the_music

Grand_Benders wrote: »

Hahaha I know, right!?

I think I saw your post earlier in the thread about your flooding and rotten joists etc and was sitting nodding along with all you were saying. The annoying thing for us is that most of the stuff we had to fix was botch-job house-that-jack-built repairs and building that the previous owner did, coupled with long-term neglect before he left, and who now lives next door. :mad: It's REALLY hard not to swear at him every time we see him.

The person we bought our house from was a builder. He worked for the local council and we appeared to have half of their tools in our shed when we took possession. He behaved really oddly when we moved in and refused to give us a forwarding address for mail and used to call around and ask us was there any. In the end, I got really fed up with it and wrote "No longer at this address and no forwarding address available" all over his stack of mail and threw it in a letter box. When I told him what we had done, he wasn't impressed but never called again.

If we did know a forwarding address he would have received some fine abuse from us when we realised what a mess he had made of this house :mad:

Growurown

Hi
Just popping in to say hi to the newbies and wish you all luck on your journey to debt freedom.

The ark sounds like a great idea as here in Wales it rains a lot, but I'll only go if HH takes 50 shades of grey so I can borrow it to see what all the fuss is about.

BTW it was my spreadsheet that was called ostrich but I like lightbulb better! Much more positive!

Two pieces of good news
1) The new Aldi store is under construction should be open in a couple of months.:D Sorry Waitrose much as I love your shop you are very expensive:(
2) The car passed its MOT:T

One year into our DMP and ticking along. Much relief over the car though because the emergency pot is looking rather empty.

Time_to_face_the_music

Great news on the MOT and the new Aldi :j

Grand_Benders

Growurown - I still kinda like Ostrich. It's a warning not to be one! Yay for Aldi. Don't know if you saw my breakdown on my Diary, but we did a price comparison from our Aldi shop on MySupermarket, based on the equivalent shop in Sainsbury's, where we would normally shop, and picking the brands we would normally use, and we saved £41.31 at Aldi on 1 week's groceries! :eek:

ikkle87

I can't remember who said congrats and that they were looking on my diary thread but thanks. I might seem a bit defensive or like I'm not listening but I do assure you all I'm taking on all comments I just think I'm not making myself very clear when I post.