advice please!

plum44_2

Personally I think its madness to be putting your money into savings when you are paying such high interest rates. You need to look at using every penny to clear your debts.

Greg_S

I'm in essentially the same situation as Gymbunny (except my barclaycard is at a higher rate) and I too am trying to find a way to reduce the interest so I can bring down the debt, while also putting a little something aside. I appreciate it may seem mad to be saving money when in debt, but I want a small sum as a safety net, so if something unexpected comes up I can pay it without starting to use the cards again.

If I can find a way to do this, once I have a bit of savings to fall back on only if need be, I would stop adding to the savings and start paying as much as I could to the debt.

gymbunny_3

Plum
You are right - but having lost my job a few months ago I also realise the importance of an emergency fund. Ideally planning to save three months worth of expenses and then start paying more towards the debts.
This situation is soooooo frustrating though

plum44_2

Completely understand the predicament...can you drastically cut back on your expenditure to hammer even more off your cards or have you already done that?

gymbunny_3

Thank you - I have been trying to cut it down. I have had terrible depression which has not helped things and in the process of seeing my doctor as I still am not there yet.
It is a circle - when things aren't great I spend.
Have stopped using my credit card and keeping track of everything on spreadsheets which is helping.

anik1980

Hi everyone,

That’s it! I’ve had enough of ‘just getting by’ and these companies taking my hard earned money. I’m determined to clear my crazy debt problem and giving myself two years to do it. Over the past four years certain situations have caused me to stupidly apply and rely on the help (or not help) of credit. Two periods of maternity leave, one redundancy, my partner losing his job, putting 40% deposit down on a house (all my savings gone) and then the government taking more tax off of me and taking away family tax credits – I have no choice. At 31 years old it’s time to wise up and start thinking about my children and their future. Do I want to be passing them over debt? Absolutely not!

I took a day off work today to get to the bottom of my finances – seems so hard to keep up and have now drafted letters to all my lenders explaining my situation and they will be posted tomorrow. One particularly awful company I am dealing with at the moment is Virgin Money (credit card) – over these years they are the only people to have not helped me when my income has been significantly reduced and instead hiked up the interest rate when I missed a payment. When I contacted them to ask if I could reduce payments for a 3 month period, they tried to take the entire amount owed out of my account leaving me with bank charges to pay! Anyone had any experiences with them, I’m sending one last letter to them tomorrow before it goes to the Financial Ombudsman.

Be great to hear your stories of how you’ve tackled any of the below companies.

Thanks