Help! I'm drowning!!

samsampotts

:eek: After a year or so of mooching around the various threads and wealth of advice on this site, still I find myself creeping deeper and deeper into debt. I feel I need to admit my position to people who don't know me - unburden my worries without feeling judged. I hope this is ok and any advice would be VERY gratefully recieved.

So here are my cold hard facts:

HSBC Overdraft £1500 - I'm usually teetering on the edge of going over and have done on a number of occassions, I get charged interest on this one and am about to start claiming my charges back from them. It'll probably come to about £200 as, unitl recently, no matter how much I was struggling, I would never allow myself to go over or miss a payment. This is starting to happen now because I simply can't help it.

Alliance and Leicester Overdraft £750 - interest free until Jan 07 I think

Loan: I have a rather large loan for £15,000 which I took over three years when I was earning more money, in the hope of getting rid of it quickly. It costs me £479.11 per month and they don't allow payment breaks. 28 months to go, I've not missed a payment yet.:T

Credit Cards:

Halifax Classic Visa - £8,014.32 - limit £8,350
I found out today the APR is 22.53%!!!!

SonyCard MBNA Visa - £8,936.65 - limit £9,000
Apr - 15.9% plus I've got 0%on balance transfers until Dec 07 (this is a good 2500 of my current balance I think)
Earns me pulsebeats points redeemable for goods

Amazon Mastercard - 3,817.3 - limit £4,400
APr: 12.9% (however most of this balance is made up of credit card cheques for which the APR is 21.95%
Earn points redeemable on Amazon

HSBC Mastercard - £5.99 - limit £3,200
APR: 17.9%

I run two businesses. One as a personal fitness trainer, this didn't do well last year so I set up a small magazine to compensate. Now the personal trining is picking up but the magazine has not made any profit yet. I hope it will though - still feeling positive! Basically I spent the whole of 2006 getting further and further into debt and now I can't seem to break even.

Can anyone give me some helpful advice????

lonely_2

Can you market your magazine through your existing client base (I'm assuming it's a fitness magazine)? Correct me if I'm wrong.

medman

Hi Sam and welcome

Writing it down and sharing it is a good start to clearing your mind and tackling the problem.

First thing that strikes me is the very high interest rates. If your credit score is up to it then apply for 0% cards or low life of balance transfer cards and get that interest charge down. Alternatively phone each CC company and tell them you are applying for lower interest cards to transfer balances to and see if they offer you a better rate, they often do and it's dead easy.

Other than that without knowing your situation maximise earnings and snowball your debts throwing every spare penny at the highest interest debt.

Best wishes and good luck

MM

Biffa

Just a of quick thoughts before I try and get the kids to bed ( lol!)....

Do you have anything of any worth that you can sell on ebay to raise a bit of extra cash? It's amazing what some people will buy, and you can make quite a bit of money selling stuff that you would probably either throw in the bin or give to charity shops.

Without knowing all of your SOA, it's quite hard to find areas that you can cut back on.

samsampotts

Thanks for what are already three helpful posts! The magazine is not related to my fitness business at all. Its a local community free mag which is paid for by advertisin - I'm just struggling to get advertisers in! We've made a couple of hundred since we launched in Nov but seem to have got a bit stuck.

I've just done the budget planner and found I've got a £1,124 overspend each month OMIGOD!!

Have cleared out 50% of my wardrobe to go on ebay - can't believe how much stuff I've got that I never wear. Working from home alot I have been guilty of spending my lunch break buying things on ebay, time to spend it selling things instead!

I'm wraking my brains with my boyfriend for ways to get new advertisers into the magazine as we are currently breaking even so anyone new is profit. I'm on a mission!

I agree with the comment about credit card rates, unfortunately I seem to have reached a point where I'm now getting refused for cards. This may be because, until recently, I had about three other cards which were empty but had huge limits on them so it looked like I already had huge amounts of credit open to me - which I did but I have enough sense left to know not to use it so I cancelled them before I got tempted.

I've got to be a bit tougher on myself too - I've bought tickets to see The Who in May which I'm not prepared to give up but I was planning on a couple of festivals this year which I'll have to give a miss realistically. That budget planner has been a real wake up call!

Thanks and keep the advice coming, hopefully I'll be able to do the same for someone else new to money saving in the future

GirlRacer_2

Hi Sam, Have you got any bank charges you can reclaim? I recently reclaimed some and it paid off my Next Account.

samsampotts

I have only been charged a couple of times which is about £100. Then last month I went over my overdraft a couple of times and this month they charged me another £100 for that which immediately put me over my overdraft again!! Why do they keep up with this ridiculous system now that customers are fighting back - aren't they learning their lesson. I'll definately be claiming them straight back although, if my boyfriends experiences are anything to go by, HSBC do make it as hard as they can.

GirlRacer_2

If you are ging to reclaim, make sure you open a parachute account, just in case they give you 30 days notice of closing your account. I reclaimed off the Halifax and they didn't close my account.

Is there any other way you can cut back? Are you with the cheapest Gas, Electricity, Phone, Broadband providers if not go through Quidco or some of the other cashback sites and earn some cash. It takes a few months to come through but every little bit of extra cash is a bonus.

Have you posted your statement of affairs on here?

samsampotts

This may sound stupid but what's a statement of affairs? Thanks for the tip on cashback sites too!

GirlRacer_2

Have a read of this hun http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=107280 Put down all your incomings and outgoings and make sure you make allowances for car repairs birthdays, christmas, etc etc etc. Once you list it here, everyone will come along with some ideas on how you can cut back. Sometimes it sounds harsh, but becoming debt-free is bl00dy tough and you often have to cut back on luxuries.

Post up your SOA and let us all have a look.

samsampotts

Thanks! I'll do that tomorrow - I think I've had enough scares for today!