Diary of a Foolish woman wanting to mend her ways

chevalier

STOP PANICKING

Sorry for the shouting. But you BOTH need to stop a minute. Please ask your sister to have the kids for a day on the weekend when you can both be off from work. Then you can sort out a plan.

DON'T if you can possible avoid it, turn unsecured debt (your credit cards, overdraft, any loans) into secured debt (ie put onto the mortgage, and guaranteed with your house). This puts your home at risk if you then run up more debt, and can't pay that and the higher mortgage.

Secondly taking out a loan to pay off debt means that you are paying off two sets of interest. If you put the figures into the snowball calculator (link at the top of the forum), you will see how much interest you have already paid, plus how much you would pay on the new debt. Just because the PAYMENTS look lower DOESN'T mean you are getting a good deal.

So having got rid of the kids, get ALL the paperwork for ALL of your bills, yep both of you. All of the statements. You will need this for the following, but I also want you to be able to show your OH that this debt has been run up on (as I suspect) day to day living. IE YOU HAVE BOTH BEEN LIVING BEYOND YOUR MEANS, not just YOU!

You wanted your family to have a certain standard of living and didn't want to have to say no?

Then you can fill in this income and expenditure form below. This will show you where your money is going each month. This is important as StepChange said you had money over each month, but I bet you actually don't have it.

Here is the link
http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

Once you have filled that in, you will have a true picture of the state of the finances.

You may be able to see some obvious savings. You may see that you SHOULD have a surplus. If as I said above you don't have this in reality, then BOTH of you need to do a spending diary for a couple of months to track those little spends, that don't get noticed, but all add up...

Good luck. You OH needs to calm down. You won't need to go bankrupt or sell cars, you both need to set a budget, and you need to do it TOGETHER. If he has no role in the finances because he has pushed it onto you, even after you ran up debt before, the he is in part responsible ASWELL. He wanted an easy life, not having to worry about finances, and is now angry when you haven't done very well at it. Well he will have to step up now and help too.

Sort out a joint budget together and then start sticking to it.

If you want to post up the Statement of Affairs on here, then we will help you with potential savings too.

Good luck
chev

alwaysworried_2

thank you so much everyone for your advice and comments.I Honestly do appreciate it.

Today the bank called me and said to go into my branch, they would have all the forms ready for signing, so I picked up hubby he got in the car and said "I don't want to do this, there must be another way"

He started shouting at me telling me he was taking all of my jewellery off me to sell I was to sell all my clothes, unused make up and perfume. He said he was selling his watches and his car. I obviously got really upset, I don't mind me selling my things, but I don't want him selling his. He then said my oldest son wasn't getting anything for his Christmas I've got absolute nothing in for him, but everything for my youngest, and he also said I was to tell my oldest son why he wasn't getting anything. This made me even worse, so, I got out
the car and walked away to a graveyard, just walking about. The graveyard is near a railway line and I was so close to doing something silly. Luckily, I had my mobile phone on me and I called the Samartians.

I eventually after an hour or so calmed down and called my husband to come and pick me up and we went for a drive and had a long talk.
He doesn't want to take out the loan because its just increasing the debt. He said he would rather do a balance transfer onto 0% credit cards and fix it that way. So my next card of £1500 was transferred onto his barclaycard. £6000 was transferred from my barclaycard onto his RBS card. The other card I have is a Virgin card which is 0% until November next years, so no point n doing anything with that.
All this still leaves me with £1880 on my barclaycard and £2250 on my argos, so about £4000 in total which is still accruing interest.
The only card we can transfer anything over to is his barclaycard because that has a limit of £10000 and he only has the £1500 he transferred from next on that.
We can't transfer from one barclaycard to another, and argos is owned by barclaycard, and for some reason RBS couldn't transfer the balance from argos either (their system wouldn't accept the card details).

We just have to work out what to do with that. Im sure i seen on my barclaycard that you could do a balance transfer from your card into your current account so I'm assuming my husbands barclaycard would be the same, however I don't know if this is on 0% or if there is a higher than normal interest charge. I did say to him about it but he wasn't keen so left it a that.

He might still sell his car, and then when all the cards are paid buy himself another car, or he might sell his watches or he might tell me to sell my things (I would rather sell my things than he sell his) because he will want to try to avoid paying interest.

My mum and dad have told me they are giving my hubby and I money for our Christmas, so I will be using that to buy my sons Christmas presents. I know some people will be saying use that to pay towards the debt but there is no way I could have him getting up on Christmas morning to nothing. I just couldn't do that. I would rather sell my soul to the devil himself.

I don't know how hubby is going to do this but he must make a better job of it than I did.

I will continue to update be because I did join the "pay as much as you can in 2013" challenge so will update on that and on my diary. I'm sure even though I'm not dealing with the money I will have a great feeling (when I start to feel better) of seeing the limits go down.

Oh and over draft hasn't been cleared either so still for that to deal with too.

Again many thanks for your support.

alwaysworried_2

I hope now I can get a sleep tonight I haven't had a proper sleep for weeks. I was in such a state last night I had to take a diazepam to calm me down.

never again will I deal with money, I will be quite happy to ask my husband for every penny.

mummybearx

Alwaysworried, I know your husband means well, but..... He isn't going about things the right way. His belittling and demeaning attitude towards you isn't helping. I know this is the second time you have both been here, but..... Well, he isn't really helping much.

Have you spoken to him about how you feel? Really spoken to him? You shouldn't be going through this depression alone. I'm so glad you called the Samaritans when you did, you not being here is not the answer! My mum died when I was three and it destroyed our family, please do not do that to your children

You will get through this.
You will get past this.
You will!

StressedSteph

Crickey hun, you have had one hell of a day, I do think it is a much better option keeping the debt on cc etc than putting it in a loan or mortgage. If the worst happenned and hubby lost his job, there are worse consquences on missing the loan than paying less off your cc.

I think you have hit rock bottom today and the only way is UP. Hubby will hopefully calm down now he has actually moved the debts around. Maybe you can just concentrate on getting out of the OD like I am for the next few months and then work on paying off the cards with interest on them. Pay the 0% ones last.

I do agree though, that no matter how small the presents are, we need to give our children something to open on Christmas morning. Its not the childrens fault that we have no money for presents. but they do have to accept that it will be less than previous years.

Keep your chin up hun, things will get better soon.
xxxxxxx

alwaysworried_2

i have been completely honest with him and told him how I'm feeling but He goes from being okayish to absolutely raging and when he gets like this I think he doesn't care how I'm feeling. I have been diagnosed with depression last year and I told m doctor all about the money problems I had. I did tell my husband about this yesterday and he was so angry with the doctor. said she should have told him about me being in his debt. I tried to explain that it's not her job to do this and she could get into a lot of trouble, but his answer was "we'll when other people's lives are being affected she should have phoned me to let me know"!!! He just doesn't seem to get it. He even said he was going to make an appointment and have it out with her !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I will probably get more of this over the next few weeks.

what I would do to turn back the clock.

Fae

Hi,

Just read through your diary, and so sorry to hear how difficult things have got for you. As others have said, not being here is not the way forward, your children would miss you so much.

I hope your Husband is able to begin to calm down now, and maybe you can get across to him just how bad you feel about this, I think you both need to work together to get this sorted, and then work together on your finances in the future to, I don't think you can take all the blame for this as your Husband know you have found managing money difficult in the past, so really should have at least been checking in with you on how things were going.

I think spending your Christmas money on a present for your Son is a great idea, that way you won't be adding to the debt.

I am going to subscribe and pop into see how you are doing.
just take it one day at a time, and if you continue feeling bad make use of the samartians again, or maybe consider a visit to the Dr's for a little help.
You are not a bad person, just a person who has made a mistake as we all have at one time or another.

Fae

alwaysworried_2

Well hubby going off on one again this morning. After all our "basic" bills are paid we have just under £1100 per month for food, petrol and to throw at the cards. We have worked out food and petrol will cost approx £400 per month altogether leaving just under £700, he says that's not enough.

Wish I could just go to sleep and not wake up!

Housework*Fairy

Hi Always Worried

I hope you'll be able to change your user name to "now I'm in control I don't worry any more" :-)

I'm starting day one (again) today and will just concentrate on one debt at a time - I'm going to get the smallest one out of the way first, which is my catalogue and I think I owe £250 but the biggest one is £4000 :-(

So, small steps, baby steps is the way forward - remember you didn't build up the debt overnight and you wont get rid of it overnight.

And if it makes you feel any better we have the same left over as you do for food, petrol etc - it is loads!

StressedSteph

Morning AW,

That is loads towards the debt. We have a similar amount as well. Have you done a Snowball Calculator.

http://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx

Click on this link and fill in all your debts with interest rates. Put how much you can throw at them per month and it will tell you which bills to pay first and when you are likely to be debt free if you stick to the amount to pay off.

I found this very comforting, it makes you feel in control and shows you the light at the end of the tunnel.


Its a pity you can't look back at some of the credit card statements and prove to your hubby that some of the stuff was bought for him too. He should have taken over the finances, the last time you got into debt, or at least checked on you, rather than leaving you to manage on your own and then beat you up about it.

Make sure you DEFINATELY make him deal with ALL the finances from now on and see how he manages. Will be very interesting.

Let us know how you get on with the snowball calculator. xxx