Are we really in debt? YES WE ARE

Errata

Errata, you are quite right, whilst we are really moving on the repayment of debt, we have no contingency money at present, a hic-up in a few months that might require some cash would be a problem

I was thinking of a contingency plan rather than a contingency fund, sorry if I didn't make that clear.
As in - when the rainy day arrives what goes to the pawn shop first?
Which assets can be easily and readily converted into cash? It's easier to make decisions like this before the possibility arises that they have to be made.

seven-day-weekend

tolip wrote: »

Errata, you are quite right, whilst we are really moving on the repayment of debt, we have no contingency money at present, a hic-up in a few months that might require some cash would be a problem.

Seven day Weekend, i just wish I could arrange for you to come with me on a days work, to experience what we do, sometimes that helps get over ther fear, but since 9/11 its no longer possible to have guests in the flight deck.

I have over 7000 hours in the air, with only a few problems !! The arrival into Almeria's westerly runway is fantastic once you come over the rigde of high ground to the north. I have been to malage nearly every week for the past 4 years !!!

Seven Day Weekend, I think you have a very valid point, my salary made us feel that we had a bottomless pit, but as you say, we just didnt realise that were had money problems and kept spending.

As I said in an earlier post, we were always able to pay all the bills, but we never had a handle on how much debt we had.

Seriously though we could never have done this without everyones kind comments.

Roll on pay day, the bonus will be slapped towards the snowball!!!!

We DO fly, we just hate it! Treating ouselves by driving/ferrying this year (four times the cost when you count in the fuel and overnight stays). Not very MSE:eek:

We fly from/to Almeria and Malaga. You must have been our pilot on more than one occasion. Next time I fly, please arrange for there to be NO turbulence whatsoever!

Hotman_2

Tolip,

Reading your candid story, I can tell you that, you are not alone.

I am in in a similar position to you, but your must be in the 7th degree. I, however, must say that there is loads of advice here which I am applying.

My case in a nutshell is as below

Monthly

Income

Salary - 2430
Wife

---

0
Total 2430

Outgoings

Mortgage 859
total usecured loans on 5 CCs - 405
Household Maintenance --- 300
Nursery fees (average) 270
Other house expenditure including 10% savings etc -1061

My current total unsecured debts is about 18.6K. I have asked for a further advance from my mortgage provide, NR, and they have approved 20K at about £155 a month. I intend to take this and use it to clear all my CCs off and have just one payment. I shall then strive hard to pay the further advance off in a ver quick time. The good thing about the FA is that it is very flexible in terms of payment so I can over pay without penalties.

I basically need to lower my monthly outgoings at the same time trying pay off my debts as best as I can, hence the decisions to go for the FA. I considered a loan but the monthly payments for about 20K will ne more than 380 quid a month.

All what do you think

tolip

Hello Zulu Dawn

I think we had about the same credit available with around the same number of credit cards. We have contracted all the credit card companies which we have cards and no balance and cancelled them. The only cards we have now are the ones with balances and all but one are Life Of Balance Transfers, obviously we are not spending on them, in fact we have shredded the cards, so we only get the statement each month and have a standing order set up to pay them.

I see DMP referenced to quite a lot, what is it?

Regarding Geneva, fantastic airport to fly into expecially onto runway 23, over the lake, hedge your bets and sit on the left hand side of the aircraft, that way if they are landing runway 23 you can see the lake and most of the city, keep your eyes open for the fountain, as you are just about to land it will be on your left, its nearly always on and if it is you cannot miss it!

We flew as passengers to Geneva 2 years ago and found that there was not real difference, HOWEVER, if you are hiring a car, check carefully as the price can differ from the french to the swiss side. We entered on the French side only for that reason

tolip

errata, we have the car ! but I always said its not going !!! Its a 1 year old Audi S4 (Not A4!!) , i suppose it worth around £30k

To be honest with our current schedule of repayments on the snowball, I hope to have the need to pawn or sell anthing else provided we can survive on our budget.

seven day weekend - I will see what I can do on the turbulance front ! Sometimes we need to stay at the bumpy levels as descending to a lower level burns more fuel and sometimes with a full load and lots of bags its a balancing act between fuel and payload (the passengers and bags!) so getting up very high is important to lower the fuel consumption en route !

Hotman - You can see from the start of this thread that I was considering remortgaging our property to raise the cash to repay our debts, but decided against it, but I understand that its the only way out if your circumstances are diifferent.

My advice for what its worth is to cancel the credit cards once they are paid off, and only carry one for emergencies.

Our new view is that if we cannot afford to pay for what we want on the debit card then we cannot afford it.

As someone said in an earlier post, once this debt is cleared we will never have our family in this position again. We will have one credit card and use debit card for everything. I look forward to being able to save money for our future at the same rate as we are repaying this debt.

seven-day-weekend

tolip wrote: »

errata, we have the car ! but I always said its not going !!! Its a 1 year old Audi S4 (Not A4!!) , i suppose it worth around £30k

To be honest with our current schedule of repayments on the snowball, I hope to have the need to pawn or sell anthing else provided we can survive on our budget.

seven day weekend - I will see what I can do on the turbulance front ! Sometimes we need to stay at the bumpy levels as descending to a lower level burns more fuel and sometimes with a full load and lots of bags its a balancing act between fuel and payload (the passengers and bags!) so getting up very high is important to lower the fuel consumption en route !

Hotman - You can see from the start of this thread that I was considering remortgaging our property to raise the cash to repay our debts, but decided against it, but I understand that its the only way out if your circumstances are diifferent.

My advice for what its worth is to cancel the credit cards once they are paid off, and only carry one for emergencies.

Our new view is that if we cannot afford to pay for what we want on the debit card then we cannot afford it.

As someone said in an earlier post, once this debt is cleared we will never have our family in this position again. We will have one credit card and use debit card for everything. I look forward to being able to save money for our future at the same rate as we are repaying this debt.

:eek: And that's supposed to make me feel better??!! I shall worry about the airoplane running out of fuel now!

(Only teasing:rotfl: :rotfl: )

Zulu_Dawn

A DMP is a debt management plan.

It is basically a name to describe a plan for managing your deebt when you cannot afford the minimum payments or interest charges but you don't want to do anything more formal.

You prepare an income and expenditure account which details how much you can afford to repay. You then write to all your creditors and make them an offer based on that plan. You also ask them to freeze interest and charges.

At the scale that I did it (my offers were around 0.5% of the outstanding balance), some creditors issued me with a default note which then sits on your credit file. However I got nearly everyone to accept it and most have also freezed interest.

It's not really relevant if you can make the minimum payments and it sounds to me like you are currently overpaying so you don't need to worry about it. However at the peak my minimum payments plus my mortgage were over £5k per month so there was nowhere else to go.

ZD

Karmacat

tolip wrote: »

Our new view is that if we cannot afford to pay for what we want on the debit card then we cannot afford it....... I look forward to being able to save money for our future at the same rate as we are repaying this debt.

Just hiked these forward from a post of yours yesterday, tolip - I especially like the second one!

tolip

Hello Everyone

Just to touch base and say hello !

We are still managing to snowball £3k a month at present, and making in roads to paying this debt off.

Mrs Tolip has been a star with the debt diary and budget.

My bonus went into the debt also. So no holiday this year. Instead we are having day trips and with a little 3 year old we can turn a picnic into a big adventure for very little money!!

I hope you are all well, once again thanks for all your comments.

Without this site I feel we would have lost our focus!

hypno06

Hi Tolip and thanks for the update.

I am really pleased to see that things are going well, and you will have a fab "holiday" without great expenditure - that is exactly what we are doing this week and so far so good - we went picking blackberries in the hedgerows yesterday - took hours, but was sunny and nice and we have loads of fruit do put in the freezer, so very OS/MSE too!!

Glad that Mrs T is on board too - you will have that debt gone in no time - I love snowballing :T

Keep us informed, and happy holidays x