My husband's business is in trouble...

Mojo-a-gogo

Hello moneysaving experts,

I'm in a bit of bother...

I work full time and my husband has had his own business for 3 years. It's paid well and 'regular' so far, but now he's in a bit of trouble and can't forsee any wages for a few months. (He'd love to get out of it, but has a £30,000 overdraft on the business and it's all linked to our house.)

The problem is, we really depend on his wage to pay the bills as mine doesn't stretch far enough.

We have all the usual bills: gas, electric, council tax, mortgage etc - and over the last few months I've been changing to cheaper suppliers. We've saved over £700 per month, and have got to the point where we were breaking even on all of our bills, and saving enough for a £1000 holiday each year and £300 for Christmas.

The only loans we have are for our cars. Mine is £215 per month, and will be paid in 2yrs time, and we've only just bought his car in November, which costs us £285 per month. We have 5yrs left to pay on it.

We hate credit cards, so don't have any, and we've now filled our 'free' £2000 overdraft.

When we were in our 20's, we overspent by £40,000 on credit cards and we had to put the debt onto our mortgage to be able to move to a cheaper house 2yrs ago - that's why I daren't get another card ever again!

Our biggest bill by far is the dreaded mortgage which we're locked into for another year or we'd have a £4000 charge to pay. It's £815 per month, and we only pay the interest at the moment. (I'm hoping to change to a better deal if we can next year so that we can actually afford to pay it off properly). I phoned the mortgage company's 'helpline' and they were so rude to me about refusing to let us have a payment holiday that I dispair!

I could have sworn we were entitled to two payment holidays when we bought the mortgage, but can't find any paperwork to support that - I'm furious with the mortgage broker about it!

Any ideas folks? I'm thinking of going cap-in-hand to my mother-in-law for a loan - gulp!

art_student

My best suggestion is to post a statement of affairs (see the sticky thread for newbies by southernscouser at the top of the DFW board) for the worst case scenario. You may be able to make more savings and not have to borrow money!

chevalier

Is this a cash flow problem, ie he will get the money just not for a while? Or is it that the the business is taken a down turn due to no new clients? If the former then chase chase your creditors. If it is due to no new clients, then perhaps your OH needs to look hard at the business with regard to putting less time into it, and more time into a PAYE job?

You seem to have done really well cutting your expenditure by so much, but there are no sacred cows in this situation either.
Best of luck
chev

Mojo-a-gogo

Hiya folks,

Thanks for your ideas and suggestions. I'll take a look at the 'statement of affairs' stuff too and see what the next step is.

At the moment, I'm doing freelance design work in the evenings - but it's a bit of a bind as I work full time already. It's really helping to keep our heads above water.

I do recon my hubbie should look at maybe doing the same - and spend less time fighting with a business (and working silly hours) that's on a bit of a downward slide.

On a totally different subject though - I was searching to reduce my car insurance online, and did you know that if you search in a different browser the price for the same product can be cheaper! I shaved another £9 off the policy by using Internet Explorer instead of Firefox the other day!