I've got myself into a MASSIVE debt in 9 months...

FinallyGettingFree

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[Deleted User]

Weebit.., as a woman with two children, on benefits who has to manage a stringent budget and does it.., you can't afford 'entertainment'.., you don't have a 'right' to entertainment with the debts and long history of not really making the inroads on it you should.

You have come some way.., but still explaining away spending rather than prioritising debt repayment before all else. Spending is anything that is non essential. You rent a more expensive apartment than you really need, had a lodger and decided as you are mid 30's you have a 'right' to live on your own. So more debt doesn't get paid off. Your debt load is still not the priority. Its very very hard work to clear debts., and I'm sorry, you still aren't really in the right mind set to do it.

What if you get unwell (it happens), or your wife's visa fails again? Your debt load over the years has gone up not down (yep the £11k wedding then explanations as to why spending money abroad happened made my eyes bulge lol). You need to make nothing else more important than paying off the debt, you can still have fun without spending money. Do you want a family? How are you going to fit that expensive event in if you don't start reducing your debt load by enormous amounts. This debt could stop you living a life that you could so easily have.

I've been there, had a partner, prospects, reasonable earnings and debts. Didn't really pay them off except for one. Then the world fell in on me, illness, a baby died, my partner left me.., and lots of debts to pay off. I'm very very careful now. And we still have fun. Life hasn't come to an end but I have no debts.

Oh and when my then partner lost his job, the bank did call in our overdraft with no notice. Wouldn't listen to anything we said, they just wanted it cleared. At the time we were living on £100 a week! It happens. Numerous things go wrong at once.

determined_new_ms

deannatrois wrote: »

Weebit.., as a woman with two children, on benefits who has to manage a stringent budget and does it.., you can't afford 'entertainment'.., you don't have a 'right' to entertainment with the debts and long history of not really making the inroads on it you should.

You have come some way.., but still explaining away spending rather than prioritising debt repayment before all else. Spending is anything that is non essential. You rent a more expensive apartment than you really need, had a lodger and decided as you are mid 30's you have a 'right' to live on your own. So more debt doesn't get paid off. Your debt load is still not the priority. Its very very hard work to clear debts., and I'm sorry, you still aren't really in the right mind set to do it.

What if you get unwell (it happens), or your wife's visa fails again? Your debt load over the years has gone up not down (yep the £11k wedding then explanations as to why spending money abroad happened made my eyes bulge lol). You need to make nothing else more important than paying off the debt, you can still have fun without spending money. Do you want a family? How are you going to fit that expensive event in if you don't start reducing your debt load by enormous amounts. This debt could stop you living a life that you could so easily have.

I've been there, had a partner, prospects, reasonable earnings and debts. Didn't really pay them off except for one. Then the world fell in on me, illness, a baby died, my partner left me.., and lots of debts to pay off. I'm very very careful now. And we still have fun. Life hasn't come to an end but I have no debts.

Oh and when my then partner lost his job, the bank did call in our overdraft with no notice. Wouldn't listen to anything we said, they just wanted it cleared. At the time we were living on £100 a week! It happens. Numerous things go wrong at once.

This advice is spot on. I was earning £35k 5 months ago and then my world fell to pieces, I was (unfairly) sacked but as I hadn't been there long enough to have full employment rights there is nothing I can do about it and as I was driving home I received a call from a hospital to tell me my mother had died. I have fallen apart spectacularly and haven't been able to work for months. I have now taken on 2 p/t roles (one is for 12 hours pm and the other 12 hrs pw). This month I took home £300 and am just about balancing the books. I can't imagine how frightening that would be if we were still in debt - we do owe oh's mum some money but she is understanding that we will need more time to pay it back.

In 2009 me & my oh decided we could no longer justify all of the things we felt we *deserved* so we cut back on everything. It took us a year to clear £13K. At the time I was taking home about £1800 pm and oh £1200. We did still go on a cheap package holiday, a sun holiday and we went to a festival that year. The package holiday cost us £300 each and to pay for it we reduced our debt repayments for 1 month and had £150 spending money. For the sun holiday and the festival we raised money by selling things. For all other entertainment we did things that were free. I think we probably had a budget of £100 for the both of us for anything none essential for the month (but there were months when we challenged ourselves to spend nothing!) I would have loved to live in London where there is no end of fun and interesting things to do for free, we really scraped the barrel!

It did take a big shift in our thinking. I was earning a reasonable salary in my mind so felt I deserved these things. But once we got into the mindset it became addictive and we spurred each other on. And then of course once we'd cleared our debt we had surplus cash and we did treat ourselves to these things - we went to Morocco which was a dream of mine for years, all paid for in cash. Since then we've had some really great holidays - Thailand & Brasil being the headlines - and began saving and bought our first home in 2012.

I really do wish you all the best and hope that you and your wife can pull together and encourage each other on, having a partner really on board makes it so much easier in my experience. Good luck!

Teacher2

dirtycredit wrote: »

Retrench! What a great word! I've never heard it before. Thanks Teacher2 I'm going to be using that one from now on.

Sorry dahhling, I'm retrenching.:T

I first read it in Jane Austen's 'Persuasion' when, at the beginning, the silly and wasteful Sir Walter Elliot has to give up his country mansion because he has been so !!!!less and spendthrift. His agent tells him he must 'retrench'. It is a fabulous word, I agree.

Teacher2

UrbanDanceSquad wrote: »

Possibly the life of someone who'd rather not go bankrupt.

Quite. Thanks for the reinforcement.

Teacher2

"@Teacher2: Thanks for the advise. All good in theory, but most things are unworkable in practice. No gigs, holidays, pubs, presents etc. at all... for 5 years? What kind of life is that? I need to live a little, give me a break! ".

If you bite the bullet and have five years of a different sort of fun, enjoyment that does not depend on spending cash, you will have what is worth far more. You will have the amazing sense of achievement that doing a difficult thing successfully brings. You will have a sense of self reliance. You will have a sense of self respect. You will have freedom and autonomy, all worth far more than trashy, materialistic, manufactured 'fun' provided by those whose job it is to take money from punters.

Lemonsqueezer78

No gigs, holidays, pubs, presents etc. at all... for 5 years? What kind of life is that?

Its the kind of life that someone with a shed-load of debts - built up over a long period of "having a life" which you couldn't actually afford - has to live for a while, if they really are serious about getting out of it - and getting back to having a life again.

That is the harsh reality - but maybe one that you are still waiting to set in. You have lived the life of someone that earns more money than you for a considerable period of time now. If you are still of the mindset that you need to have all these things - that you somehow deserve them - and that you cannot have a life without those things for a while..... if you regard those things as "must haves" still - in the same way as you regarded your £11k wedding as must-have.... Well then my friend, you are not quite there yet. But you will be soon, of that I have no doubt. I don't mean that to sound nasty. It's just the truth, I think.

Years ago I managed to accrued debts of around £15,000 - whilst on a salary of £12,500 a year, Over time - as my debts were building up to this level - it became harder and harder to meet my repayments, bills, rent and food. For a long time, I couldn't afford to go out, I couldn't afford decent food, I couldn't even afford to buy a bus ticket in the end. And yet, for a long time I still did all these things. Like you. I ate out, got takeaways, went to the pubs/clubs every weekend - and occasionally after work, went on holidays. I did anything I wanted to do, in fact. And pretty much everything was paid for with credit.

It wasn't until I had my lightbulb moment that I realised I couldn't do that any more. I couldn't afford to go out, go to concerts, eat out or do all the fun stuff I liked doing. I ran out of rope. My debts got too high, I reached my credit limits, couldn't get any more cards, loans or Balance Transfer deals.

I knew at that point that the only way I was going to be able to deal with this mess is if I made sacrifices. And I knew I had to let go of that feeling that I was somehow "denying" myself all these things or not having a life if I didn't do them.

I had to stop doing all that - and I got myself a job in one of the nightclubs I used to go to as a customer. I worked a full time 9-5 job all week - and for as many evenings as I could I worked at this nightclub to make money to pay my debts back.

I worked at least 3-4 nights a week in the club. I got up at 7.00 am for my day job - home by 18.00, slept 18.30-20.00. In to the club at 21.00 and worked through till 02.30 - home by 3.00 am - and up again at 7.00 am for my day job.

I did that for 3 years. And it was hard. Really hard. Because that is what it took to get myself debt free. I didn't do this to torture myself. I wasn't a fool for stopping all the spending on things I couldn't in reality afford to do. I did it, because trying live a life with massive debts hanging over me, borrowing money to do everything I wanted to do, paying for everything I felt I deserved with a credit card was, itself, absolutely no life at all.

Your mindset needs to change. Yours and your wife's I think. See this break from going to gigs and concerts and weekly drinks at the pub as a "pause" ...so that you can set yourselves up for life after debt. Which may come sooner than you think, if you actually make the required changes.

I'm not suggesting you can NEVER give yourself a treat. I'm sure in my 3 years of debt hell I did occasionally do things I enjoyed. But they were truly "occasional"... Not weekly - sometimes not even monthly. And I certainly didn't go ticketed gigs every few weeks and I certainly didn't go on holiday. I had time off obviously - and I found cheap/free things to do during that time.

The idea that you "deserve" to take expensive holidays abroad even though you owe tens-of-thousands of pounds is insane, frankly. And it suggests your situation still has a way to go, before it clicks. But I will say this; the window of opportunity to be able to actually do something about your huge debts - without massacring your credit records if that is what you say you are determined to do - is closing fast.

And that emergency fund? At this point - with your current mindset - I have absolutely ZERO doubt that you guys will be dipping in to that regularly to pay for some of the treats and luxuries you want, in order to feel like you are having a life. No doubt at all...

determined_new_ms

Lemonsqueezer your comment reminds me of the greatest (and most insidious) tag line marketing (and also capitalism) ever came up with

"Because you're worth it" has contributed to a lot of unnecessary spending/debt over the years.

A few years ago I was out with a friend of mine who was off sick due to a work injury and I knew was in a lot of debt and she was considering buying another top - even though I knew her cupboards and drawers were overflowing with very similar tops. I gently asked her if she could afford it. Her reply was "no but I'm worth it". My reply was wasn't she worth not having the stress of the bill coming in the post the following month

Fletchasketch

There is such a wealth of experience on this forum and genuine well-meaning people here who want to help you. Weebit, you would be an utter fool to ignore it.

Teacher2

Weebit, reading this page written mainly by people who have been through what you are going through, there's a lot of 'tough love' on this thread. We might seem a bit harsh and judgemental but every single one of us wants you to get to that lightbulb moment and clear your debts - and you are not there yet. We are all rooting for you.

Growing up is about doing the hard thing, not the easy thing.