Help/advice wanted! complete newbie

Nfaa

Hi, I am just looks for a point in the right direction really, I will try and keep things as quick as poss.

Basically, when I was 18 (I'm now 25) I went straight in full time work. I worked for a banking group and given financial benefits including interest free/low interest overdraft. I was made redundant in 2009 ( had a payment of £3k), my circumstances had also changed and I was going to uni to become a full time student (this is something that was completely unexpected and not something I had planned). Now I let the bank know, and advised them that my income will significantly change. I left with 1500 in overdraft and 1200 on credit card. I offered to changed my work account to the student account and carry over my overdraft to that, after many many phone calls, they agreed, however when I went into branch they said that it couldn't be done, and when I called they said the changes had to be done in branch, they made it near on impossible for me to do anything and I gave up. They made no offers to discuss my options with me regarding my drop in income. Since leaving my job, my debt has not increased (apart from general student finance).

I know someone will say why didn't you use your redundancy? Well that was the plan, however student finance had messed up and I had to used that 3k to live on as I didn't have a job when I first arrived.

Fast forward to now, I am in a good part time job, and have relatively low expenses, however, I do not earn anywhere enough to cover paying anything off, I barely used to make minimum payments. I did change this as I discovered that my charges were causing charges and it was a vicious circle. One month they charged me £86 charges, then those charges causes another £86 charge for the next month, however when I called and enquired, they offered to refund the first £86 and stop the second coming out and since then I have made sure I am on top of what in which account (as I opened up a student account separately with another bank which I used as my current account).

Basically, I want to know what my options are, my income isn't very much due to being a student now, but I want to pay this off. I've read the guidelines on asking for charges to be refunded/offset again debt and I feel that I do qualify within the hardship guidelines, is this something worth pursuing? I'm really sorry for a rant and part life story but I'm just really confused and not sure where to start, I just know that I don't want this hanging over me any longer.

It might also be worth mentioning that, if I could use my charges over the years to offset against my overdraft, it would of corse make the £1200 from the card easer to manage, and with a bit of overtime more doable.

any help/advice much appreciated.

wegle

You first step should be to complete a full Statement of Affairs. You can do this here http://www.stoozing.com/calculator/soa.php This will give you a realistic idea of what is coming in and what needs to go out.

With a debt level of £2700, I'm pretty sure you should be able to manage this with a part time income. Obviously until you've completed the SOA we can't say for sure, so get that filled in and posted here.