How many LBM's do I have to have before I learn!!!

cynicalgit_2

Let's hope sanity prevails and Stressed Steph makes the right decisions.
All the advice here has been spot on, I wish to God I'd followed it all those years ago.
Don't mortgage your future for today.

MiMi66

Hi Steph,

I do so feel for you but I have to say steer clear of consolidation loans or attaching it to your home. I did this aboout 4/5 years ago - £20K onto the mortgage and if you see my debt free wanna be diary you'll see I am ended up with a further £22600 of debt at the begining of this year. Slowly but surely mine has come down this time - it will be a 7 years slog out with my credit cards, but having that sense of focus, this website forum, and determination not to retire in debt is keeping me going. I won't pay my mortgage off, but I won't have other outstanding debts, I am determined.

Home grown spreadsheets have helped me turn it into a project. Work out what you can reasonably pay back and set up standing orders and budget budget budget. It doesn't mean you won't have the odd bad few months, but try to weather it and look at the biger picture over months and years. My debt tends to go up and down, but as long as the downs far outweigh the glitches up you are winning.
Good luck and remember to get some support if you need it - And remember too that the sky won't fall in - debt can be managed. You been so brave facing up to again:Ajust tackle it the right way this time.

StressedSteph

I don't know what to say............

I am crying buckets here after reading your replies, THANK YOU soooooo much for all taking the time out to help me.

It has been a real kick up the bum and I deserved it. I am so busy wallowing in self pity that I just want a quick route out. But as you all say, there isn't really a quick route, or what looks like the quick route is actually going to make my life worse.

I guess looking at my signature, I can see that I have managed to make a dent in the debt total in the past, I just took my eye of the ball again.

If I am truthful to myself, I know the reason why it hasn't worked in the past. Its because I have been doing it in secret..
Too scared of owning up to my husband and wanting life to be all perfect, and because of that I have now ruined it.

We haven't really had the talk yet, he knows that I have applied for a consolidation loan and that we are in a bad way, but I haven't actually told him the amount we owe yet. He did ask what on earth have we spent it all on and apart from £1800 on repairing the car a year ago, I have NO CLUE!!. How terrible is that, I don't feel like I have anything to defend myself with, it feels like he will think I have just gone off and frittered the money on myself but I am sure I haven't.
My clothes are old, my make-up has virtually run out, I haven't been to the hairdressers in over 6 months so heaven only knows where all the money has gone to. Just living beyond our means I guess.

I doubt very much that the loan will even be an option soon anyway as the mortgage DD fail to go out yesterday . Pretty sure they won't offer a loan to a mortgage defaulter! and even if they do I expect the interest rate will get even worse.

Looks like I am left to figure this out somehow. On the snowball calculator, paying the worse case scenario of £600 pm we would be debt free July 2016 :eek:.

Off to cry into my coffee and get myself together, thanks again everyone.
I love you MSE'ers so much. :heartsmil

foxgloves

Well Steph, if you haven't spent the money on luxuries, then you have actually hit the nail on the head in your last post as to what the problem actually is. I am diagnosing a chronic lack of planning & that includes budgeting. If you aren't treating yourself to the good life, haven't had a whole heap of horrendous emergencies but still have all this debt, then that's all it can be. And it is a treatable condition! The money you have coming in each month is your money & you don't have any more, so your budget HAS to reflect the figure coming in. NOT what you can buy if you use cards, etc, because that's someone else's money. It isn't yours to spend. End of! Budgeting is a discipline. It is making sure that the roof over your head, the heating, bills etc, can all come out of your monthly income with enough left over for food, petrol, clothing, etc. You will find that you jiggle your budget around for a while before you find something that works, but the basic principle is that if your food shopping is coming to say, £60 a week & you only have £40, then you need to revisit your meal plans to tweak what you are planning to eat that week. If you see a lovely present for someone that costs £30 & you have £15 in your present budget that month, you find something cheaper or you wait till next month. That's what budgeting is. We used to spend a lot on having coffees/cakes out, but now, it has to come out of our personal spends budget of £60 each per month. When we've spent that £60 (on whatever we like), that's the end of it, there is no dipping into the account for more. I was HOPELESS at this pre-LBM & mr f was worse. However, because I can see that budgeting has got us debt-free & seems to be keeping us that way, it's now a discipline I really enjoy. You do have to put a bit of time & effort in, but that's got to be better than spending willy nilly, having now't to show for it & feeling stressed & miserable. If you need another day of wallowing, have it, but make it your last one, then start turning it into action x

StressedSteph

Hi all,

Thank you Foxglove for your reply, I very much appreciate it.

Well....the decision has been made for me, but all for the best in the long run I suppose.

The loan company have come back with a resounding NO. Don't blame them really, I am not a very sound bet.

As much as it leaves us in the "you know what", after receiving all your help and wise words I think it is probably better that it has ended up this way.

I now need to figure out how I am going to sort these arrears out and somehow give my children a Christmas.

Thankfully we are having Christmas day on our own this year, so no need for any lavish hosting to be done, we can just treat it like a Sunday roast.

Feel abit better now I know the direction I have to go in. Still not looking forward to the conversation with hubby which will go along the lines of "life is on hold for the next 3 years"!!! :eek:

Thanks again for all your help.

Will do a new SOA and start a debt diary just as soon as I have got myself together.

xxx

jayss

Best of luck.

Practice saying no.

Once you get going it'll become routine and with luck and your family on board you might beat that snowball date.

Find_The_Real

Wishing you good luck but please remember to go with a realistic budget as life shouldn't be put on hold and you are living a life of poverty. I appreciate that many people consider you should throw as much at debt in order to be debt free but that quite often causes people to get fed up with a frugal way of life and they lose track. Be sensible and budget for small treats.

If the payments are becoming a problem, do remember there are free debt charities out there that can offer advice as well.

dancingfairy

One problem is that 'little things' can add up to a huge amount. Say you get a 2 pound coffee every working day, that's about 40 a month. That magazine or 2? That chocolate bar/bottle of wine etc etc that sneaks into the shopping basket? It all adds up.
The second problem is pretty much the problem that UK government has. You spend more than you earn (even if it's just a small amount). Next month you owe interest/charges and you spend again a bit more than you had coming in. Before you know it you're in a whole heap of a mess. You cutback, but all your doing is cutting back from where you are now, you're not actually making any inroads into the debt. You think you're doing well as you're *only* 50 pounds above your budget (instead of 100 or 200 etc etc).
My point is small debts can grow, and grow extremely quickly. They snowball. A large proportion of your debts is probably interest and charges upon interest and charges.
Please make sure you have that chat with your husband so you are both on the same page. It's blatantly obvious you haven't been spending it on lavish things like haircuts etc etc.
You need to start a spending diary and ,of course do a SOA.
Best of Luck
df

ceecee31

Hi Steph. Please please please DON'T go down the consolidation route. I've been there in the past many times and got us (and I blame myself entirely) into massive massive debt. It was the same old story and your situation rings to true with me too. Spending on credit cards, storecards, loans without my husband being aware of the true nature of our debts. He had actually no idea I had seven credit cards as well as three or four personal loans running at the same time. We were living a good life, not luxurious, but well above our means. We both had really good jobs and managed the payments no problem. Then WHAM. Redundance, illness, downturn in the building trade. And there we were stuck with mega debts. I bit the bullet, took it on the chin and contacted every single creditor to put a plan in place. Every one of them was brilliant. I have managed, in the last two years without a single credit card or loan, purely living off our wages to bring down my debt from £88,4422 (yes you read that right) to £61,260. A massive £27,182 paid off since July 2011. The moral of this story Steph is, YES, it can be done if you are serious about it. A consolidation loan is not the answer and will only add to your worries in the future. Believe me, I know.

JulieGeorgiana

Do remember to live... If the debt takes 4 years instead of 3 to pay off that's better then cutting back to the bone and falling off the bandwagon in 6 months.

Set a realistic budget on your SOA and then work out how much is left to spend on debts...

Mine took 8 years to clear... But we lived to (just within our means instead)

Good luck x