A few questions

Owens_2

Hi, I know a lot of these questions may have been asked before but I'm having real difficulty getting answeres everywhere I search.
Me and the wife are at a point where we can't phisically pay the mortgage (and loan combined) as we don't live in the property anymore and were unable to rent it out.

I've been in contact with step change and they have advised us that bankruptcy is our only option.

The questions I'd like to ask are.

1; we both own cars and we both use them for commuting to and from work, if I didn't have a car I wouldn't be able to get to my workplace without 4-5 hours traveling every day (only 25mile round trip) and my wife wouldn't be able to drop our son at nursery and get to work.
I've had a hunt online and it appears to vary depending on where I look as to what answer I get regarding values of the cars.
My wife's car was perchased for £2500 3 years ago and is worth roughly (based on average prices on autotrader) £1200-1500
My car was bought for £500 as a non runner about 18 months ago and online prices vary from £1000-2500

Would we be able to keep them or are we looking at potentially loosing them ?

And secondly our mobile phone contracts, these are with O2 and are only a few months old, there appears to be some confusion regarding whether O2 allow you to keep the contract ? It's never not been paid and isn't part of the bankruptcy.

Any help would be gratefully received.

jojohotpotts

Sorry wrong post!

adpod

Owens wrote: »

Hi, I know a lot of these questions may have been asked before but I'm having real difficulty getting answeres everywhere I search.
Me and the wife are at a point where we can't phisically pay the mortgage (and loan combined) as we don't live in the property anymore and were unable to rent it out.

I've been in contact with step change and they have advised us that bankruptcy is our only option.

The questions I'd like to ask are.

1; we both own cars and we both use them for commuting to and from work, if I didn't have a car I wouldn't be able to get to my workplace without 4-5 hours traveling every day (only 25mile round trip) and my wife wouldn't be able to drop our son at nursery and get to work.
I've had a hunt online and it appears to vary depending on where I look as to what answer I get regarding values of the cars.
My wife's car was perchased for £2500 3 years ago and is worth roughly (based on average prices on autotrader) £1200-1500
My car was bought for £500 as a non runner about 18 months ago and online prices vary from £1000-2500

Would we be able to keep them or are we looking at potentially loosing them ?

And secondly our mobile phone contracts, these are with O2 and are only a few months old, there appears to be some confusion regarding whether O2 allow you to keep the contract ? It's never not been paid and isn't part of the bankruptcy.

Any help would be gratefully received.

Regarding the o2 phone, I told them when I went BR, never missed a payment and have been with them for about 8-9 years, they let me keep my contract (£32 per month) and offered me a free upgrade when I was due.

Not sure about the cars, depends who owns them really and if there is any debt on them.

TheGardener

Hi
If your phone contracts are up to date - I see no reason why they would cancel them - I don't even know if my OR informed my provider (orange) I was BR as I didn't owe them anything and I have 2 contracts (me and teenager) and - I had no problem upgrading when my renewal was due a few months after going BR.

Cars - yours is fine, under £1000 the OR will allow you to keep them. For your wife's - its up to the OR, they may insist that you sell it and give you £1000 back to buy another car but it will depend on getting a realistic valuation on it. If there is little or no value in the car above the £1000 they may not bother. Either way - if you need to 2 cars - there is no reason why the OR wont let you have 2 - its up to you to prove that you need (as opposed to want for convenience) two cars. It will be more about whether you can afford the running costs of 2 cars.

macbabypam

OR was happy me and OH to keep our cars as we use them for work, but in the end we decided couldn't afford to run them both anyway.

As far as O2 goes, we have not heard anything from them, as we have kept our payments up to date, so as long as you don't default they shouldn't be a problem.

Don't worry, everything seems like a huge problem if you decide to start out on the BR journey, but it's amazing how everything seems to work out.

You will find that someone knows just about every answer to all your questions on this forum too as well as loads of non judgemental support.

Owens_2

TheGardener wrote: »

Cars - yours is fine, under £1000 the OR will allow you to keep them. For your wife's - its up to the OR, they may insist that you sell it and give you £1000 back to buy another car but it will depend on getting a realistic valuation on it. If there is little or no value in the car above the £1000 they may not bother. Either way - if you need to 2 cars - there is no reason why the OR wont let you have 2 - its up to you to prove that you need (as opposed to want for convenience) two cars. It will be more about whether you can afford the running costs of 2 cars.

My wife would have to give up her job without having a car as there's no way she could drop our son at nursery and make it to work on time it would take her about 2 hours to do the whole journey which at the minute takes 30-35 mins

Owens_2

Forgot to mention she can only drive an automatic which makes buying a reliable automatic for under £1k a difficult task

longtermplanner

Your car won't be a problem. Your wife's car sounds pretty marginal - a nice dent might help? Only joking...

TheGardener

Hi - I wasn't trying to imply that you wanted 2 cars for convenience - I was simply saying that you will need to make the case to the OR - its not unreasonable to have 2 cars and I doubt the value of your cars is going to be a massive issue. The rules say £1000 - they don't comment on what model a car is or accommodate what license you have but will make decisions within the rules. Try not to panic (easier said than done I know) The OR and you will come to an agreement about your income and assets - its not all set in stone.