My situation 31 January 2014 at 8:54PM in Debt-free wannabe 1 reply 814 views

sonic91

I'm new on the forum, so I'll just outline my situation:

I am 28, I rent a 1 bedroom flat with my wife and I work full time for around £16K per year. My wife is long-term unemployed (nearly 3 years) and no matter what she does, no-one will give her a job, despite all the independent advice she has received on CVs, interviews, etc. She is trying extremely hard and it reduces her to tears.

I have around £10K of unsecured debt, of which around £8K is in default (approx. 2 years and counting). My credit rating is awful. The only credit I can use is my very first credit card that I took out when I was 19: Capital One, 34.9%. The majority of my debt is with a collection company (I made mistakes, my mental health prevented me from sorting things out as soon as they went wrong, when I lost my job during the recession, amongst other awful things coinciding with this.)

Part of my debt is overpayments of working tax credits, an overpayment of nearly £1K from last year, and this years payments recently stopped with HMRC wanting £150 back. So I'm down on £80 per month on income and a further £150 in debt.

I'm currently paying back debt by around £100 each month (and I've done a budget - after rent, utilities, etc. go out I have less than £300 of disposable income left, which is spent on food and goes to servicing my debt, I can't really afford more).

Long-term, I want to be able to buy a house, have a family, etc. It's becoming a more and more distant dream.

I would love some independent advice on what I can do to get out of debt and repair my credit rating as fast as I can. Anything would be great. Thank you.

Madchickenlady

Did you write to them about the money you owed the Tax credit people, I got a letter from them telling me they had over paid me by £1000 and I phoned them up and told them that I couldn't see how that would happen, so they told me to appeal, I appealed and they investigated it and in the end it turned out that they owed me £275.00 this has happened to me twice and I appealed both times and got money back, I would normally have just paid it but I know how stupid their system can be so I would always check after that