Help - need to tell husband about our debt!

Verbatim

Just to put in an optimistic word...
If your youngest is 4 or nearly it can't be much longer that s/he will need nappies at night. Also I guess s/he will be starting full time school soon so it may be possible to change the level of childcare to something much more affordable.

Do you have a spare room, or if not could the kids share so that you could take a lodger? This could be M-Fri if you live near a big town and people who live to far away to commute need somewhere during the working week but go home at weekends. Or if there's a language school you could host foreign students here to learn English.
On the negative side is your husband saving his tax/national insurance to pay to HMRC? If not there will be the need for more credit to pay this when due.

Emmala

I just wanted to say well done for telling your DH!!! I've had to do this, many moons ago, and he was so worried about what I was going to tell him, he was actually relieved when it was 'only' about money!!! TBF, we didn't have kids or a big mortgage then, but even so, I dreaded telling him!


I wonder if your childminder is being honest? She's entitled to claim for the 15 hours funding, she wouldn't be out of pocket because your child is entitled to it......maybe she's claiming the funding AND charging you and pocketing the cash????? I would ring and get this checked out with someone from the council.


Good luck on your debt-free quest, it's so scary but so much easier when your partner is there to help you through it xxxx

LittleMissGiggles123

I know its been mentioned a lot but you need to check things out with your childminder. All childminders in my area charge by the hour & only for hours the child is with them.

My daughters childminder works out my costs like this

Number of hours required per week x hourly rate x 38 weeks (number of weeks in school). This gives the total per year then she divides this by 12 so its spread over the whole year.

If she has my daughter then over the school holidays she just invoices me separately for the hours.

Also, when my daughter had 15 hours free nursery place my childminder picked her up & just charged me for the hours she had her, not the whole day.

x

London_Town

Hi Vix,

Just read through your entire thread and very pleased to hear things have gone well with telling your partner.

I agree with you about not wanting to move or sell the house, I always feel this is the nuclear option of very last resort. Don't allow it to come to that.

However, you do need to focus on hammering your debts this year because of wanting to keep the house. You said you're on the SVR and you can't remortgage due to your partner being self employed.

Forgive me if you're already clued up on this, but please be aware that it's looking likely that the base rate will start to increase next year and may head up to at least 3% in time. SVR's tend to follow accordingly and with a big mortgage, this could see your payments increase quite a bit. If you google "mortgage calculators", you'll be able to assess the increases by feeding in your mortgage amount and seeing how it could go up.

I'm glad your partner has taken all this well as keeping your home is way more important than £60 a month on beer or a flashy phone.

Best of luck with everything!