New job, good income now but bad credit history

Davidtube

Basically, my situation has changed a lot for the better, but I don't know if any banks will trust me enough to provide me with a loan.

I was self-employed and had ups and downs with money and had to support my wife on a low income. Over that time I amounted £8,000 in debts. Now my wife and myself are in stable jobs, I don't need to support her any more and I have left over money at the end of each month.

I pay £170 in interest every month on my debts.
After all my expenses I have £520 left over (£690 if it wasn't for debt interest).

That's £170 down the pan every month. If I could get a loan to repay the £8,000 (then close my credit cards) with £350 repayments each month over 2 years, I would still have a buffer of £340 per month left over. But I have gone into arrears quite a few times over the past few years when we were struggling. Will anywhere give me a loan or will I have to wait a year or two without going into arrears before anywhere will trust me?

Idiophreak

Davidtube wrote: »

Basically, my situation has changed a lot for the better, but I don't know if any banks will trust me enough to provide me with a loan.

I was self-employed and had ups and downs with money and had to support my wife on a low income. Over that time I amounted £8,000 in debts. Now my wife and myself are in stable jobs, I don't need to support her any more and I have left over money at the end of each month.

I pay £170 in interest every month on my debts.
After all my expenses I have £520 left over (£690 if it wasn't for debt interest).

That's £170 down the pan every month. If I could get a loan to repay the £8,000 (then close my credit cards) with £350 repayments each month over 2 years, I would still have a buffer of £340 per month left over. But I have gone into arrears quite a few times over the past few years when we were struggling. Will anywhere give me a loan or will I have to wait a year or two without going into arrears before anywhere will trust me?

You should check your credit file and see how bad it looks, how many of the arrears show up...If they've made it onto your file, you might have struggles getting credit for the next 5 /6/7 years.

No family you could approach for the loan?

Tixy

Its not £170 'down the pan' though. Its only the difference between the £170 you are currently paying and the interest you would pay if you could get a cheaper loan.

Your chance of getting a loan at 5% as you illustrated I would imagine is very low if you have a lot of missed payments.

If you have £8k debt and the interest this £170 this month then it looks like your average interest rate is around 25%.
If that is about right and you can pay £690 off your debts each month then the amount of monthly interest will rapidly decrease. At £690 a month your whole debts could be paid off in 14months (and total interest cost would only be about £1300).

Maybe try putting the details of your debts in the snowball calculator to look at different monthly payments and how long it would take to clear your debts for each.
E.g. if rather than £690 you paid £426 a month then your debts would be cleared in 24 months. See here - http://www.stoozing.com/calculator/snowball-calculator.php