Any way out of this?

[Deleted User]

getmeouttahere wrote: »

Going through the stepchange Debt Remedy form it says do not put items on hire purchase down as assets.

You're not filling in the DRF. You are completing a SOA.

A Statement Of Affairs is just that, a statement of your financial affairs.

An incomplete statement isn't much use.

hohum

getmeouttahere wrote: »

Thanks for all the comments. There are a lot of useful tips which I will take time to digest.

In reference to the comments about my SOA:

Any chance your partner could get a job?
We have discussed this at length and my wife suffers from asperges, dyspraxia and something else which I can't recall the name of. Her previous job was working for our own company and she was earning £1300 per month but we were ripped off to the tune of £34k and had to cease trading.


.....

Sorry to hear about your company. That must have been hard (I was one of a small team doing closedown on a company once, wasn't even mine and it knocked me for six!).

I think I echo everyone in saying you need to get help now, because actually you are in quite an urgent situation.

However I thought I would add that as your wife has been able to work in the past, perhaps with the right role and set up she will be able to work in the future. I appreciate that recruitment and finding a suitable role isn't easy in her situation but it is possible. I'm saying this as I volunteer for an organisation for people who have learning and multiple disabilities. Some of those people have more severe disability, but there are a few who have been able to find paid part time work. There are roles and employers out there who can work to accommodate the skills and needs of people with disabilities. It's not easy finding them but they are out there.

Just saying this as if your wife does want to work, she shouldn't feel consigned to the scrapheap! It's more of a long term solution but do consider (once you've got this rather more pressing problem sorted) out of the box solutions to support your wife finding work - if that's what she wants to do, and it's manageable within her conditions of course. A part time role could be a boost to your household income. I don't think you should count on it to be a solution to your immediate problem, but just a thought to throw out there for the future.

getmeouttahere

hohum wrote: »

Sorry to hear about your company. That must have been hard (I was one of a small team doing closedown on a company once, wasn't even mine and it knocked me for six!).

I think I echo everyone in saying you need to get help now, because actually you are in quite an urgent situation.

However I thought I would add that as your wife has been able to work in the past, perhaps with the right role and set up she will be able to work in the future. I appreciate that recruitment and finding a suitable role isn't easy in her situation but it is possible. I'm saying this as I volunteer for an organisation for people who have learning and multiple disabilities. Some of those people have more severe disability, but there are a few who have been able to find paid part time work. There are roles and employers out there who can work to accommodate the skills and needs of people with disabilities. It's not easy finding them but they are out there.

Just saying this as if your wife does want to work, she shouldn't feel consigned to the scrapheap! It's more of a long term solution but do consider (once you've got this rather more pressing problem sorted) out of the box solutions to support your wife finding work - if that's what she wants to do, and it's manageable within her conditions of course. A part time role could be a boost to your household income. I don't think you should count on it to be a solution to your immediate problem, but just a thought to throw out there for the future.

Thanks. It has been tough and thankfully, the company was able to close only owing very little.

We have talked about starting up another company designing websites and business stationery and as I have next week off work, we may do some door to door leafleting and put some real effort into getting a new business off the ground, etc (not an immediate fix, but would give my wife some income).

My wife loved working for our company and I think if we can start afresh with a company with no overheads (such as web design) which is something we both can do (my full time job is as a web developer), it would be a real boost for her mentally as well as financially.

We have some money to get us through the next 2 or 3 weeks then it's pay day so I'm really hopeful that by pay day we'll have a strategy in place for moving forward.

getmeouttahere

I just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone that has posted on this thread. We're in a difficult situation and it's so easy for people to turn round and say 'you're the idiot that took the credit, so deal with it', but that's not happened here and I'm really grateful.

I truly value every comment and suggestion offered by everyone here. This is a lesson I will definitely learn from and hopefully my wife and I will come out of this better people.

moxter

Good luck. You're in a tough spot (modest income, few assets apart from properties with little equity, hefty debts) but seem to be looking at things rationally. Taking a lodger would seem to be a sensible option as an easy way of boosting income.

One other argument against selling property is the expenses involved - estate agents and conveyancing will take a big bite out of any equity you've earned.

getmeouttahere

moxter wrote: »

Good luck. You're in a tough spot (modest income, few assets apart from properties with little equity, hefty debts) but seem to be looking at things rationally. Taking a lodger would seem to be a sensible option as an easy way of boosting income.

One other argument against selling property is the expenses involved - estate agents and conveyancing will take a big bite out of any equity you've earned.

Thanks Moxter. I'm not in 'panic mode' yet but that doesn't mean I'm in denial either. We have the help of my mother in law paying one of the car payments each month, and then that car is going back as soon as possible, so that's already reduced our shortfall to around £750 per month and we're going to try and get an extra income of some description so we just need to work out what.

Re selling the other house, when we were looking to buy the house we're in now, we had an estate agent round to value the house and they quoted £2,000 for selling the house, then there's solicitor fees on top, plus any costs in making the house presentable to sell, so it could cost in the region of £3,000 to sell. There's about £8,000 of equity in the house which is why I think we'd get £5,000 but it's still not going to be a quick fix seeing as it takes months for a house sale to go through (it was 4 months when we bought that house).

desperate_times

"We have some money to get us through the next 2 or 3 weeks then it's pay day so I'm really hopeful that by pay day we'll have a strategy in place for moving forward."

Don't go down the payday route just stop paying your credit cards. Payday money is just going to cost you more. It sounds like with your income if you don't pay the cards then you have enough to live. OK you will go into arrears and perhaps in due course default and trash your credit rating but you have little choice at this point. I would default, get interest frozen and agree to pay just a small amount even just the £1 per month. This could buy you 6-12 months to raise your income, wife get a job, reduce expenses, sell BLT, etc and then start reducing debt more significantly. If you accept that credit rating will be destroyed then you have a lot of time before getting to CCJ stage during which you could live normally and keep up to date with mortgage. Good luck.

getmeouttahere

desperate_times wrote: »

"We have some money to get us through the next 2 or 3 weeks then it's pay day so I'm really hopeful that by pay day we'll have a strategy in place for moving forward."

Don't go down the payday route just stop paying your credit cards. Payday money is just going to cost you more. It sounds like with your income if you don't pay the cards then you have enough to live. OK you will go into arrears and perhaps in due course default and trash your credit rating but you have little choice at this point. I would default, get interest frozen and agree to pay just a small amount even just the £1 per month. This could buy you 6-12 months to raise your income, wife get a job, reduce expenses, sell BLT, etc and then start reducing debt more significantly. If you accept that credit rating will be destroyed then you have a lot of time before getting to CCJ stage during which you could live normally and keep up to date with mortgage. Good luck.

I meant it's pay day as in I get my wages. I would never ever consider a pay day loan.

retepetsir

I'm impressed you managed to get that much credit in such a short space of time, and on that income. Amazing

Ideally you shouldn't have paid all the money to renovate straight away, but do it slowly over a period of years.

The suggestions so far are good, you basically need to cut outgoings and increase income. Please don't turn it into secured debt.

getmeouttahere

retepetsir wrote: »

I'm impressed you managed to get that much credit in such a short space of time, and on that income. Amazing

Most of the 'credit' was already available, just not being used as we were both working and had a combined income of around £2800 per month.