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Advice Needed, Newbie approx £16,000 in debt

Hi all,

I really don't know where to start here but was hoping for some help.

my fiance and I are both 28 and in February this year we bought our first home together, we had both been living with our parents and my parents very kindly helped us with our deposit which we are currently paying them back each month.

Aside from paying back the deposit, we have a lot of other debts that are starting to bog us down. We actually had a bit of this debt before we moved in, I know I know people will say you should have cleared these before you moved into your home but we really wanted our own place and thought we could cope.

We love our home but altogether, I have 3 personal loans (one due to end in November this year yay!) the other 2 I have about 3 years left to pay. I have 2 credit cards, one is approx £6,000 and the other is £2,400 odds, we both have overdrafts that we live in mine is £1,000 and my fiance's is £300. All in all we are about £16,000 in debt (excluding the money we are paying back my parents for our deposit).

We are finding that once we pay our minimum balances every month we are left with very little to live on. Most people will say just knuckle down and try and clear your debt and curb your spending, easier said than done when you are still trying to have some sort of life other than going to work and back!

We also made the horrid mistake of trying to quickly fix this by applying for multiple personal loans in the past few months and we were rejected everytime. I haven't even looked at our credit ratings but I'm sure they are horrendous.

I was considering contacting Halifax who we have our mortgage with and asking them if they would help us consolidate our debts and add it to our mortgage? since we only moved in in February, I'm not sure if they will agree to this? we would also like to pay off our overdrafts and open a joint account with Halifax then we just have the one payment coming out each month.

Can anyone tell me me if they think this might be possible. or can anyone tell me if there are any balance transfer credit cards out there for people with bad credit ratings to transfer a balance of almost £6,000 onto?

many thanks!

Comments

  • ~Beanie~
    ~Beanie~ Posts: 3,043 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Consolidation is not usually a good idea and definitely don't think of adding it to your mortgage. Swapping unsecured debt for secured is never a good idea. Plus, if you only moved in February you probably wont have enough equity to be able to do this anyway.

    The first thing to do is to complete an SOA (statement of affairs) and post it on here. You can find the template here: http://www.stoozing.com/calculator/soa.php

    Also get copies of your credit files from all 3 credit reference agencies, it might bit be as bad as you think.
    :p
  • thanks for your reply, I don't have all the information in front of me at the moment to complete the form but I can do it at home.

    In the meantime, I will get an up to date copy of our credit reports.

    Many thanks
  • SOA is a good idea as you need to get this under control ASAP :)

    The Great Declutter Challenge - £876 :)

  • ok thanks, I will look into this
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