Ŵant to be hopeful, not hopeless!

meroko

Hi,

We are quite a bit in debt. It is causing problems with our marriage, causing a lot of stress and anxiety and affecting our day to day lives. I am a mature student at university, my hubby is a self employed tradesman and we have a four year old who has just started school.

I thought I'd give a bit of background history and then give a SOA.

2008 - we finished uni first time round, I with an honours degree, my husband with only his student debt. I got a graduate job, my husband struggled to find work. I supported my husband for 10 months, us steadily getting into low levels of debt, until I was made redundant because my company relocated overseas. We lived entirely off benefits for two months and got into a little more debt.

2009 - husband convinced me it was a GREAT idea to move to the rural idyll of unemployment that is the very North North-East, where he is from. Family did give him a job, but wouldn't give him more than part time hours on the books and no contract, for tax purposes. I got a job on a short term rolling contract for a local firm working 6 days a week. We are meeting our debt but not doing too much to clear it, to be honest. The end of the year, surprise! I'm pregnant!

2010 - 2011 my company end my contract the minute they find out I'm pregnant. My husbands work dries up. We cannot afford to live. The debt racks up. I am fed up of the bleakness and a friend offers us to rent her property back where I'm happy for cheap rent. There are more jobs there. Hubby however when baby is born goes through a bit of a breakdown and doesn't work full time for almost a year. Attends college for an nvq paid by Jobcentre. Does odd small job. I get a full time job when child is 6 months old, but after childcare and supporting husband, it doesn't stretch far enough. Husband has break down and after his family offers to give him decently paid full time job back in rural unemployment area of doom, I agree to leave my job and for us to go back because I'm worried about him, and us.

2011-2012 - husband works as contractor for family business, but only gets paid for 25 hours a week. I am a sahm. I regret decision, but it's better life for child. I get weekend job in bookshop, the bookshop is a new business and fails within 7 months.

2013 - I am accepted onto a bursary funded course to do nursing. I work out on hubby's current wages, bursary pays better than minimum wage if you incorporate childcare costs. MIL offers to do wraparound care, changes mind 3 weeks into course, leaving us short on childcare budget. FIL dies, meaning hubby has to take over business or be out of a job. Hubby doesn't work for two months because of grief, is on a bit of a reduced workload the rest of the year because Has to take time off to manage anxiety/ see mental health team etc. I travel 60 miles each way for university, costs are high. We accumulate more debt while hubby is off because he is main source of income. Hubby doesn't pay bills for months and I only find out after, I end up taking out 4k loan in my name to consolidate some of irl we move house because there is actually no childcare AT ALL within a 20 mile radius of us and my daughter is applying for school and the village school isn't very good. N power start disputing our electricity bill and it turns out we owe them £1400.


2014 - I fall ill and have to have an operation. This delays my bursary. We get into more debt. My husbands car dies, he needs one for work, also cannot get daughter to school etc but he cannot afford to buy one outright because we have debts but no savings, so he gets one on HP. A few months later, car suspension goes, hubby finds out he's bought his car and warranty from a place that has gone into administration and he has to find £500 from somewhere. We get to w point where we cannot afford to feed ourselves, we cannot afford to meet repayments, we cannot afford to meet our rent this month. Our food shopping has been paid for by my university's charity food vouchers.

I contact CAB for debt management, they do a budget with us. I also contacted STep2change and the lad is calling me back tomorrow night.

GunWharf

Welcome Meroko

That is a detailed history there and you have had a tough time of it. You have done the right thing by posting on here as a wealth of info and support will come from us all. We have all been in debt for various reasons but have a common goal- DEBT FREE!

All the best from the South Coast.

meroko

SOA:

Outgoings:

Rent - £550 per month (tied in till December)
Water - £27 per month, arrears of 1 months payment of £27
Council tax - £85 per month, arrears of £85
Gas and electricity - £100 per month, plus arrears of £1400 which an power want us to pay £50 a month of. Hubby just tried to switch us to utility warehouse without consulting me :mad:
Bt package - £36 per month inc tv, Internet, home phone (in contract for a year)
Tv Licence - £13 per month
Childcare - £260 per month, arrears of £90
Mobile phone contracts - £80 per month (on 3, both in husbands name, he says that they won't let us out of the contract, one has almost a year left and the other almost 18 months)
Hire purchase on husbands car - £159 per month (46 months left)
Road tax - £10 per month
Car insurance - £53 per month (Inc breakdown cover)
Petrol - £230 per month (husband commutes about 300 miles a week with work)
Public transport - £169 per month (I commute 2 hours each way by public transport for uni, that's a bus ticket and a metro ticket per wk)
Food and toiletries budget - £246 per month
Pet food/litter - £20 per month
Opticians scheme - £21.50 per month (inc contacts, eye tests, aftercare, solutions, 1/2 price off glasses when needed)
Clothing - approx £20 per month (I have a kid, she grows!)
Gifts/emergency spending etc - works out about £25 per month.

Total : £2236

Ingoings:

Bursary: £590 per month inc childcare payment
Husbands average pay: £917 per month.
Student loan: approx £181 per month, but doesn't come in till January.
Working tax credit - £115
Child tax credit - £275
Child benefit - £81

Total: £2165

Loss of £71 before we get onto the debts! However,I am also agency staff and I get 1-4 shifts a month, which means I can bring in between £70 and £300 a month, depending on work availability. So in reality, without the debt, we break even.

Nw the debt -

My barclaycard - £2046
Husbands barclaycard - £4100
Husbands overdraft - £1750
My overdraft - £2000
My personal loan (to consolidate debt mostly in hubby's name) - £4,100 with a contractual payment of £129 per month
Argos card in hubby's name - £1978
Next store card in my name - £450

Total debt - £16,424

Debt husband owes to his family - £7,000
Debt I owe to family - £330

Any ideas where in the world I start?

meroko

Has anyone got any suggestions?

pinkgiraffe2014

Well done on starting your diary. Sorry you've had a tough time lately.

I'm very new to all this but didn't want to read and run.

Mobile phone bill - it will cost you to come out of contract early but they should let you lower your tariff.

Shopping - have you switched to aldi/lidl, if you have one nearby? You could take a look at the old style boards for some good cheap meal ideas? (I need to take my own advice here as food shop is one place where I'm still overspending!)

Pet food - what pets do you have? Do u buy their food from supermarket? If so you could probably get a better deal online and if you join one of the cashback sites you can earn a little extra on top too. I feed 4 cats and a dog for approx 20 a month.

Have you thought about joining some of the survey sites to earn a little towards Xmas? I've recently joined swagbucks and just about to cash out a £20 Amazon voucher.

That's all I have I'm afraid. I don't know much about CAB or the other charities so can't offer any advice on your options with those. I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will be along shortly.

Good luck

meroko

Hi thanks for the tips for survey sites, I will give it a try.

Where do you get your pet food from, may I ask?

meroko

Day 2 -

I spent the afternoon trying to sort out my student finance. It isn't coming in until after the rent. Great. I'm scared to contact the letting agency because we have missed the rent once before. Our contract is also up for renewal and I'm scared to discuss that...like "hey, we want to continue renting with you but we can't afford the rent this month". That's going to go down well!

I also contacted ancestry about an account that I forgot to cancel, they are giving me a £50 refund.

I had my telephone appointment with the steptochange guy tonight, apparently we need to more or less ignore the debt right now because until January when my student loan comes in, we don't even have enough to meet our priority bills. He suggested that we use their token payment scheme for now and they will pay a token payment of £1 a month per creditor until January when we will start to break even and then we can look into paying off the debt then. I think I'm going to use this scheme.

Then this evening my husband and I opened up a basic cash account with lloyds tab. It feels nice to have a bank account that says £0! I want to open up a back up one just in case, any suggestions? Cannot be Barclays as they are our main creditors.

We need to contact 3 and basically default on our contract. Not looking forward to that bit.

My husband has cancelled all direct debits from our old account apart from Barclays because we are paranoid they will catch on before we have transferred details.