want to consolidate but nobody wants to help!

When_the_going_gets_tough

Op have you considered one of you staying at home to care for the children? Maybe a sabatical or you could negotiate a period of unpaid leave if you don't want to leave completely. Then you might be able to make other savings as well as living in a less stressed and frenetic household?

rockm87

Some Great advice!

Can't believe you spend more on child-care than I actually earn though!

Definitely look into SOA and look at the snowball calculator its incredible and very illuminating

northerner999

When_the_going_gets_tough wrote: »

Op have you considered one of you staying at home to care for the children? Maybe a sabatical or you could negotiate a period of unpaid leave if you don't want to leave completely. Then you might be able to make other savings as well as living in a less stressed and frenetic household?

I don't know about loan consolidations etc, but I was going to ask if this was possible, you must earn a lot for £1600 PCM childcare to make it worthwhile.

Do you have an other childcare options, such as grandparents, who could take over one day a week or more?

How flexible are work? Could you work from home one day a week, thus potentially saving childcare costs? I assume you'd get less done on that day so may mean more work in the office, but that might be a price you're willing to pay for the saving / time with kid(s).

What about holidays? I'm assuming if you're worried about debt you may not be planning on going away. How about taking a week off early in the year to save yourself £400 on childcare? If you get five weeks, could doing this three times in the first half of the year make a difference? Potentially £1200 less in outgoings if you take three weeks off. Similar with grandparents, even bribing them with £200 to take on childcare duties for a week could save £200!

If you don't like the sound of a full week off, why no just book every Monday off (if work allow) and pay for four days of nursery a week rather than five. Would still work out a big saving.

Remember, employers have a legal obligation to be flexible with working hours for parents.

Sazzie23

Hi Bobflap

I hope you haven't been put off by the fairly tough talking first post, the message is correct but perhaps not easy to read when you are looking for help.

Sorry to sing the same song but, yes consolidation, been there, done it several times and blown it including blowing an inheritance payment, my former more silly money self. I am a changed Sazzie !

I really would recommend you come up with a different plan to consolidation, maybe not a DMP but you defo need to look at how to stop the debt spiralling and until you've done that don't touch your mortgage or anything secured

Good luck though and come back, we like to help not criticise.

timbstoke

I'm seeing the same issue - not trying to consolidate but 6 months ago I was at about 80% on my cards and credit rating was improving. The cost of Christmas has driven that to 90-95% and suddenly my rating is poor again.

Build the habits first. Try to increase payments to get the balances down a bit. Right now, lenders get the message "They're maxed out and want more credit - they can't manage their money" - you need to change that to "They're a way off their credit limit but they want a consolidation loan - that sounds sensible" - unfortunately, that means you have to pay the higher interest for the time being.

You'll still get there, it's just a bit tougher.

-taff

Consolidation didn't wrk for me either.

It also won't work for you unless you address how the debt was caused in the first place. As above, unless you can pay more than the minimum on 0% your chances of paying the debt off weren't great.

Again, post your SOA, use the stoozong calculator, and people can help a bit more.

tori.k

A SOA is really the place to start if you find your living in your overdraft

Like timbstock stated Consolidation worked for us only because we managed to balanced the books that we could meet all our repayments without issue (just wasn't making much of a dent due to the interest) and we knew that baring an apocalyptic tragedy we wouldn't need access to credit for a least the life of the loan. we still had to keep life like we hadn't consolidated and save everything we had until our savings reached the outstanding balance on the loan.

The repayments may have been halved but I found it more stressful then just covering our out-goings as knew we were walking such a fine line

ReadingTim

Consolidation loans don't exist - while the spin is that you use the money to repay lots of existing loans and are left with one single (lower) repayment is wishful thinking on the part of the lender, as there's no compulsion on the borrower to do that. Yes, the old loans/credit cards might be temporarily paid off, but the accounts/borrowing facility remains open, and are soon enough used again.

Or on other words, if you replace "consolidate" with "double my debt", it might give you an idea why the banks aren't that keen on your plan.