should i sell to pay debts?

westhamgirl

I have been very stupid and have got 4 credit cards and 2 loans! Now it has finally caught up with me! I have £62k left of my mortgage to pay and have a good amount of equity in my house. The only way out i can see is to sell my house to pay off my debts and then to rent. This is the last resort but i can see no other way. I have never rented before and my fear is that the landlord can end my tenancy whenever - i dont want to have to keep moving at my time of life (60).

greensalad

How much debt do you have, in what form and how much interest are you being charged?

Tixy

Impossible to give any meaningful advice without understanding far more about your current situation.
Not least how much your debts are.

How long will it take you to clear your debts if you don't sell the property?

If you don't know then your first step should be to work this out. You can do this by preparing a statement of affairs to work out how much you can put towards the debts each month, and then a 'snowball calculator' to see how long it will take to clear the debts at that repayment level.

How would rent on a property you would want to live in compare to the mortgage on your current property?

theoretica

Could you rent a room to a lodger for extra income to pay back your debts?

puppey

Could you look at combining all your credit cards/loan into one to try and get a better rate?

glentoran99

puppey wrote: »

Could you look at combining all your credit cards/loan into one to try and get a better rate?

awful advice. that just increases the debt spiral for most

northerner999

As has been said, we really need to have a better idea of your debts (amounts, interest rate and repayment amount) to be able to offer meaningful advice.

Then we also need some idea of your income and expenditure. I don't know if you've looked at where you can cut back to save money for repayments, but I've never yet seen a statement of affairs (SOA) posted on here which hasn't been followed by loads of great pointers.

A good SOA calculator is at:

http://www.stoozing.com/calculator/soa.php

The important thing is to figure out how you built up the debt and change that behaviour at the same time as implementing a repayment plan, but by posting on here you've made the first step which is the most important one. If you go through the SOA on the link above, then post it on this thread, then people will help advise on how to cut back on spending and pay back the debt. It could well take a long time before your debt is cleared, but not that long for you to put together a plan and see the first effects. Once I realised I had cut out enough spending (without any real impact on lifestyle, it was mostly just renegotiating deals or cutting things I didn't need) to see my credit card debt coming down rather than stagnating it was a huge sense of relief. I hope you can get there soon, which will take away your house worries and hopefully allow you to enjoy life without quite as much worry.

Pepperoni

Definitely do an SOA and let people advise where you can cut back etc. Then go from there