Last place to turn, advice much apreciated!

sanfrancisco

Hi rburns,

I have been where you are. I can see you are desperate and you just want a fairy godmother to make it all go away. That is not going to happen. Make this the day when you make long term changes to your life so that you will never be in this situation again. It will take a bit of effort, but in 3 to 6 months time you will feel brilliant. Consolidation loans ar very short term relief and will not sort out this problem.

So...here's what I would do...first of all how are you getting to work? Are u able to without motorbike? And second question... What bills do you have to pay in next two weeks (till pay day)?

1. Presuming you can get to work...ring up and cancel insurance.
2. Stop buying all petrol.
3. Open basic back account.
3. Ring up Santander and say how much money do you need for me to close this account? Close it. Use any money you can to do this. By not spending on petrol etc, it seems to me you can do this.

You should now be £300 per month better off. This is in 6 weeks time. How much is your pay day loan?

4. I would write to capital one and Halifax od and offer to pay £1 per month and could they freeze interest.

5. Pay off pay day loan.

6 pay off 2 other debts.

Say hello to freedom.

Now this plan will take effort and hard work. I don't know all your figures, but it seems to me that this time next year you will be debt free. By age 21. That is amazing. Your credit file will be rubbish for a while, but use that time to save and go travelling or something. You are so young, you really can turn this round, but you have to put some effort in. Anything in life tart is worth having is hard work. So go and put the kettle on and get on with it. Xx

sourcrates

OP,
You will not get a consolidation loan, as you simply dont have enough spare income to make it an affordable prospect, add to that your credit file is trashed, no lender is going to touch you, except in maybe the high interest payday loan sector, which you should steer well clear of.

Best advice is to default on your consumer credit debts, and enter some kind of DMP to repay what you owe, at a vastly reduced sum each month, you have to break the cycle of borrowing on PDL`s every month, if you cannot increase your income, then this is the only way you will get it sorted.

Speak to National Debtline, or Stepchange, both offer excellent and free advice, and will not judge you, as far as i can see, this is your only realistic option.

FatVonD

You need a second job, would your current hours allow you to take on an evening or weekend bar job?

Throughout most of my 20s I worked Friday and Saturday nights in a club (or 'disco' as we called them back then in the dark ages ) my wages from my day job went entirely on bills etc and then my evening job money was my spending money. The job got me out of the house to the exact same place everyone else was paying to go but I got paid to be there

If clubs aren't your thing what about a music venue (see gigs for free) or working as a steward at a football stadium. If your hours are erratic and you couldn't take on a second job look for a block of work and take your annual leave to go and do it *(think of the thousands of temporary staff needed at festivals for example.) I took a weeks holiday from my job last year to work somewhere else to get the money to pay for my son's driving lessons, you could have that Santander debt paid off with one weeks work and also get £100 ahead so you don't have to keep relying on the payday loan.

* this is assuming your annual leave is paid.