What to do when you can't afford to pay?

LLM

Myself and my partner have a few credit cards that are maxed out and we can't afford to make the repayments any more. We are really struggling.

He's recently gone self employed and I lost my job and had to take a lower paid one which has taken its toll on us being able to meet our monthly payments.

What do we do? Do we continue to avoid calls from the companies or do we write to them and let them know the situation?

Thanks in advance.

KTF

Calling them up and explaining the situation is always better than sticking your head in the sand and hoping that it will go away (which it wont).

newlywed

Contact CCCS - https://www.cccs.co.uk or Payplan. These are charities which help advise you about your debt. They do not charge fees.

Dylanwing

I have been through this some years ago, brace yourselves, you are in for a rough ride. First thing is to prepare a proper statement of income/ expenditure and work out how much you have left for the cards. Always a good idea to try and build in a bit of slack as they all seem to want 'the extra fiver', and allow for unforseen events.
At this stage you could go to the CAB and they will advise you, or you can try and negotiate with your lenders. Before negotiating they will default you and it will muck up your credit rating for a long time.
Main tips are-
Put all offers in writing and request a response in writing.
Try and avoid negotiating on the phone, they can be very intimidating and will try and bully you.
Be persistent - On many occasions I pointed out that I do not have a magic money tree, and food is not really just an optional extra. Oh yes, and sarcasm did not always go down well!
Hope that your lenders treat you fairly. If you have any American Express debt beware, they are horrible.
Good luck, I hope you get over this difficulty.

CLAPTON

as well as contacting CCCS/Payplan/CAB I would suggest you post a SOA over on the debt free wnabee board where you will find lots of support.
An SOA is a statement of affairs that lists income, details of all your spending and debts details ..amount, APR minimum payments.

LLM

We looked at the website that shows you about snowballing but I think I really need to sit down and have a serious chat with the OH about it.

Trouble is, he's self employed and his income fluctuates, as does mine as I get paid by the hour. So we never know exactly what we have coming in each month.

I think we should maybe work on minimum income and go from there and see how much we're left with then see if it's really necessary to start going to the companies as we'd quite like to get a mortgage soon and don't want to mess up our credit rating any more than we have done already!

Banderman

Emigrate. .

Tirian

CCCS have a very helpful online debt counselling service that you could try, which takes you all the way through the process of totting up all your debts, incomings and outgoings and will suggest the best course of action for you.

I would definitely recommend giving it a try -

https://www.cccs.co.uk/debtremedy

MABLE

Join the masses and go bankrupt. I understand from a friend of mine its cool to go down that route.

M_Thomson

MABLE wrote: »

Join the masses and go bankrupt. I understand from a friend of mine its cool to go down that route.

I hope that is a joke.

Lavendyr

I think it's pretty obviously sarcastic. :P

OP, please don't keep on ignoring the calls, the debt is not going to go away. Take the advice above and go to CCCS, work out exactly how much you can afford to repay each month as an absolute minimum and then anything extra can be thrown at the debt too.