We need Help! SOA included

lunar

I have sent a mail to egg requesting a lower interest rate, dont know if it will work but i thought it would be worth a try. I will let you know what happenes.

HairyHandofDartmoor

Have you tried the snowball calculator yet? If you go to www.whatsthecost.co.uk and click on snowballing and type in all your debts, you will see how long it will take to pay it all back (especially if you can only pay the minimum). You may get an unpleasant surprise but it's best to be realistic.

If I were you, with that level of debt, I would consider bankruptcy. You will surely never get a mortgage anyway with such huge debts. You will be out of the bankruptcy period years quicker than it would take you to pay off your debts, and then you could work on saving money, and rebuilding your credit reputation.

I commend you for wanting to pay off your debts, but with no house to lose, bankruptcy may be the best option for you. You could spend the rest of your lives paying off such huge debts.

Sorry if that sounds harsh or depressing. Just want the best for you.

Mindspace

Hi Savvy, I commend ur courage and motivation for dealing with such mega monster debt and not looking for IVA/Bankruptcy. Putting myself in ur situation, I'm dead by now.
You and ur partner are working hard, now i think the challenge is keeping focus and being consistent with efforts you make! Please dont let it slip out of ur hands.
The prospect I foresee, since you have been to uni and have done masters like myself, as u gain experience, I'm sure future earnings will be substantially higher. You need to plan and push for this opportunity. Keep your eyes open for this opportunity.

Please keep posting ur progress on here, wish u loads of luck.

Arise, Awake and stop not till Goal is reached!!!

sooziesooz

It's true about the reducing of APR rates. I've just rang to close my Debenhams store card - an APR 0f 29.9% and they asked me if I would reconsider if they dropped the rate to 18.9%. Of course I told them to 'shove it'!! But yes you can definately get them reduced as this will seriously help with your repayments.

x

izzybusy23

sazzacat wrote: »

at least that 'extra' £450 will really take a chunk out of one of the higher-interest debts.

i have read on here that other users have rung up their credit card cos and stated that they are good customers, always make payments etc, but are feeling the need to move the debt because of the high interest rates (they won't know it's not true) - and have had it reduced by a few percent. it's worth a try.

you could start a separate thread on the cc board and ask if anyone has had any recent success?

let us know how you get on x

Yesterday I phoned MBNA to ask what my settlement figure was, as I wanted to clear that and then do a BT from one of my highter cards to it. Didn't realise MBNA interest was 27% but they reduced it to 19% just because I called, then literally a couple of hours later, somebody from MBNA called and asked me if I wanted to do BT at 4.9%... so its always definately worth ringing them.. perhaps do a white lie and say you are thinking of settling up and they may well just drop that interest rate for you.

Lemon_Tree

sazzacat wrote: »

at least that 'extra' £450 will really take a chunk out of one of the higher-interest debts.

i have read on here that other users have rung up their credit card cos and stated that they are good customers, always make payments etc, but are feeling the need to move the debt because of the high interest rates (they won't know it's not true) - and have had it reduced by a few percent. it's worth a try.

you could start a separate thread on the cc board and ask if anyone has had any recent success?

let us know how you get on x

My sister has just gotten Alliance and Leicester to reduce their interest rate by doing this, but got nowhere with Egg. But it's always worth a try.

mel19632

Hi, just a quick note on MBNA, I rang up about 6 months ago to close my card (as nothing was on it, as such high interest rate) and they offered my £12k limit at 7.9% to keep it.

Maybe try asking them again, as I was never a particularly loyal customer to MBNA!

firesidemaid

also, as you pay off each card in turn you then are in a better position to get a better BT deal on each empty card in turn x

i don't know if i mentioned this before but you can make money on dvd rental trials and also curtain measuring appt from quidco!

the old style board is amazing for making your food money go even further - are you able to acquire any free food at this time of year? fruit and veg, making jams etc - i just got 7 jars of jam out of 1 kg of plums, just used a £1.08 bag of jam sugar = 18p per jar of HM jam. yummy!

if you have an asda near you, then i have found that by keenly scouring the shelves you can find some random bargains - reduced jars, tins, herbs etc - normally due to end of line/repackaging.

i have also started using their own version of soya mince (58p) and packing it out with veg (some suggest lentils or porridge oats) for cheap meals. also tesco value porridge oats won the 'which' taste test recently. at 21p, asda value custard creams are not bad either.

sorry for this random selection! i can see you are working so hard and are doing really well. good luck x

savvy14

Today's update - well managed to change council tax to 12 monthly payments instead of 10 so now my payments will be £110/month. Plus, as I changed the DD date, I will be having a month break in September as it's too short notice. So that's an extra £110 to put onto a card next month.

Just about to start calling some CC companies - wish me luck!!

Thanks everyone for all your support.

lunar

Good luck, let us know how you get on. Im still waiting tohere back from egg!