Possible debt advice

engineer_amy

im sorry to be blunt, but if you came to the realisation 3 months ago that if your wife lost her job, you wouldn't be able to cope - why haven't you done anything about it yet?
You were advised to do a statement of affairs to work out your income and expenditure (something that takes a few hours over the course of a weekend, so hardly labour intensive). Even if you didn't post it publicly, you would still be able to see if cutbacks could be made or more drastic action was needed.
the original post had the debt at approx. 25K, the later post shows 35k - is this a typo or have you added 10k to the debt in 3 months?

kazwookie

You need to pull your finger out and fast, you have known about this for some months now, and done NOTHING about it.

Your wife needs to sign up with temping agencies / big local businesses who may be taking on staff to cover for their staff holidays / cleaning / delivery type jobs.

You need to cut back HARD all your spending.

You need to get ebay or fb selling pages to sell any spare items you have.

What did you spend the money on to get all this £35K debt?

Gavin78

No the debt was 35k it was a typo.

It all started when my daughter was born..nursery turned out to be a lot more expansive than I thought it would be then our car broke down at the worst time we needed one.

So I had a CC and the car cost about £800 to fix and it lasted all of about 8 months and it just died. we didn't have the money to get another car and wife couldn't get to work in time and sort daughter out as well.

So ended up getting another CC 4k and bought a car for £2600 only it turned out to be the car from hell ended up costing my nearly the whole 4k to try and get it fixed in the end.

Then Motosave wrote it off, but was only willing to pay me out 3k for it despite me putting a lot more into it. in the mean time they only paid for a hire car for so long and it ended up the first CC going to 2.7k I spent nearly 1.2k on car hire/putting extra into get another car.

But in the middle of all this was falling behind in our daughters nursery fees trying to balance the books so got another card to pay that off and you see where it is all going.

I got a loan for 5k to help pay some of the cards off. then I got a letter from CSA to say there was a miss calculation on payments of nearly 9k

going back over 10 years

used them cards again to help pay some of it off not all I then got a load for 13k to try and balance it all out only I miscalculated my payments even though I thought I had checked it was ok I could pay.

But then found out I was running short on my wage every month so much I couldn't get us through the month and my wife was struggling too to try and keep on top of things started using the cards for every day. We ended up in this never ending circle of debt with Npower and they messed up so much we didn't and they didn't know how much by so calculated a round figure but ended up paying that off to balance the books using card as it seemed cheaper to make smaller payment on card than it was for Npower to take the Monthly costs from us.

Before I knew it I was looking at 30k+ debts.

My daughter finishes nursery in January 2017 saving me £400-£600 a month I was holding out for that as would have put that into clearing out the smaller debts and would have brought everything back ok.

Reason I haven't done anything about it - denial I thought everything would be ok with her job and reality has hit hard now which is why I need to get ontop of it now

Smodlet

Forgive me if this is not appropriate but, if your wife is no longer working, do you have to pay for nursery fees? It sounds as if she worked in a school; unless I am mistaken, surely she can fulfill the role a nursery was providing, and do a far better job, perhaps?

I have no idea whether, in the circumstances, this might be appropriate, either, but is there any possibility she could become a childminder? Apologies if I have misread the situation.

HTH

Gavin78

yeah she was working in a school...but I would still have to pay nursery fees.

Currently tax credits pay us £21 a week towards a £45 a day cost

wife called TC and asked them if she lost her job would it make a difference and they said probably not. because they go on last years earnings and they said even on my wage at 18k a year with her not working it would still probably work out the same as we get now.

As for her doing the childcare. unfortunately without her working my wage wont cover all the bills.

I still need to cover the car insurance/tax so my wife can look for work and travel further out if need be. but with her losing her job daughter will have to leave nursery and we had her name down for a year just to get a place so it has really messed things up

Whatawaster

Hi Gavin,

Just got through reading this post and your previous post re your wife's job.
Have you done a SOA yet ?
Perhaps it would help if you can complete one ASAP and post on here and I'm sure ppl can give you tips on how to make changes..such as :
- get rid of luxurys like sky, Internet
- swap energy providers
- cut down on food bill tips

I know you've mentioned that you've been in denial but it's now being confirmed that your wife's lost her job so you need to get your head out the sand, make time to fill in a SOA, call step change and go through all your debts.
We can't do that for you on here, you need to put the time in yourself and do it ASAP or you'll be in an even worse situation.
Good luck and keep us updated

DCFC79

Whatawaster wrote: »

Hi Gavin,

Just got through reading this post and your previous post re your wife's job.
Have you done a SOA yet ?
Perhaps it would help if you can complete one ASAP and post on here and I'm sure ppl can give you tips on how to make changes..such as :
- get rid of luxurys like sky, Internet
- swap energy providers
- cut down on food bill tips

All that could have been done in march.

Whatawaster

DCFC79 wrote: »

All that could have been done in march.

True , but he didn't. He said he was in denial and a lot of people with debt do bury there heads in the sand. There's nothing he can change about not sorting it out in March unfortunately.

Gavin78

So we have gone through our finances and paying about 1.5k a month out Zopa being the biggest at £330 a month. we have a meeting with credit union in a few weeks to go through our finances with them.

I get roughly £1250 - £1300 a month. the above debts I haven't budgeted for food or nappies or anything left to get through to the end of the month hence the Credit union meeting to try and balance the books a little.

With regards to Zopa I can make the usual payment to them in August but from Sept that is when wife wont have a wage anymore.

Do I contact Zopa now and let them know or do I wait and make the next payment and then cancel the DD and then in form them and come to some arrangement?

Gavin78

Just thought I might add to this...How do these companies work that take over contact for the companies for you and then you pay the amount they have agreed on and they charge a fee as well?