Husband has got us into unmanageable debt

jackieblack

Your grocery budget can definitely be cut by at least £150pm, especially if you're on maternity leave so have the time to cook from scratch/batch cook.
Before DD went off to Uni 18 months ago I was spending £220 a month cooking for 4 adults and that spend also included cleaning stuff and some toiletries, so it is very 'do-able' for 2 adults and 2 children

lessonlearned

Scotslass1974 wrote: »

I don't know if I'm kidding myself though because the interest free periods are almost all over by the end of the year and because he's got us where we can't get any further credit we may not be able to make all the minimum payments once they end. And even if we can it's going to be decades to pay them all with interest.

Aaaaaaaaaargh! Why is it so complicated? If we're going to end up unable to pay the debts then I don't want to make us all (more) miserable dragging it out a few more months...

See you are up early and also you mention that you were awake in the night talking to your husband about your situation. Not the best time to talk but hey I guess you just have to do it when he is ready and open to discussion. I hope you are managing to get some sleep though, you must feel drained and exhausted with the worry.

I wouldn't worry too much about the interest free payment s ending at the end of the year, cross that bridge when you come to it.......you should be working by then anyway so will have more money coming in.

Yes it will take time to clear the debts, several years no doubt but I don't think it will run into decades. Once you get going it will get easier and quicker, you will be able to "snowball" them.

You first priority now is to get through the next few months on your current budget or you go back to work, or you go under. And I'm sure the last two options don't have much appeal so realistically your only option is to slash your budget to meet your current comittments.

As I explained in my last post you can find £445 a month with relatively little effort. If you wanted to be really hardcore you could find another £100 by reducing your food bill down to £150' but I suggest you don't try that. £250 would be better because it would give you a bit of wriggle room to include toiletries, maybe the odd charity shop bargain .....that kind of thing.

I think you are just going to have to accept you are in this for the long haul because there are no quick fixes. However don't try to plan too far ahead in one go. For now just get a six month plan in action, then review it again later.

You may find that your current credit card providers send you offers of further 0 per cent deals, two of mine do on a regular basis. As I say cross that bridge later.

You could ask them to freeze interest - some will, some won't.

At the moment, if you slash your budget as I suggest then you will be able to continue to meet all your current outgoings with ease. Then you can rejig things once you are earning again.

I know you both want to spend as much time as you can with the children but I'm afraid one of you at least is going to,have to up your working hours. I would suggest whichever of you has the most earning capacity.

I would also advise you to make sure your husband is on board, you can't do this alone. He too has to grasp the nettle and stop spending otherwise you will get nowhere,

You can do this. Just take it one step at a time. Get through the next 6 months.

lessonlearned

One other thing, whilst you aren't working and whilst your husband is working reduced hours could you not look at ways of increasing your income. Take a look at the Boost Your Income Board for ideas. It depends on your skill sets of course but there are lots of ways you can increase your income. And it's always better to have more than one source of income.

In the meantime have a good declutter and get selling all your unwanted stuff. You would be surprised what you can make.

Debt busting requires a two pronged approach, reducing your outgoings and increasing your income. The more you can do now the shorter your debt journey will be.

Ps I post on the Millionaire thread. When it began I was £30k in debt. My net worth is now around £140k. It would have been Nearer £250k (yes a cool quarter million) but I gave over £100k to my children as deposits and renovation budgets to get them on the property ladder.

How did I do it.......a combination of extreme frugal living, selling everything that wasn't nailed down, downsizing and flogging all my assets. You can follow my journey on the millionaires thread if you are interested. It included me being made a widow.

So basically I am now starting with a clean sheet. I'm now trying to build up again to have a safe and secure retirement. I have embraced a life of simplicity and minimalism. It suits me. I now hate clutter and "stuff". I don't need it and I no longer want it.

I now have financial freedom to do what I please when I please, within reason. I live simply but well and, barring something terrible happening, I aim to remain debt free so that I can continue to enjoy the odd holiday, run my car and get out and about.

I got a lot of inspiration from the boards on this site and some of the minimalist and frugal living blogs. TBH if I can do it, anyone can.

Given the chance I could spend for England - I shudder to think how much money I have wasted over the years. Now.....I'm a reformed character. I still like to spend - who doesn't - but I now spend wisely.

pleasedelete

Your debt was unaffordable regardless of what extra he spent as the 0% needed paying off within the term and as soon as that went off 0% the repayments would have soared.

I am not sure that blaming him is totally fair- did none of it go on day to day expenses? How many graphics novels- for that debt you would be looking at thousands?

Cutting costs isn't an option - you need to increase your income.

You are lucky that you both don't work full time- it is hard for people who come on here working 60 hours a week already doing 2 jobs. Can you consider full time plus (at least 50 hour each) jobs- basically working around the clock between you- trying to juggle the childcare and then see what the maximum income you can get it. If one works weekends/ evening/nights and 1 days then you can limit childcare costs.

Puddylove above says they have 2 full-time jobs and it is is possible. I used to work 100 house a week when my children were little- I still do 60 hours and often more over 7 days.

It is hard to work so much when you have little children but working part time is not a life style choice that many people can afford.

FBaby

We did consider a return to full time work but we'd lose much more than we gained (and overtime is not available except very occasionally).

Are you sure you would lose more than you would gain? Most of your debt is due to your husband spend on luxuries, and you say he did so because he felt depressed. Could it be that he needs this financial freedom to buy some things to make him feel better and that's why even though he knew what he was doing, he went ahead and did so?

Even if he wants to spend more time with you and the children, if he is going to be depressed and end up in debt, it is not what is best for your family after all.

Tiddlywinks

Scotslass1974 wrote: »

We did consider a return to full time work but we'd lose much more than we gained (and overtime is not available except very occasionally).

How would two adults working full time hours leave you worse off than you are now?

Your OH can work full time in the day and then you could work 30+ hours in the evenings in a supermarket, pub, care home or whatever.

That way there would be no additional child care costs as one of you would be home whilst the other worked.

The reality is that you NEED to maximise your income - so you can't afford to get sniffy about the types of work or the steps required to do that.

Scotslass1974

Thanks for the further comments - it might take me a couple of goes to reply to all as I don't have much time.

I spent some time playing with the budget yesterday and today I'm hoping to grab some time to talk to hubby about it (easier said than done with a 3 year old!).

jackieblack - I'm confident if we both try we can cut the shopping bill - but in all honesty being on maternity leave doesn't give me time to cook. My baby feeds every 2 hours round the clock and takes all his naps in my arms if we're in the house - my eldest was the same! I have to go to bed when he does at 7pm just to try and grab enough sleep to get by

lessonslearned - see above re. sleep! lol. Thanks for all the other stuff, I think we probably can manage for a few months if we try hard, and it's a good point about them sending interest free offers, they usually send me them regularly so hopefully we can keep as much as possible interest free. They wouldn't generally freeze interest unless we were defaulting. Also the really high payment, high interest loans are only a year, and once they're paid off we will be in a better position, so I'm going to start decluttering and hopefully overpay those. I already started arranging for couples counselling for us last week so we should be able to talk more about his spending and everything then. I think part of my frustration lies in the fact that I've already got rid of a load of debt before - when I met him 10 years ago I was in £26k debt, purely from being an idiot in my 20s, and I'd paid virtually all of that back.

pleasedelete - the debt was affordable, I was able to move it around 0% offers easily as we had excellent credit scores and additionally I knew we could tighten our belts and cover payments if interest did kick in. Incidentally I had also timed it so the current 0% deals cover until the end of my maternity leave. As I mentioned earlier I do a careful budget each month, and so yes I'm confident virtually none of it went on day-to-day costs, except things such as hubby not bothering or not having time to make himself a packed lunch and going to KFC instead (which I thought he was paying for from his own spending money which I allocate each month, or profits from selling stuff, which he's done a lot of over the year too). There may have been a few pints of milk or loaves of bread picked up from the supermarket from it so I'm sure a little may have, but a relatively tiny amount.

I'll write more later, have to go! Sorry I haven't finished replying.

pleasedelete

Scotslass1974 wrote: »

pleasedelete - the debt was affordable, I was able to move it around 0% offers easily as we had excellent credit scores and additionally I knew we could tighten our belts and cover payments if interest did kick in. Incidentally I had also timed it so the current 0% deals cover until the end of my maternity leave. As I mentioned earlier I do a careful budget each month, and so yes I'm confident virtually none of it went on day-to-day costs, except things such as hubby not bothering or not having time to make himself a packed lunch and going to KFC instead (which I thought he was paying for from his own spending money which I allocate each month, or profits from selling stuff, which he's done a lot of over the year too). There may have been a few pints of milk or loaves of bread picked up from the supermarket from it so I'm sure a little may have, but a relatively tiny amount.

I'll write more later, have to go! Sorry I haven't finished replying.

The debt was not affordable, the 0% repayments might have been but you were not paying off any of the capital. The only way to use 0% cards is to pay enough each month so that the full capital is paid off over the time of the 0%. So £12,000 over 12 months you would have had to pay £1000 a month even though the repayments may have been a couple of hundred.The 0% offers might just have dried up and you cant rely on them in the future, you may still find that when your current offers end.

MiMi66

pleasedelete wrote: »

The debt was not affordable, the 0% repayments might have been but you were not paying off any of the capital. The only way to use 0% cards is to pay enough each month so that the full capital is paid off over the time of the 0%. So £12,000 over 12 months you would have had to pay £1000 a month even though the repayments may have been a couple of hundred.The 0% offers might just have dried up and you cant rely on them in the future, you may still find that when your current offers end.

I think what pleasedelete is advocating is the ideal and from some perspective true. But I think many of us who juggle money using 0% balance transfers work on the precept that we will reduce the amount before each transfer. And I think that is ok. The thing to be very very very mindful of and also incidentally where I have been a repeat offender and got into my own personal mess, is adding the balance of any using credit card to the balance transfer to have breathing room. Do not do this!!!! Like me you'll end up in just treading water or worse.

It sounds to me like your husband needs to work full time plus some. You need time to recover post birth and to feed your little one. And he needs to take an equal share of planning how to address your finances. If he doesn't, it doesn't bode well for the future. Has he read your thread?? He needs to.

Take heart though. I am learnng that there isn't a debt problem that can't be sorted. The sky will not fall in and there is help to be had. But do lift the lid off the situation even if it means an almighty row. Being depressed is not a reason to !!!!!foot around him as I know. Good luck and be brave!

Spendless

Scotslass1974 wrote: »

jackieblack - I'm confident if we both try we can cut the shopping bill - but in all honesty being on maternity leave doesn't give me time to cook. My baby feeds every 2 hours round the clock and takes all his naps in my arms if we're in the house - my eldest was the same! I have to go to bed when he does at 7pm just to try and grab enough sleep to get by

You need to do some batch cooking. Have you got a slow cooker? If not, can you ask around see if anyone has one to lend you or even give you. A lot of people have them at the back of their cupboards and don't use them. Prepare some meals, cook them and freeze and label them. You can do this in stages around baby's feeds.