It's all such a mess and I don't know where to turn

tealady

Hello and welcome. You HAVE to give up smoking, I know how hard it is (Ihave started and stopped more times that I care to remember) however it it monye you need for important things (like keeping a roof over your head). I appreeciate it means giving up something that gives you pleasure but unfortunately you have few options.
Good luck anyway

Louise4793

Hi Scarlett, i know how you feel...

all i will say is get in touch with CCCS, they were helpful with me. I know i'm just repeating what everyone else says but most of us have been or are in the same position and i think sometimes of more tan one person tells you something you suddenly realise that it might be a good idea.

stick around though, some of the people on here have made such a big impace on me with simple honest advice and kind words. best of luck xxx

affordmylife

Hello scarlett - why dont you work out how much you spend on non essentials like phones, sky, fags, expensive food? magazines etc. You may be surprised how much you could save and may not be that far away from breaking even.

I have five children and a dog and a husband and we spend approx £200 per month on food although I could easily spend twice that. If I cook everything from scratch using fresh ingredients its possible.

I wish you luck with your challenge.

Is it rude of me to ask of your husbands health and is it something that is likely to improve in the future and this may be just a difficult time until things improve?

Do you have room for a lodger? Just a thought.

Scarlett.1974

Hi guys,

Thanks for the new replies and encouragement

i hadn't disappeared, I was just having a look around at the other forums (this place is fab isn't it?), especially the Bankruptcy one, y'know, just in case

affordmylife - no, no problem at all. My H has been diagnosed with severe depression, anxiety and panic attacks. He is getting better, albiet very slowly; as anyone who knows anything about this will testify, it's a very long road to recovery.

Not sure whether it's good news or not, but he's got 2 job interviews next week lined up now, he received the phone calls earlier this evening Like I said earlier, neither of us (but more me really) are sure whether he's actually ready to go back to work yet, but he seems to be more accepting than I am - he's got the attitude now of "this is what needs to be done, so I'm going to do it". We've agreed that we'll see how he copes with the interviews first and we'll take it from there

No room for a lodger unfortunately. 3 bedroomed house - 2 kids (boy, 7 tomorrow and daughter 12, so she especially, needs her own room for her school work etc) and H's son who stays over every other weekend.

affordmylife

Good luck to you your husband then - he must be having a dreadful time. I have suffered with depression although not severe and it is awful.

Good luck to you all and happy birthday to your son tomorrow.

Scarlett.1974

affordmylife wrote: »

Good luck to you your husband then - he must be having a dreadful time. I have suffered with depression although not severe and it is awful.

Good luck to you all and happy birthday to your son tomorrow.

Thank you, that's very kind of you

Alan1973

Scarlett.1974 wrote: »

Warning - this could get VERY long!

Hi everyone,

We're in a Big Mess and I don't know what to do. There's (a LOT) more going out than coming in and I just can't make it work any more. I'm sat here crying (so please excuse any typos) and I feel sick to my stomach because I just can't see any way out.

Some brief history:
My H is not working at the moment, due to ill-health. He did receive some 'pay-off' from his previous job, but that's long since gone. He was able to make some money to help towards the bills by playing on-line poker, but that's now gone tits-up and he can't play anymore because he hasn't got the funds. He is now desperately trying to find work, although neither of us are 100% sure he's well enough - but even if he does get a job I can't see us being massively better off because we'll lose our tax credits & his sickness money as soon as he is working - this comes to almost £800 and the sort of jobs he's able to do don't pay much more than about £1000 per month.

We have been living the last few months with 1) his poker money and 2) credit cards and 3) help from parents. But we've really no-where else to go now, we've exhausted all our options. H is already on a DMP (is that what it's called?) with payplan, which *does* help a bit, he pays them £100 per month for all his debt (CC's, loans) and I'm wondering if that's what I should do too. I'm going to do our SOA in a minute for you and ALL the CC and loan debt is in my name only. I'm confused about DMP's, IVA's and all the other terms. I've even looked int0 bankruptcy as a possible option, but the thought of losing our home breaks my heart in 2. I have 2 children and he has 1 from his first marriage.

The long & short of it is this - we have the money in our account to cover this month's bills and the mortgage company have kindly given us a payment holiday for November, but come this time next month we're going to be in serious trouble :sad: I have already asked First Plus (you'll see that below in our SOA) if they can help in anyway, reduced payments or anything, but they said they cannot because our loan with them is less than 12 months old.

Anyhoo, this is getting very long and I don't want to bore you good people any more than I have to, so here it is <deep breath>, our SOA: (I know you guys like a challenge; if anyone can suggest any ways out of this mess I'll be impressed).

Statement of Affairs

Incoming:
H sickness benefit - £244
My salary - £700 (net)
Tax Credit - £545
DLA (for my son) - £172
Child Benefit - £121
Maintenance for daughter - £120

Total - £1902


Outgoing:
Mortgage - £527
First plus loan - £476 (secured on the house )
Council tax - £90
Gas services (maintenence plan, we really need this as our boiler breaks down frequently) - £14
Gas - £45
Electric - £34
Water - £40
Life Insurance - £60
House insurance (contents & buildings) - £36
TV Licence - £11
Sky - £55 (am trying to convince H to reduce this to a lesser package)
Internet - £10
HFC (sofa) - £49
BT phone - £17
My mobile - £30
H mobile - £25
Daughter mobile - £15
Pet insurance - £7
Food - £400 (I am working to try and reduce this to £300 of less)
H payplan payment - £100
H car payment - £135
H maintenance payment - £20 (supposed to be £175, but his ex-wife is kindly accepting reduced payments at the moment)
NSPCC payment - £2
Inland revenue (for overpaid tax credits) - £10 (approx. £1200 still to pay)
Tesco loan - £125 (£5000 outstanding, only took out in July, over 5 years)
Next directory - £130 (£1600 outstanding)
Llloyds CC - £120 (£6000 outstanding)
Virgin CC - £90 (£3000 outstanding)
Egg CC - £30 (£1100 outstanding)
Barclaycard - £15 (£500 outstanding)
Additions - £15 (£170 outstanding)
Freemans - £40 (£130 outstanding)
Overdraft interest - £56 (£4000 OD)

Total: £2829

A couple of points - all our mobiles are on the lowest tarrfis available to us. You will also see that I haven't included any other car expenses - H's parents kindly paid for a years insurance & tax last month for us, so we don't need to worry about that for a while. The car currently has almost a full tank of petrol, when that runs out I don't know what we're going to do frankly.

I'm sorry this is soooooo long, but I've tried to give all the relevant information. If I've missed anything out that you need to know, then please ask.

Am going for a little cry now......

Thanks for reading,
Scarlett xx

Hello Scarlett:hello:

You've taken a great first step here and I expect there will be lots of people to assist you and offer advice along the way. You can get out of this mess though. I'm sorry if I'm repeating what others have said but I wanted to offer my suggestions even if they are harsh. Firstly, I have been a situation where my outgoings were almost as much as my incomings and I realised that although you can cut back, this is only possible to a point and at the end of the day you need a bigger income too. To be honest, your income is tiny and you have to find a way of increasing that, for the short term trying to get a pay rise at work / changing to a better paid job. Also, maybe consider doing extra hours or getting another part time job too. Yes it may be difficult but you need to do it. For the long term, consider retraining for a higher paid career. I would not recommend your husband working at the moment.

Here's my thoughts on where you can cut down your outgoings:

Mortgage - £527 Can you switch to a cheaper mortgage with a different company?

First plus loan - £476 (secured on the house ) Is it possible to extend the term of the loan to at least reduce monthly payments in the short term. I wouldn't normally advise that but it may be the best option at the moment.

Utilities Can you switch to cheaper providers?

Sky - £55 (am trying to convince H to reduce this to a lesser package) Ditch it as soon as contract expires. You don't need this.

Mobiles Ditch them all. You don't need these either. If you really insist on one, buy the cheapest PAYG as one for the family and set aside £5 a month as top-up.

Food - £400 (I am working to try and reduce this to £300 of less) You can get this down to about £200

NSPCC payment - £2 Ditch it.

Inland revenue (for overpaid tax credits) - £10 (approx. £1200 still to pay) Contest this. Contact the CAB for advice.

Credit cards / catalogues Consolidate into one loan or if possible, one 0% credit card and switch to another card when the 0% ends. As an example an average Barclaycard bill would take approx 40 years to pay off at minimum payment due to compound interest.


Here's my quick calculation at how much you can save / earn extra.

Job. Conservative estimate at extra £300 a month. Yes it can be done. Sorry to be blunt but I earn approximately 7 times as much as I did in the mid 90's just by retraining. I can't stress enough how much difference this can make.

Mortgage / loan £50 possibly.

Utilies £10.

Sky £55.

Mobiles £70.

Food £200.

NSPCC £2.

Inland Revenue £10.

Credit cards / catalogues £100.

Also, look at the 'matched betting' forum. You could probably make another £100 a month from doing that.

That now brings you incomings and outgoings roughly in line.

Some final bits of advice:

1. Could you sell the car and buy a cheaper model?
2. Could you move to a cheaper house and use the profit to pay off some debt?
3. Sell everything that isn't nailed down on ebay :rotfl:

We're behind you Scarlett :grouphug:

lunar

Scarlett, I wanted to say well done on your LBM and for having such a positive and constructive attitude towards solving you debt. you will find all the support you need on here, ive found my diary and others diaries so helpful in staying motivated.

keep up the hard work and keep posting on here, it will keep you going when things seem difficult

Floss

Just a quickie, take a good look at every option. Consolidation can be good for some people, but may not be the best solution for others. Payplan should be able to help you on Thursday.

Have a good day tomorrow, and all enjoy DS's birthday!

Floss xx

Scarlett.1974

Hi Alan1973,

Thank you for your reply, your advice is much appreciated. Since you've taken the trouble to type such a long, helpful reply I shall try to reply to all your points raised

I don't think there's much I can do about my job at the moment. I'm not trained or qualified in anything else. I work from home at the moment, in the evenings for a recruitment agency and it's a small company so asking for a payrise would get me no joy, I know this for a fact. Any additional income I could make at the moment (day-time working, ironing services etc.... oh I've considered them all) would only be taken away from our tax credits, so a bit of a no-win situation there. Another valid point that I should raise is that my son has ASD and obviously, as a big part of that, routine is everything. If mummy were to suddenly not be there when he is used to me being there then that would be incredibly difficult for him to handle, so that would be a final resort for me

I can't get a credit card or loan for my CC/loan debts because due to H's payplan arrangement our credit rating is now in tatters.

First plus have told us they can do absolutely nothing to help us at the moment, until our account is 12 months old, nothing at all - that's helpful of them isn't it?

I am currently looking into switching our utilities and life & house insurances to cheaper providers; that's going quite well, but the British Gas site kept crashing earlier today, so that's on my list to do

We have discussed today selling the car, paying off the HP and buying something cheaper - H is naturally not keen on this, but it's something that we're discussing still.

There is no equity in the house at all, not a bean; in fact we're probably in negative equity now due to the First Plus loan (the biggest mistake we ever made that, but hindsight's a wonderful thing isn't it?), so no profit there to re-pay any debt.

Alan, if the kids sit still long enough I'm thinking about e-baying them lol!

I completely see what you're saying about H not being ready to go back to work yet, hell I agree with you. But apart from Bankruptcy we're not sure what else to do.

Thanks for the hugs, they're seriously needed and much appreciated