The long haul supporters thread...

fedupandskint

A very inspiring post TEK.

This plan could help me too - is it the idea of paying off £1000 by the end of this year and then does it go up to £3000 for 2010?

Any tips or advice? I am in a similar debt situation too and I feel stuck in a rut with it at the moment unable to make any indents into the total amount.

ramblingtree

Well done TEK, sounds like a good realistic plan.
I have a question that I hope someone here can help me with.

We obviously have a huge amount of debt, but we are slowly but surely paying it off, the interest on almost all things is fairly low, or 0%, we don't have much to spare each month, but manage ok.

But there is one problem. We have a virgin/mbna CC with a balance of £9000. The interest has steadily increased and now its at 29.9%. So each month we pay £230 ish and all but a fiver of that is interest. It really is crippling us. Virgin have refused to lower the interest and are so unhelpful. I just wondered what would people on here do in our situation? If we say to Virgin we can't afford it, what is likely to happen? We're doing so well with trying to be positive but this one is really getting OH down especially, and I feel if we could sort this out then things would be a lot easier. We're not really in a position to balance transfer, as I doubt we would get a card(s) with high enough limits.

Sorry for the long post, but I hope you can give me some advice.
Thanks, x

geranium72

Good plan tek

Rambling - I am in the same position with MBNA - they won't reduce it - so I am simply going to keep overpaying as much as I can - even if it is £10 a month until I get it down and can then get on to the rest - once I get rid of that I can work on the rest

Keeping_Positive

Part balance transfers ? Move whatever you cant to a lower interest card. Heck even an overdraft sounds cheaper. Down side is any transfer fees. Even last spare penny bneeds to go on over paying this £225 interest :eek:

Good luck xx

ramblingtree

Thanks geranium. Its just such a nightmare isn't it?! We want to pay it back, we take full responsibility, we just need a teeny bit of co-operation from them. The new payments mean that we just can't afford it. So we're going to call tonight and tell them that, and see what they say.
I'm just not sure about what we can do when its only one of our debts.
Other things I've read (reduced payments, freezing interest etc) seem to only be possible when you're sorting out all the debts, but the rest of ours are ok. I've just got a second job so everything from that can go on it, but its such a huge balance its just going to constantly be a struggle...

ramblingtree

Thanks Keeping Positive,
We are trying to overpay, but lately, with the car breaking etc it just hasn't been possible. I'm not liking our chances for the phonecall, but will see what they say.

ramblingtree

Oh yes, and we can't part balance transfer really, we've got some space on a couple of cards, but really tiny amounts. Might also call them and see if they can increase the limit to transfer. I just can't wait until I can tell Virgin where to go!!!

In_Search_Of_Me

rambling have you spoken to debt agency? Dont know what you earn but with that level of debt may be worth looking at a debt management plan (DMP)...at least you may get some interest frozen? worth a look at even if just to make sure that its doable...

TEK_2

Thanks for all your kind replies! Yes fedupandskint in theory we would like to pay off £1,000 by the end of the year & £3,000 in 2010. As the loans clear & interest payments fall it should enable us to clear debts quicker. As others have said it is a case of trying to take babysteps & hopefully doing it this way we will slowly start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully all being well by trying to stick to this plan we can realistically achieve our targets, allowing for obstacles like car & house repairs etc. Still got a bit to pay towards wedding but paid the majority & it works out our debt is now just over £34.5k. Hopefully this will be the last month that we add to our debts & then we can start to chip away at them until we are DF. I know sig isn't impressive at all but that should change from September onwards. Going to update yearly list once a month like this;

December 31st 2009= £1,000
2010= £3,000
2011= £4,000
2012= £5,000
2013= £6,000
2014= £7,000
2015= £8,572.45

TOTAL £34,572.45

Thanks for reading folks & will catch up soon! God bless!

ramblingtree

Evening ISOM,
I have considered a DMP, there are a few reasons why we don't want to go that way, the main one being what OH does for a living, might impede future career choices etc, that really is the one stopping us.
The frustrating thing is, we do ok, we pay around £1500 a month to debt repayment and only about £400 of that is interest, not a lot in the grand scheme, and over half to damned MBNA. So if we could just get them to co-operate a bit more, or get a good balance transfer, then it would be fine.
I might call CCCS on monday though, just to see what they say and get their advice on the best way to deal with it.