Getting debt free with a partner you struggle to communicate with about finances

Emmel

Your childcare costs are higher than your wages. Is it actually worth while working and paying this? Can you find a job that fits around your husbands?

Those APRs are high, can you get a 0% deal or lower %?

ERPY85

I worry about a DMP ruining my credit rating (I'm thinking of the future and the dream of home buying one day etc) One day when my kids start school hopefully I could work more without childcare costs so we could improve our situation.thats a few years off yet though! But maybe we've got no option. Looking at my SOA realistically the 'spends' is actually everything that's not a bill or budgeting money. Normally prescriptions, my bus fare, my husbands vaping etc all come out of this, the equivalent of £30 each per week. Maybe its too much. I'm awake and tired and feeling angry that we're in a situation where having £30 a week is extravagant!

My childcare is more than my wages on paper but we get a lot of help from tax credits towards it. I've done the calculations and I'm better off in work although it doesn't feel it! , and my daughter will get 'free' hours from next April (although I've got to confirm what lovely extra charges the nursery will add on!)

ERPY85

Oh and I've tried to get a 0% deal, but we've just moved house so I applied for one but was refused, maybe its that. Sometimes I can ping-pong between 0% offers on two of my cards but at the moment I've only got an offer on the one that's already full! We've just moved £1250 off one of my husbands onto the other at 4.9% until 2021 so that'll reduce a bit of interest.

I really just want to pay my debts, I just wish I could pay less each month for them!

fatbelly

ERPY85 wrote: »

I worry about a DMP ruining my credit rating (I'm thinking of the future and the dream of home buying one day etc) One day when my kids start school hopefully I could work more without childcare costs so we could improve our situation.thats a few years off yet though! But maybe we've got no option.

You won't be buying a house for a bit. For now, you need a debt management plan. You can live on your income
(yes, your expenditure needs a few tweaks) but you can't service 26k of debt so stop. Cancel payments out to the 5 credit cards, get your banking to a place unconnected to them and decide whether you want a plan from stepchange, payplan or do-it-yourself (and CAB are about to start offering them).

ERPY85 wrote: »

I really just want to pay my debts, I just wish I could pay less each month for them!

That's what a debt management plan is.

Now I will point out that your plan may be unfeasibly long unless you can re-jig to more than £150 per month surplus. On the flip side you are very close to qualifying for 2 x DROs, which stepchange, payplan (and CAB) can do, and which knocks your debts on the head for £90. You need to start talking to one of those organisations, as well as posting here.

You're not screwed. I see far worse than this every day. I work at CAB!

Pixie5740

You're just going to have to park your dream of buying a house for now. You've got more going out than you've got coming in so you're not in a position to even think about saving a deposit right now.

You can change a few things here and there on your SOA but essentially you'd just be rearranging the teaspoons in the drawer. It would be helpful if you broke out your spends into the categories the money is actually spent on such as clothing and entertainment and there's no point budgeting £200 for groceries if that's an unrealistic amount for your family. Your SOA has to reflect what you actually spend not what you think you should be spending.

At best you've got £153.60 a month to repay your creditors which is less than your minimum payments so you have little option but to start defaulting. You can write to your creditors asking them to freeze the interest and offer to make reduced payments. That's a DMP and how quickly you can repay your debts will depend entirely on how much you really have left each month after paying out your other household expenses which is why an accurate SOA is essential.

If we go with the SOA you have presented then even with frozen interest and paying £153.60 towards your debts each month it will take you over 14 years to repay all your debts. Whilst you say you want to repay all the money a more realistic solution could be a form of insolvency such as a DRO or bankruptcy since you don't own your home or have a high value car. Yes it will negatively impact your credit files but it will mean you can start saving for a deposit sooner than slugging it out with a DMP for 14+ years.

ERPY85

Thanks Pixie and Fatbelly. I just feel awful this morning. I'm not a bad person, I've always worked and I did well at school etc and as a grown up I've managed to right royally f**k everything up. My parents will be so disappointed, neither me or my sisters are financially well off, but they see me as the responsible most 'stable' one, when actually I'm drowning and all my budgeting and coupons and 'piggy bank accounts' are all just bulls**t because I obviously can't manage anything.

I hate that I'm looking at a DMP or even as bad as a DRO as by not paying my debts I'm quitting, I'm failing. Why shouldn't I pay them? I borrowed the money, it's my responsibility to pay it, not just write it all off and say thanks very much for the free money!

I'm so angry with myself, and I wish I could find a way to just pay what I owe. But I can't earn more, as childcare is more than I can earn and the more I earn the less help I get with it, I'm literally worse off the more I work! And my second job means I can work when my husband is home so there's no childcare costs, but my husband doesn't cope well with the two young children on his own for long periods, and I always feel guilty for working and leaving him with them (back to the depression/him not coping thing I guess!)

I've really messed up.

tallyhoh

Looking at some of the interest rates there I wouldn't feel guilty about a DRO, you may have already paid a lot more than you borrowed.

Just a thought?

-taff

I don't think you are entirley to blame for this, so stop beating yourself up. It took both of you to get into this, and it will take both of you to get out of it. There's no point going through whatever debt management plan you decide on if both of you are not on board together, so he will have to take some responsibility for not spending money, the same as you. Basically, you have to address the issues that got you into this otherwise you'll go through whatever you decide on, and potentially be in the same place again in a few years.


Give Stepchange or CAP a call, or go to the setpchange website and see what the options are [they'll be what fatbelly has said] but it might help to see it in black and white. How you commmunicate this to your husband is down to you, but you really do need to get him on board too.



You're not quitting or failing, you need the tools to see why what happened happened and how not to do it again. Money management really should be taught in schools.....I could have done with lessons in that too


Give them a ring today

ERPY85

I'm going to call Stepchange today if i can get my kids to coordinate napping! Otherwise maybe on my lunch break at work tomorrow.

I hate admitting defeat. I've spent years managing all this and hoping one day some great life event or change in circumstances would mean we could get on top of things, but I know realistically with 2 young children and childcare costs etc that time is not going to come any time soon (all except a lottery win!). I think I'll speak to Stepchange first, then talk it all through with my husband.

Thanks everyone for your advice and help. I'm sorry to be just another one of the many who have got themselves in this situation. I wanted to volunteer for citizens advice myself, but couldn't because of childcare, but I now realise that's a bit of a joke anyway, I need to get myself in order first before thinking I can offer any advice to anyone else!

Pixie5740

Why would volunteering for CAB be a bit of a joke? You would have first hand experience of dealing with debt which could be invaluable to someone else in the same position that you're in now.

There's no need for anyone else to know that you're on a DMP/DRO/whatever so you needn't worry about what others think about you because it's none of their business.

I think you're beating yourself up too much over your debt. It's only money, worse things happen at sea. The banks aren't infallible either; from fixing the LIBOR, being bailed out by the tax payer after being reckless, to laundering money for drug cartels so really your debt is just a drop in the ocean.