Reduce minimum payments??

Lalalula

Hi

I wonder if anyone has some good advice for me.

Basically, we had a few tough years where my husband lost his job (twice) and went self employed but earned very little. This coincided with having very young children and was financially very tough. As we had been previously conscientious borrowers we had good credit limits. To make ends meet we used the credit cards and are now in about £23k debt. These were all 0% cards but these periods of 0 have run out and I no longer seem able to move them, I got rejected when I applied for other cards recently to shift the balance. They have all gone up.

We are now earning better incomes and employed but it is still a huge struggle.

The minimum monthly repayments are over £450 per month. I am only really paying the interest, which has gone up to 18% APR on one card, for example. Now, I am going to have to restart paying student loans (after a period of deferral) which will be another £120 per month from this month, and we live in a rented property, I anticipate the landlord will put our rent up again when we renew our tenancy.

I checked my credit rating and it is 'fair', 700+. As all new cards into my name when husband was self employed, he now has a perfect 999 score with Experian. I would have thought this would help us.

I was wondering if there is a way to do something with this? My main priority would be to reduce the monthly payment, and the interest that is accruing now that the 0% has ended. The ideal scenario would be a long term loan that we could pay off that didn't have a crippling interest rate.

I went through the debt remedy thing on Step Change and will talk to them another day (didnt have the required 45 mins available to go through) but is there anything that anyone can suggest? Any ideas I have overlooked?

Thanks

Willing2Learn

First up, welcome to the forum Lalalula

Secondly, ignore your credit scores as they are meaningless. Lenders neither use nor see your score. Lenders score you independently against their own criteria and polices using the data held in your credit files, added to the data you submit in an application, added to the data they may already hold on you as an existing or returning customer.

A consolidation loan is not usually an answer to debt problems. This is because, usually, the individual seeking the consolidation loan have not addressed the weaknesses in their monthly budgetary planning.


Anyway, for you two to have meaningful advice, we would need to see your Statement of Affairs (SOA). It would be helpful if you could post your SOA up in this thread.

http://www.stoozing.com/calculator/soa.php

molerat

For future reference you can reject any CC interest rate increases.



Can your husband get any 0% BT cards as they will likely only look at his situation, a loan will likely look at both of you. As for consolidation - you already have £23K debt so do you really think a lender will give you any more as that effectively is what a consolidation loan is, they can't guarantee you are going to use it to pay off the cards.

RecentPost

I would recommend the step change tool or payplan -

There is no quick process and a consolidation loan is not always the best solution.

One option is you set up a Debt Management plan credit card companies usually still report a positive rating and freeze the interest (not guaranteed).

Have you tried speaking to them direct and asking them to freeze interest and charges? I have recently helped someone do this but it does take some time and repeat effort.