Tough times ahead for me

BigMart64

Hello all, thanks in advance for any advice you give.
I'm not sure where to start really.

I have 4 credit cards and a loan which I have never been late or missed any payments. Because of this virus my wife has lost her part time job and as she has osteoarthritis she can't seem to find another one suitable. She only had a take home pay of £450 per month but it definitely makes a difference.
The cards I am going to struggle with is a Vanquis credit card and an Aqua card. Over the last year or so, both of them have upped the interest rate to a ridiculous amount which made things a little bit tighter in the household.
I have taken a 3 month payment holiday with my Barclays loan but both Vanquis and Aqua will give me a payment holiday but interest will still be charged at the normal rate.
If I were to take the holiday, it would add over £1000 in interest to the balance (between the two cards), then would put the payments up even further, which I wouldn't be able to afford.
I considered applying for the holiday, then speaking to them. I also considered defaulting this month, I'm not really sure what to do.
The payment on the Aqua is the major one, £255 per month and on the Vanquis, it's £225. The other two cards are quite small, £55 and £30.
The plan I had been working on has gone out of the window. The idea I had was to get the monthly payments below £200 but keep paying the £200, it started to work, I hadn't used the two big cards since the turn of the year.
I work in health care, so I'm dodging the virus on a daily basis, our car has just developed a fault and with the impending financial issues things are really starting to get on top of both of us.
Any advice would be much appreciated. 

EimearF

Can your wife ask her former employer to rehire and furlough her? This would bring in £360 until the virus ends and will cost the employer nothing. 
Have you tried MSE Credit Club to see if you could balance transfer the Vanquis and Aqua as they are usually really bad rates. 
Can you do and SOA and we can advise on a suitable way forward. 
Us ethis link https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/financecalculators/soa.php

BigMart64

EimearF said:

Can your wife ask her former employer to rehire and furlough her? This would bring in £360 until the virus ends and will cost the employer nothing. 
Have you tried MSE Credit Club to see if you could balance transfer the Vanquis and Aqua as they are usually really bad rates. 
Can you do and SOA and we can advise on a suitable way forward. 

I'm pretty sure the furlough scheme is only for those who pay income tax, my wife didn.t earn enough to pay tax.
Her employer has said she would be welcome back when things get back to some sort of normality, if he decides not to call it a day in the meantime.
I'll do a SOA tomorrow when I get home from work.

[Deleted User]

Would your wife's illness not allow her to claim PIP?

[Deleted User]

I think it might well @venison. 
I know of people that do indeed claim PIP with theirs; definitely worth a try.

EimearF

BigMart64 said:

EimearF said:

Can your wife ask her former employer to rehire and furlough her? This would bring in £360 until the virus ends and will cost the employer nothing. 
Have you tried MSE Credit Club to see if you could balance transfer the Vanquis and Aqua as they are usually really bad rates. 
Can you do and SOA and we can advise on a suitable way forward. 

I'm pretty sure the furlough scheme is only for those who pay income tax, my wife didn.t earn enough to pay tax.
Her employer has said she would be welcome back when things get back to some sort of normality, if he decides not to call it a day in the meantime.
I'll do a SOA tomorrow when I get home from work.

Hi Mart, Furlough is for anyone unable to work for an employer at the minute due to the virus- i have a second job and have been furloughed for £40 a week. (SSP has limits though that may be were this confusion has come for the employer)
If they will take her back when she is better they will probably be open to taking her back to furlough her. It would make a big difference for you both. 

EDIT: Agree with the above that PIP may also be a good option to investigate too given your wife's health. But try furlough in the mean time as PIP can take a while 

tlc678910

Hi, I wonder if your wife might be entitled to contribution based job seekers allowance (now called new style job seekers allowance). It's not affected by your earnings but she needs to have paid sufficient national insurance and it only lasts so long.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/new-style-jobseekers-allowance

The site also says you can't claim it with certain disability benefits so you might have to research to find out if you are better to go for one or the other.

It might be worth posting a full statement of affairs as if people can see you income and the level of your debts and other outgoings they can see if they think you might be entitled to help from benefits or if you might need to default on your debts and consider a debt payment plan or if that's not necessary.

tlc678910

link to do a statement of affairs if you want to.  I believe you need to choose "format for mse" or something along those lines to copy it to here.
https://www.stoozing.com/soa.php

monetxchange

I second the SOA. There'll definitely be a way to manage the debt, plus starting to getting an emergency fund in place for things like car breakdowns. Sorry to hear you're struggling. It's an awful time, but you've done the right thing in taking the hard first step of facing up to it all.

BigMart64

I didn't get chance to do a SOA this evening, I'll try and get it done tomorrow.
My wife already receives the basic amount of PIP.
 Her employer refused to furlough any of the part time staff he had and just let them go.
I've got both payments due in a few days, I may just have to default this month.

sourcrates

Hi,

Its all non priority debt, so if it’s going to be a problem, default on it, even if you/your wife get any benefits, it won’t be enough to pay the minimum payments, and any money you do get, has priority elsewhere for food etc.

If the card companies are unwilling to help, and let’s face it, they never are in all honesty, just don’t pay, the accounts will eventually default, and they will sell them on to debt purchasing companies, this will take anywhere up to 6 months, maybe longer, by that time, hopefully things will have more stability than they do today.

Now defaulting is probably the last thing you wanted to do, but if the money isn’t there, you have no choice, your credit file will suffer, but hard choices have to be made, and despite all the noise they make, they know these debts are non priority, as well as you do, you won’t be the only one in this position trust me.