feel like i'm going around in circles

BlueJ94

kazwookie said:

Water for one seems high as are other utilities

If your partner is moving in, does your rental agreement allow for this? you will also loose your single persons discount

What have you got you can sell? what did you spent the money on in the  first place?

You need to up you income by a major amount, (2nd job, selling things, 3rd job even for a short time)

Some of those apr% are enormous, can you change to an interest free card for now?

Thanks for the input! Unfortunately I can't get any cards I've looked at 0% ones and the balance transfer ones 

BlueJ94

ThatKiss said:

That Vanquis interest rate in particular is giving me the heeby-jeebys.

Can I ask why there are no payments to Satsuma and Cap One? Is that due to Covid payment holidays which will end soon, or are you intending to default these?

Is overtime something you can do on a regular basis?

They're on the holiday plans, they start back in a month. 

Yes the vanquis one is the one that stresses me out, I pay it then get charged silly interest so feels like I've not paid anything.. 

Overtime is occasional but I can probably get more if I asked for it 

enthusiasticsaver

As others have said it is the interest rates which are crippling you and what should really have put you off borrowing at all.  Taking payment holidays is actually making it worse as you will have higher interest to pay.  You have two choices.  Cut back as much as you can, throw everything spare at the debt and when your partner moves in make sure that any spare money you have goes toward the debt and not towards spending. Or you can default, write to your creditors saying you are experiencing financial difficulties and asking them to stop the interest or contact stepchange and arrange to go on to a DMP.  This will ruin your credit record but it must be bad anyway to be paying those rates.  The debt is pretty small though so with some dedicated debt repayment I would go for the first option rather than trash your record even further. 

BabyStepper

Your budget is frustrating for me to look at. Your debt is really very low, your rent to income ratio is good (300 rent -1240 wage, less than 25%) so you really should be managing this. The problem is not big bills or running a car, your problem is entirely the interest rates on your cards. 

I would hate to see you ruin your credit rating for the sake of a couple of grand debt. I can see you can't get transfer deals yet but make sure you keep an eye on this as you go and as soon as a deal becomes available, snap it up (and CLOSE THE OLD ACCOUNTS!).

In the meantime, make sure your partner knows your predicament and is supportive, and commits to paying half of the rent, gas, electricity, water, council tax and internet services. It will take a month or two to see how much your bills increase with 2 of you, but they need to be paying you at least £340 per month for these things. You can nail your Vanquis card in 2 months with this money. At the moment you're paying £35 interest and £12 off the balance with your £47 payment. Daylight robbery. 

Any extra work will help just now, every single pound counts when you're dealing with interest rates like this. Be as frugal as you can and come back here for help when you need it. Good luck.  

ladyholly

Have you looked to see if you have anything you can sell, even a couple of pounds is better in your account than a credit card companies. Dont automatically say no as some really odd stuff sells on ebay. Check it out. . If you can get a decent amount together a car boot might be a worthwhile option although I understand if you dont want to do one in the current situation with Covid19.

BlueJ94

BabyStepper said:

Your budget is frustrating for me to look at. Your debt is really very low, your rent to income ratio is good (300 rent -1240 wage, less than 25%) so you really should be managing this. The problem is not big bills or running a car, your problem is entirely the interest rates on your cards. 

I would hate to see you ruin your credit rating for the sake of a couple of grand debt. I can see you can't get transfer deals yet but make sure you keep an eye on this as you go and as soon as a deal becomes available, snap it up (and CLOSE THE OLD ACCOUNTS!).

In the meantime, make sure your partner knows your predicament and is supportive, and commits to paying half of the rent, gas, electricity, water, council tax and internet services. It will take a month or two to see how much your bills increase with 2 of you, but they need to be paying you at least £340 per month for these things. You can nail your Vanquis card in 2 months with this money. At the moment you're paying £35 interest and £12 off the balance with your £47 payment. Daylight robbery. 

Any extra work will help just now, every single pound counts when you're dealing with interest rates like this. Be as frugal as you can and come back here for help when you need it. Good luck.  

Yes I'm aware. That's what's the most frustrating thing to me, I pay vanquis and then I get charged the interest so feels like I've paid nothing. 

My credit score it shot, so ideally I don't want to ruin it any further as we want to buy a house in the future. My partner knows about my debt, I told him about these and he's supportive and tells me to pay as much off as I can.

Thank you for the support. My plan for today is to sort out all my clothes, whatever I don't wear can be put onto ebay. 

BlueJ94

ladyholly said:

Have you looked to see if you have anything you can sell, even a couple of pounds is better in your account than a credit card companies. Dont automatically say no as some really odd stuff sells on ebay. Check it out. . If you can get a decent amount together a car boot might be a worthwhile option although I understand if you dont want to do one in the current situation with Covid19.

That's what my plan of action is for today 😊 I'll be going through old games/books anything that I don't use and selling them. 

BlueJ94

enthusiasticsaver said:

As others have said it is the interest rates which are crippling you and what should really have put you off borrowing at all.  Taking payment holidays is actually making it worse as you will have higher interest to pay.  You have two choices.  Cut back as much as you can, throw everything spare at the debt and when your partner moves in make sure that any spare money you have goes toward the debt and not towards spending. Or you can default, write to your creditors saying you are experiencing financial difficulties and asking them to stop the interest or contact stepchange and arrange to go on to a DMP.  This will ruin your credit record but it must be bad anyway to be paying those rates.  The debt is pretty small though so with some dedicated debt repayment I would go for the first option rather than trash your record even further. 

I took the payment holiday last month as I nearly lost my job so rather than letting it run up and get late payments I opted for the payment holiday, thankfully I will be keeping my job! I'm going to try and stick to the first option, I've booked off a lot of holiday for August so plenty of time to sit down at home and go through stuff and see what stuff I can sell etc. 

BlueJ94

Oh and I forgot I use two apps AttaPoll and CuriousCat to get money, takes a long time sometimes but worth it as I've managed £10 in a week from the one so I paid money off a debt 

monetxchange

I thought I recognised your username and went back to confirm that you've come here many times before posting at the start of your journey and people have given you advice similar to the above. Not a criticism AT ALL as I too failed many times at debt clearing, so was just wondering what it is that seems to trip you up so we can knock that on the head now.

Has the pandemic worsened things? I see in your old threads you didn't know where between £180-£350+ of surplus income was going every month - have you tracked that down and budgeted accordingly? There's been a few plans for partner to move in previously - have you two had a frank talk and nailed down how things are going to be split equally/kept cheap? Got all utilities down to their absolute cheapest?

The reality is if you didn't spend too much as against your earnings, you wouldn't have debt. There's definitely gaps in your budget here. Would love to see you succeed this time and it's always great to face up to these things at the start.