Persistent Debt

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Penguin_

Let them know you have the ability to, as it stands, clear it in 2-3 years. 

Don't take a loan to consolidate unless you have fixed whatever caused you to get into the original £25k debt as you will end up with a loan & a shed load of card debt. 

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Penguin_

Chuck the most money at the card with the highest interest rate. 

Naomim

To be honest, you may not be approved for a loan if you already have £25k of debt.  Check with the MSE free credit check and it can show your affordability.  I'm guessing if you're receiving persistent debt letters you are paying the minimums? If you are this will probably show on your credit file.  

The best thing to do is list the debt in order of highest interest first. Set up direct debits to pay over the minimum on them all, even by a few pounds and then throw as much excess as you can at the highest interest debt.

Good luck

Naomim

Sharon87

The letters are being sent out to a lot of people who have had 'persistent debt'. Just tell them you can pay it off.

Are they on 0% deals? If not, see if you can transfer as much as you can to 0% cards to avoid large interest rates.

TheAble

0%s becoming increasingly rare in these Covid times...

sourcrates

mattyj3nks said:

My debt was run up by stupid decisions and living beyond my means.

Then please don`t make another stupid decision by getting another loan.

You can`t borrow your way out of debt, it simply does not work.

Better budgeting may help, or if not, there are debt solutions laid down by parliament to help you.

We see this time and again, peoples first thought is always consolodation,when infact you should be looking for debt help.

RobM99

To sum up - look at an do something about the reasons for the debt (Maybe you already have) then pay off the highest rate first as described.

monetxchange

mattyj3nks said:

With my credit rating i cant imagine i would get accepted anywhere for any 0% cards, i wish as that would save wasting money on interest on these cards.

Then you won't get a £25k consolidation loan either. Take that as a blessing - they rarely work. Look, nobody likes being stuck with high interest cards, but use this as a lesson to never get in this position again. You're in a great position to get all your extra money thrown at the debt and get the interest right down.

As an aside, if you're worried about future job security, then start putting something aside each month for an emergency fund in case things change. Maybe try a couple of hundred a month to start with.

SandyShores

We consolidated our credit cards three times - but we kept using the cards and ended up with around £20k-£30k debt again each time.  After the third time I finally had enough and stopped spending on cards.  Instead of consolidating we kept a cash amount back each month for our spends, but no spending on the cards, and all our spare cash went into paying them off.  As others have said, concentrate on the highest interest ones first.  I found that as we were paying our cards back and the amounts were going down, we had more offers of balance transfers available.  We moved one to a lifetime low rate (I think it was 2.7%) and a couple to 0%.  Brilliant feeling to finally be rid of them and we also paid our car loan off and have bought our own home.  Our only debt now is our mortgage, and I'm planning to start extra repayments once we've built up our emergency fund.  Have a look at Dave Ramsey and Anthony Neal for inspiration.  Dave Ramsey has a six step plan for getting out of debt, 1st is to build up a £1,000 emergency fund and then 2nd is to get rid of all your debt.  I'm currently working on step 3 which is to build up a 6 month emergency fund.  Best of Luck!