Seriously need to take action before we lose everything

inigma

Is your partner on board that you are sitting on a time bomb?  If they have their head stuck in the sand then you will have a huge uphill battle on top of trying to do this.

enthusiasticsaver

If you are serious about this then you can clear very on your next payday. I would pay it off then close it. Then tackle the overdraft over the next two months. Cut the cards up. There must be lots of frittering or unnecessary spending. Is gambling/drugs/alcohol a problem for either of you? If so there is support out there. 

Bigphil1474

OP, when I sorted my debts out, the first thing i started doing (where I could) was pay cash. Seems a bit old fashioned but parting with cash for me was psychologically harder than with cards, so made a big dent. It's a good way to budget for daily spends. I was in a much worse position than you, but took me from 2005 to around 2020 to get myself on track. Now I'm on the other side, I've got healthy savings, no mortgage, and everything is looking rosy, and I don't miss the things I wasted my money on.

As others have said, if you are being realistic on your SOA then you should be able to manage it, clearing the expensive unsecured debts first. However, no point setting a budget if you can't keep to it. It really is about changing your mindset as well - not buying things you don't need, but also spending money wisely when you do need something. 

Pollycat

Re the £1500 pm that is not accounted for:
you need to think what cash you spend out of your purse and wallet.
Think window cleaner, spare £10 for the kids on top of their spending money, greetings cards/wrapping paper, trip to the corner shop for milk and sleeves £20 cash, comics/magazines, takeaway coffees etc.
Anything at all that is not on your credit cards.
That money is going somewhere and you need to identify it and include it in your SOA.
And revise your SOA to reflect your actual spends.

Good luck.

Grumpelstiltskin

I suspect the OP is one of those people ho doesn't budget for anything, they just say 'Oh put it on the credit card'

With such a high income they must have had an idea they had problems or they wouldn't have resorted to Very with such a high interest rate, unless as I say they saw things on Very and said OK no problem that we can't pay cash just stick it on credit.

kimwp

Feels like a good point to remember that the forum is for providing useful advice to posters and that not every thought we have needs to be made public.

Exodi

Just since I love any excuse to create a spreadsheet (especially one that uses the FV function), by my calculations you would be debt free within 30 months (2.5 years) by using the traditional snowballing method (paying minimum payments on all and then putting anything spare into your highest APR debt).

I've assumed you have £3818 available for debt repayments as per your OP. While I assumed the minimum payment remained static throughout (shown at the top of the table), lenders sometimes reduce your minimum payment as the balance reduces. If they did and you then used this difference towards a slightly higher APR debt, you might save a few pound in interest (though probably not enough to reduce the total number of months needed).

Overall you would pay £112,833.27 to clear £93,509 worth of debt (which I think is pretty incredibly considering this is over 2.5 years and over half the APR's are double digit). If anything, I think it is incredibly positive.

The biggest challenge will be sticking to it. Any increases in pay or circumstances should only be used to reduce the debt quicker.

foxgloves

I think this is doable but you need discipline. In terms of 2 indebted people getting together & continuing with ....well, more accruing of debts, I've been there. Ok, our debts were not as high as yours, but we were not on such a high joint income. We had both been in debt since we were students & because we were both full time professionals, we could borrow pretty much whatever we wanted. We didn't bother budgeting, something I regarded as for squares & very boring folk indeed. What I can say, is that having had one big lightbulb moment re our debt in my early 40s, having got rid of it by learning to budget & changing our irresponsible attitude to borrowing has been lifechanging. We have no debt at all. We save for things & neither of us has any appetite for going back to our old ways. Establishing a functional, relevant budget takes a bit of time. It needs tweaking to get it right....but at the heart of it all must lie this simple truth: If a purchase needs to go on a credit card, overdraft or loan, then you can't afford it because that is somebody else's money, not yours. The amount you have coming into your household every month is your money. There isn't any more. I know this sounds silly, but this realisation was like a major revelation for me! 
There are people on here who are much better at what to pay first, analysing interest rates, etc, etc, so I am going to suggest some quick easy wins. You have a very good income but you haven't been engaging with what you are doing with it. While you work on a proper budget...(because this will be absolutely key to paying your dues & solving the problem), start right away with looking to plug any obvious money leakages. Stop using credit cards for starters. (Someone else's money, not yours). What things do you regularly fritter money on which could be stopped. As just one example, making packed lunches to take to work saved us a colossal (& embarrassing!) £2k per year. Do you have a coffee shop habit? Not suggesting anyone cancels the simple pleasure of popping in for a decent cappucino, but with recent inflation, a regular habit of visiting will be costing you. Takeaways? Eating out at restaurants? All nice to do, but not when you are unable to live within your means.
Your grocery budget really jumped out at me. If you had no debts & wanted to spend £600 per month on groceries, help yourself, but with the amount you owe, this is very high indeed. Do you cook from scratch, do a weekly meal plan? Shop according to the list this generates? Do you tend to go for ready-made meals? Do you find yourself popping out to do top-up shops.....you know, you need a loaf of bread & a pack of loo roll, but end up spending £30? 
While you're thinking about easy wins on the money saving front, are there any energy-wasting holes to plug? That bill could maybe come down a bit too - there are only 2 of us but we are paying £120 a month & have a lot of credit so probably still overpaying to a degree. 
Given that you do have a very good joint income, what needs to change here primarily is mind-set - cutting back wherever you can to enable you to throw more at the debts - the snowball method worked for us. You need to know where every £ is going by establishing a strong workable budget. Once you have done that, you will see in black & white how 'just putting it on a credit card' isn't a budget-heading that is going to feature anywhere because that budget will reflect only how you are going to allocated YOUR money.
I wish you all the best for turning this around. We now have no debt, no mortgage & even save for when we need to buy a new car. Plenty of people choose to live this way (many of them ex-borrowers like myself) & it is utterly freeing to be without debt & I won't go down that route again.
Best wishes,
F

Singlespeeder

Great post FG !

smithers1981

Do you have anything of value you could sell?