Where to start

Jacksonc2114

So I’ve buried and still am burring my head a bit … I’m in debt and just need to face it but I’m so worried 
I’m not sleeping for thinking about it it’s on my mind 24/7 it’s making me so stressed 

I’ve for about £28k it’s spiralled with all this cost of living etc .. I get by each month just as a couple but we are struggling … we have a mortgage and we thankfully got a fixed deal just before the crazy interest but still have a silly payment of £1100 a month .. we have tried to lower but the new interest rates are double what we have so we won’t benefit from this .. credit cards and loans are a good £800 a month and it’s crippling … the big issue is that my partner works in a job where he can’t have bad credit and has to pass credit checks as he does work with banks if he lost his job that would be even worse so most of the debt has been in my name and this has made trying to consolidate worse …  he also doesn’t know about a lot of the debt as I’ve tried to hide the real extent as I don’t want the arguments it brings … I’ve thought of leaving and walking away and taking my trouble with me ans letting him lead his life as I feel most the debt is my fault I’m sure it’s not … however I can do a debt management plan and that’s affordable but it must be me only but I worry about the mortgage … can he remoergage in just his own name when we renew in 3.5 years and take me off it as I know poor credit will stop a remortgage deal but we would more likely stay with our bank … if I do debt management or IVA I’ve seen they can force a sale of a house .. we worked so hard to have a home and we are in our late 40s I don’t want to loose it but want to pay my debt back the best I can just need more management of this … a secured loan is an option but the interest Is 14% .. any ideas where I start .. I want to pay back what I owe Or be able to some how not risk our home for our children’s sake 

Little_bit_taller

Hi Jacksonc2114

Well done for posting. You have come to the right place! 

To get really good advice and to give people here a better idea of your position, we'd normally advise you fill out a Statement of Affairs...someone here will be able to send you the link.

Be honest about where your money is currently going, not what you'd like to see.

You can get through this.

Any questions just give us a shout x

sourcrates

Jacksonc2114 said:

 … if I do debt management or IVA I’ve seen they can force a sale of a house .. 

If you play lotto, you might win the jackpot, but its not likely, same applies to losing your house in debt management, never going to happen, wild scare stories you should take no notice of.

Plus an IVA is specifically designed to protect your assets, such as a house, which is why they can be ideal for homeowners, more scare stories you`ve read ?

No matter how much you owe, debt management or an IVA as an alternative, will help solve the problem, there is no element of doubt in that statement, nothing will happen to your home, formulate a plan which does not include making this debt secured, and put it into action.

It all starts with an SOA.

RAS

You will be able to choose another product from your current mortgage provider's portfolio when you renew, even with adverse credit, maybe not the best of the market but not the end of the world.

However, you really really need to talk to your talk to your partner. They can't make the necessary adjustments your life style unless they know the true picture.

AND, what we saw in the previous economic crisis was that even those who worked for banks and went bankrupt kept their jobs IF they had discussed their financial mess with their employer before going BR. The only person I recall losing their job was the eejit whose employer found out when the OR contacted them.

Your OH might want to make an anonymous enquiry via their union or profession body if they are concerned about the impact of your debt on their work situation.

The other simple factor is whether you are aware that the fees for an IVA are £4-9k, generally not at the lower end. So a 28k debt could cost £35k+ if your earnings improve and you have declare insolvency whenever you are asked. With a DMP, the problem could be invisible in 7 years time and you might well settle for 12-20k long before that.

Jacksonc2114

sourcrates said:

Jacksonc2114 said:

 … if I do debt management or IVA I’ve seen they can force a sale of a house .. 

If you play lotto, you might win the jackpot, but its not likely, same applies to losing your house in debt management, never going to happen, wild scare stories you should take no notice of.

Plus an IVA is specifically designed to protect your assets, such as a house, which is why they can be ideal for homeowners, more scare stories you`ve read ?

No matter how much you owe, debt management or an IVA as an alternative, will help solve the problem, there is no element of doubt in that statement, nothing will happen to your home, formulate a plan which does not include making this debt secured, and put it into action.

It all starts with an SOA.

Thanks 
yes we have a mortgage with nationwide so a high street bank who we bank with and a good interest of 2.54% so good rate.:. It’s 3.5 yr left then when we renew we have 10 year to go so if we can stay with them and there is less likely to get credit and be refused and stay in variable or refix as we not moving that could help me out as the mortgage is my worry …  i read about IVa making you release equity and worry I’ll be forced to release thousands and then impact more … I want to pay it off but need a solution to the climbing costs …
I’ve seen lots of companies but never know who’s good to trust .. I think in total it’s £35k as I missed a loan have in that calculation … 
looking forward to finding out this SOA 
I need to know what’s what what help I can get the impact of choices before I break the news to partner

Jacksonc2114

RAS said:

You will be able to choose another product from your current mortgage provider's portfolio when you renew, even with adverse credit, maybe not the best of the market but not the end of the world.

However, you really really need to talk to your talk to your partner. They can't make the necessary adjustments your life style unless they know the true picture.

AND, what we saw in the previous economic crisis was that even those who worked for banks and went bankrupt kept their jobs IF they had discussed their financial mess with their employer before going BR. The only person I recall losing their job was the eejit whose employer found out when the OR contacted them.

Your OH might want to make an anonymous enquiry via their union or profession body if they are concerned about the impact of your debt on their work situation.

The other simple factor is whether you are aware that the fees for an IVA are £4-9k, generally not at the lower end. So a 28k debt could cost £35k+ if your earnings improve and you have declare insolvency whenever you are asked. With a DMP, the problem could be invisible in 7 years time and you might well settle for 12-20k long before that.

RAS said:

You will be able to choose another product from your current mortgage provider's portfolio when you renew, even with adverse credit, maybe not the best of the market but not the end of the world.

However, you really really need to talk to your talk to your partner. They can't make the necessary adjustments your life style unless they know the true picture.

AND, what we saw in the previous economic crisis was that even those who worked for banks and went bankrupt kept their jobs IF they had discussed their financial mess with their employer before going BR. The only person I recall losing their job was the eejit whose employer found out when the OR contacted them.

Your OH might want to make an anonymous enquiry via their union or profession body if they are concerned about the impact of your debt on their work situation.

The other simple factor is whether you are aware that the fees for an IVA are £4-9k, generally not at the lower end. So a 28k debt could cost £35k+ if your earnings improve and you have declare insolvency whenever you are asked. With a DMP, the problem could be invisible in 7 years time and you might well settle for 12-20k long before that.

Again thanks 
Mayes we high street bank current 2.5% rate 
if a new deal without credit check is possible that makes me feel better I just worry we would struggle to remortgage with my credit history being poor… his is good .. my OH is freelance so he gets work and is in IT so he has always maintained the good credit so don’t want to ever jepodise this I know we have clearly both caused this along with the crazy world we live in for rising costs … but if I can sort the debt I don’t mind .:: we not needing credit other than a car again something we need for work and we lease a car in his name … 
income wise I will be staying in my job for a long while ( hopefully ) but as say he’s freelance 

Floss

Jacksonc2114 said:

 
I’ve seen lots of companies but never know who’s good to trust .. I think in total it’s £35k as I missed a loan have in that calculation … 
looking forward to finding out this SOA 
I need to know what’s what what help I can get the impact of choices before I break the news to partner

If you are thinking of debt management companies, please ignore all the adverts as you will be paying for something you can get for free.

The ones to consider are Stepchange, Payplan, Citizen's Advice & Christians Against Poverty, or you can look at the NEDCAB site which will guide you through the process of self-managing.

Rob5342

The first step is sitting down with your partner and telling him the full extent of everything. I had £42k of credit card debt that my partner knew nothing about so I know how hard it can be to admit to it. It was a very difficult conversation to have and things were tense between us for a long time, but it was only after admitting it that things started to turn round. We are now working together to get things paid off instead of me being constantly stressed about her finding out.

As mentioned, if you stay with the same lender then you can switch to a new deal without needing a credit check. My credit report is in a bad state with three defaults but I switched to a new Santander deal last year with no problems at all. I had the choice of all their deals and I just chose the fixed rate deal I wanted.

RAS

Please don't even consider any "debt company". The adverts are generally just sales people whose job is to get leads for IVA providers and other companies, for which they get an introducer's fee. You will have to release equity in year 6 on  an IVA, so I'd suggest you avoid one.

Phone Stepchange or National Debtline. CAB are great but rather overworked.  PayPal are OK and Christians Against Poverty don't just work with Christians although you may not need their hands on approach.

And watch out for websites that use the tag lines like national debt helpline or national debt relief, whose paid ads top the page. You need the Birmingham based not for profit.

EssexHebridean

Great points already made above. I'd also say that you can probably consider that the difficulty in consolidating is a lucky escape for you - consolidation works for incredibly few people, and in your current position with your OH not being fully in the picture, that would make it rather unlikely that you would be one of the fortunate ones. 

As already said - SOA is the first step. Link in my signature - complete it openly and honestly, and include absolutely everything you can think of in there. It might help to get together a years worth of bank and card statements as that should avoid you missing anything. Don't complete the document with the figures you think "should" be there, or that you think we expect to see - just make it reflect the way things are right now as that is the best way for you and us to be able to get the full picture, and see what might work for you. 

I'm going to echo the others also saying that you really need an upfront conversation with your OH about this - and all the more so allowing for the fact that you have taken on debt to avoid him doing so because of his work. Just as a reminder there too - there are very few jobs which preclude someone from borrowing money at all - the issues can arise in some cases when persistent debt occurs. I'd personally be questioning why it was made so important for you to be the one who had to take the debt, allowing that presumably you weren't expecting to struggle to pay? If you  have taken on debt for the household though, that is not an indicator that you should personally have to take full responsibility for it - just because it might be in your name doesn't make it any less of a shared responsibility on the moral front! 

Bizzywizard

Hi Jackson,

My husband is where you are today, back around 2018/19. He had circa £20k of debt, which I knew nothing about.
He was not spending on clothes or anything really bar, mortgage, and credit card debit from UNI!

I caughtt him one night not sleeping and very upset, he finally fessed up. I was not mad with him, I was more hurt that he felt he couldn't talk to me. But, I said I would start looking at it in the morning and we would put a plan together and clear the debit together. He said it was the first time in a year he'd slept!

It began with an excel spread sheet, so what came in and out each month and then the 3 credit cards that he had been moving around for years on 0%....he had none left! So, for the first time ever I switched the credit card debit onto a 0% card with my name, this gave us some breathing room, I also opened a Nationwide account which had a 0% overdraft for 1 year only (then it goes up by silly percent). His HSBC overdraft was the biggest issue the 45% interest was killing his account, so he opended a basic RBS account and his salary went there and we fed his HSBC account to clear the overdraft. This was the biggest weight that was lifted,

Each credit card was split by months ie 24 divide by the £4k debit for example....this gave us the figure we needed each month, I know others use the snow ball effect, that didn't work for me. But paying off high interest should always be the priority if you cannot get a 0% deal.

I went back to work full time. I worked every weekend.

I know alot of people do this differently, but I wanted the debt gone! My husbands biggest habbit was coffee and cake he was spending £80 easy a month...this was cut straight away (he hated it and still does). I then went round checking gas and electric, we were able to reduce the DD instantly and request a £600 refund.

Plenty of things you can delete from DD if you have spotify/disney/amazon etc. You don't need them. Thats the difference between wanting or needing.

I also change our coucil tax from 10 months to 12 months, so our debit/money was the same each month, I still do this now I am free.

I also switched bank accounts, so I made money from this, not my DH as his debit was to much (bad credit score), so he had the basic account with RBS.
Any money I made went straight off the debit. I also did surveys and made around £20/30 a month, again it went straight off the debit.

We also ebayed/market placed everything we didn't need......kids toys mainly.
We also stopped drinking (not big drinkers) but, that £8 bottle of wine on friday night went, we told everyone we were on a health drive.
We didn't book a holiday that year. We live closeish to the beach, so did day trips. This was a tough one as I love a hot holiday.

I know look at my bank/spread sheet everyday........ now we are debit free and it feels great!
I also check both our credit scores for free each month!

Its all about planning and being straight with your husband. Good Luck!

We now save together!

Hope this helps in a small way.