Emergency Help needed asap Please

LoulaBelle

Hiya, I'm really sorry to read everything that has happened to you.

Are you able to book a doctors appointment so they can issue you with a foodbank voucher or do CAB issue them? feelings and emotions aside (for now) you need to be practical, what food do you have in the cupboards/freezer etc? try and channel your energy into what you can deal with, if you can get foodbank vouchers, do so.  Our local church gives away food from 10am - midday Monday to Friday, no need for vouchers anyone can turn up.

Starting the new job on Thursday, go for it, its a new beginning.

Wishing you all the best and will keep checking in.

Loulabelle 

sparks_2023

stu12345_2 said:

hello, thanks for all the lovely replies. i think the money has gone,Tesco still to reply. but they did say once the scammer gets the codes they redeem them instantly online 
 we spent hours last night going through bins to find the actual cards, not just the activation code,  but the letters on front of the card, which scammer needed and Tesco wanted these letters, we found one of them, gave it to Tesco helpline.

it was stressful as the bins had cat toys, cat food bowls that we binned, and we had to see them again, we await for the cats ashes to be returned soon in a little wooden casket.

it's really the bank and the police fraud dept that may help, but unlikely to get money back.

spoke to my elderly mother, she said do you want to divorce her, I said no, she said she can give me £200 in my bank today 

I'm so ashamed to ask her, she has her pension but is housebound for 2 years, she can't spend her pension on anything, she has Parkinson's disease too and gets council carers to feed her etc. she is hard to understand on phone, but she tries her best.

as for wife, she said she will never go on chatrooms ever again. our new jobs mean it's a month before we get paid and probably run 2 weeks wages only as it's 2' weeks in arrears before they give you a month wages, and it's our first months wage.

our final wage from old job was lower cos they said we took too many holidays as we worked in a school and got paid for Oct and Xmas break fully even though we hadn't accrued enough holiday hours.

still trying to rebuild trust with wife, sometimes Im not sure if what she says is the whole truth, I asked her what did you say to this guy, she said friendly chat for a year,  just bits and bobs, then he got personal, wife told me she told him to refrain from personal remarks he gave her,

but I'm not sure if she actually did. the hurt is when she knew our cat was dying and we had large vet bills, but she still gave him £500. and left herself with 60p in bank.

we rent council, on life time tenancy for last 11 years, we should be ok, how do you tell council no rent for a month cos my wife gave it all away to some scammer probably in Africa.

I also have years car insurance in one go and it will be taken from my bank in 3 weeks time,  I'm so worried it will be rejected and I will be driving without insurance, until our first new wages. 
I'm going to penny pinch to try and make sure it goes through ok.its £216

I think the fact we have been on a dmp for 2 years and it just leads to depression for both, I stayed strong with positive outlook. but it still got to us,  no fun time, no holidays, no romantic meals out.

then the constant feeling of being in debt and working so hard in jobs we hated to pay back debts that may take 6 years to pay. we are only in year 2. about to start year 3, thats why we had to desperately get new jobs, which we did.

you lose the spark you had when you were debt free.

we don't have any friends  here, it's always been me and her as a team, we not only live together  as man and wife, but we worked together in same job.

wife said we never got time apart, she never got to chat to other workmates, cos we had none, she had no friends out of work, she only had me and I only have her. I have no friends out of work. but I have one teacher at school who became a mate at school and wanted me to meet up, but I never did. I should have.

she has no parents alive they both died 5 years ago . I only have a mother alive. who lives Hundred of miles away.
she has  a. sister  hundreds of miles away she won't talk to now, as she gave her £100 at Xmas, where we couldn't afford to ,her sis has a great job, debt free. and her sis gave her nothing in return.

we gave each other nothing, we agreed  on a no spend Xmas, except a loving card each, as we couldn't afford to, and she gives her sis £100 behind my back.she sneaked off to a shop one day and bought a £100 Amazon voucher.

I have no family here either, it's just me and her against the world, we are meant to be a team , and best friends , not just husband and wife 

I won't be posting on any other threads cos I don't have the mental energy left to help or advice others at the moment, so if I go quiet, then you know I'm trying to sort out finances and relationship out.

Please, whatever you do, don't drive without insurance.

I hope everything works out.

EssexHebridean

I missed the bit about the insurance - yes, you must get this sorted. Why do you have to pay it in one go? Can you not opt for monthly instalments just to make cashflow easier at this stage? Whatever happens though, if you cannot sort the insurance you need to make arrangements to get the car off the public highway - into a friend's garage if you don't have one yourself, for example) and categorically not drive it until it is insured again. 

I think something else you need to think about once things have settled down a bit is revisiting your budget - you need to be budgeting monthly for insurances that you subsequently plan to pay upfront - so on the car insurance had you been putting aside the relevant amount through the year, you might have been a month short at this stage but not the whole lot which is how your post suggests the situation is. Unless of course the money your wife used for the scammer was from the car maintenance pot?  No need to panic and feel you have to do it right now - but definitely something to give some thought to doing in the next few weeks, as if there is one thing not being budgeted properly, there may be others waiting to catch you out. 

stu12345_2

will.make as many payments to rent till new wages let us catch up.
the dmp is selfrun and we've changed the amounts of our standing orders for a month to a £1 for one month only.
not going to contact creditors.

if I don't think I will manage car insurance in one go I will spread it . I set it up last week for renewal in one go to save interest , cos we had some savings , before I found out about wifes scammer
I need the car to get to work or it's no job for me.


the car got its MOT on last  Tuesday and passed first time, it's 17 years old.i was so worried, cos the job is 9 miles away with 6am start and their are no buses then. whilst I was waiting for the call from the garage, my wife sneaked to shops to give him £250!
that hurt a lot, it's as if she didn't care about the car, job situation and only this guy that needed £500 in total for internet bill he said he had

I'm making large casseroles to take to new job in a thermos. and even one for tonight so brain energy..

read out examples I found online of folk who have been scammed to wife today as to show her what can happen.

but it's the was she ever romantically tempted as in meet , get physical , even tho it would never happen cos it was a conman is my biggest stress, she said she gave him.money cos she felt sorry for him.

I dont  think I will ever get the true story from her, eg how personal the messages were, but it's been chat for one year. do scammers take a year to manipulate their victims???

I said we owe £10,000 each to creditors  and you felt sorry for him?
I'm trying to forgive her. , but it's difficult 

EssexHebridean

Remember that the scammer will have had probably hundreds of these people on the go at any one time. If one pays up every couple of days, that's a decent income for  them isn't it. I'm saying "them" because you are assuming this was a man - but it may well not have been. 

I would set aside trying to forgive - or not - your wife right now. You might even put in place a moratorium on any more discussion about it for the time being until you can get your thinking straight. not suggesting you carry on as though nothing happened, but there is a limited amount to be gained in rehashing things over and over again. 

Sort the car insurance to pay monthly, then set aside an additional £25 a month when you rework your budget to be paid into a separate account ready to be able to pay it in full next year. Good news on the MoT though - mine's up next month and I hope it goes through as smoothly as yours did! 

stu12345_2

Tesco called , the cards have been redeemed and spent.
 so it's down to rbs bank and police to help us now

mr_stripey

I think there is next to no chance of getting money back from the redeemed cards unfortunately. Probably worth letting the RBS and Police investigations run their course but I doubt either will result in getting money back.

lillypoo

Just a quick thought here. My sister works for a competing supermarket. Their policy is to not sell more than £250 worth of gift cards to a customer at a time ...specifically to avoid fraud and this tyoe of situation. If your wife purchased both in one transaction and you feel you believe her, it might he worth ringing tesco anonymously, tell them you need £500 worth and ask if you can buy them all in one go. If they say no ... perhaps you can do something about it.

I don't know. Just trying to think of ways to help.

If she bought them online there's lots of warning on the website about not giving anyone else the pin. I assume that's also written in tiny print on the cards themselves so noone can be blamed.

hoverFrog1

Your wife was conned. She is a victim here as much as you are. Con artists seek out weaknesses and vulnerabilities and exploit them. We all have them and a clever con artists can find their way past our defences and use them to rob us. It is obviously up to you but I suggest forgiving but not forgetting. Get some counselling. Figure out how to move on from this. Put steps in place to stop it happening again by addressing the root causes of her vulnerability.

As for the money, it sounds like a short term issue for you. Your new jobs will cover the losses in due time. Get a joint account with standing orders for all regular spending that you both contribute to and can both monitor. Set up alerts on the joint account to identify sudden, unexpected expenditure to prevent something like this from happening again. If she wants to waste her own money, let it be her own money and not money for rent or essential bills like council tax and food. You should have an income and expenditure form that tells you how much you both need to put in to this account each month.

stu12345_2

she bought the cards in separate transactions in two different days, in supermarket .Tesco did explain that to us today, so they did adhere to their safety guidelines policy.

it's down to whether RBS bank want to refund the money if they feel she was emotionally vulnerable and want to use a goodwill gesture  and avoid any bad publicity.

my wife said her new wages from both her jobs, she has 2 part time jobs, she will transfer into my bank account for me to do the money management and deal with bills.

any spare money  left over, I will transfer  back, or we can withdraw it  as cash and keep it at home  or she can keep in her bank once all debts and bills are paid 

that is a rule we agreed today.

I also stated today that when my mother dies, as she is ill and she made out her will last year and left me her home.
and if that time comes, any inheritance money  will never be given  to wife's bank account  or directly to wife in any shape or form . I will deal with it completely in my bank account.