Please help new and desperate

tesuhoha

This is just a small suggestion. I notice that you have £2,000 debt to Northern Rock over 10 years. This seems an uneccessary long time to keep a debt like that. My suggestion would be to transfer this loan by repaying it by a 0% card. If you take out one of the ones recommended on this site for 14 months, £300 per month for 14 months will pay off £4200 so that would get rid of the £2,000 and some other of your niggly small debts. 5.7% on £2,000 is £114 over one year, so just imagine how much you will pay over ten years. I would concentrate on the small debts first and the highest rates but try to get asmuch as possible onto 0% cards then you will start seeing the debt go down.

tesuhoha

It does take some work and you have to pay a BT fee but 0% I think is best for those small amounts as you can pay them all off in the allotted time. Life of balance is very good for the rest.

Keeping_Motivated

tesuhoha wrote: »

This is just a small suggestion. I notice that you have £2,000 debt to Northern Rock over 10 years. This seems an uneccessary long time to keep a debt like that. My suggestion would be to transfer this loan by repaying it by a 0% card. If you take out one of the ones recommended on this site for 14 months, £300 per month for 14 months will pay off £4200 so that would get rid of the £2,000 and some other of your niggly small debts. 5.7% on £2,000 is £114 over one year, so just imagine how much you will pay over ten years. I would concentrate on the small debts first and the highest rates but try to get asmuch as possible onto 0% cards then you will start seeing the debt go down.

I agree with this to at least try and over pay it or when the credit cards are on 0% then pay the minimum payment to the smallest one and pay more towards this Northern Rock £2000 one. That is of course if there is a facility to overpay on this one?

jaapie

I can see your point but at the moment I can make all the payments so I wanted to overpay on the credit cards as these are my biggest problem and try and get rid of them and then hit the loans.

I see the point about starting off like being on a diet but unfortunately I do not have a choice anymore as the well has well and truly run dry and the only other alternative is unacceptable.

Here is one for you all my brother in law has offered to pay for me to go out as he has not seen me in a year. Do I go and have someone pay for me or stay in?

Keeping_Motivated

I say go and graciously accept the offer. You are not taking advantage as you were honest and said you could not afford it so he has offered to treat you so I would politley accept.

jaapie

Thanks I think I will as we went over to see him and took him and his wife out before we had the kids and there children were young so he might be insulted if we did not. It is a tricky business changing your lifestyle it opens up so many challenges I am still not too scared yet as it doesn't feel as bad as the helplessness.

Keeping_Motivated

Good for you I hope you have a nice time.

It is hard changing your lifestyle but there is something calming about taking control don't you think?

jaapie

not just calming but I honestly could not have gone for much longer in denial. I have read alot of posts and know that I am in a bad situation but it could have gone alot worse and as long as I manage my money never use credit cards again I can get out of this. If I hadn't have taken stock I would have started to miss payments etc.. and that would have crucified me as I would have felt as I had let everyone down. I feel so much happier being in control ( I am a bit of a control freak anyway I just have not applied it to money issues before DOH!

littlemissclumsy

well done Jaapie!!!!!!

you are doing so well - i dont even know you yet i am really proud of the way you are facing this and learning from all the advice.

like me, you seem much happier. looking forward to seeing things keep improving for you

TriciaE

Hello, my first post and I just wanted to add to the support already shown and to re iterate that YOU CAN DO IT.

I hope it's ok for me to post on here as I have never been in debt in my life (mortgage aside) but felt compelled to post to offer support, not gloat in any way and thought that if I told you a bit about myself that it might show you how things can be in the future.

OK, I have always been a saver, had it drummed in to me as a kid and as a young adult I found myself looking at 'interest' as someone else stealing my money, it kinda made me never want to take out a loan, infact I was so tight I thought I could save and buy a house, lol, don't worry, I soon realised that was a step too far. Well, you can imagine my horror when I met my future husband to discover he had nearly £10k of debts (1991). He also owned his own home (as did I) and I was itching to get my hands on clearing his debts but with the horrendous mortgage he had taken on and the ever increasing interest rate we suddenly found that he could only sell it for what he bought it for. I wanted him to sell as the debt was increasing monthly and he refused, cut a long story short it was sold a year later with 10K of negative equity which we had to borrow, so total debt had gone from 10k to over 20k in one year (and never mind the wasted 12k of mortgage repayments during that year). First thing I had to do was to re educate him to a different way of thinking i.e that damn debt was a game and WE were going to win...it was gone in 2 years.

Since that time he enjoys 'the game' as much as me and apart from budgeting our expenditure we both have 'cash stashes' which we splurge on the kids or eachother but there is always a target. The targets at the moment are to be clear of our mortgage in 2 years and my personal cash stash target is a disgustingly expensive watch he wants (yeh ok so it will take some time but I have to have a target !)

There are some things I have never deviated from and much of it has already been mentioned but for what it's worth

1) No excel sheets for me, I write down our approx monthly expenditure, giving a £100 leeway for 'extras' for each month at the beginning of the year, multiply it by 11 (I exlude one month for big things like house insurance and christmas) and 'see' what I could accumulate in one year.

2) Because it is now 'my game' and I have to win, I then, on pay day, write down the expenses for that month (I know when the utilities are coming and if they are a biggie or a tiddler) and work out the monthly save, if I can't make it then I have to feed it from my cash stash (cry) / know there will be no 'extras' that month or whatever else I need to but I WILL make that target. I have to make it because I have already worked out what the end of year save will be spent on....ok at the mo it's paying off mortgage but one day soon.....yippee.

3) I have always, since my first wage packet, drawn out 'x' a week on a given day and when it's gone, well tough luck, it's gone. Every third month works out a 5 week allowance and this is costed in to the spend.

4) I like to give my brain a maths workout, so as the shopping goes on to the conveyor belt I am adding up in my head the approximate cost and if I realise I'm over stuff gets shoved on the side before it gets to the till. Yeh, ok, I know it's daft but like I say I think the reason I have always 'enjoyed' money is because it has always been a bit of a game between me and it.

Oops, sorry, I have rambled on a bit and I hope no one thinks I have posted to gloat in any way, just thought that seeing as it would seem that the person who gets in debt is of a completely different mindset to me that you might like to know how the mind of a complete 'save nerd' works.

Good luck to you all.