what a mess - desparate - HELP please!

(Land_of)_Maz

Hi there, is it worth calling RBS and asking them if they can refund you any of the most recent bunch of charges as i know they can do this from experience (phone up and discuss with someone, if they say no, call again and speak to someone else as it is discretionary!) (maybe taking you back into the black?), and then as SS said, cancel all your exisiting Direct debits so you don't incur anymore... Then go for another account elsewhere in time for your next wage payment and set up your DD's again from the end of January.

The Dec/Jan payments you have defaulted on can be negotiated upon in order of priority, definately mortgage and council tax first.

Good luck!

zoidberg

ok - freeview would not work as I have no aerial.

car insurance is high because it includes business use and I have only been driving about 4 years and have 3 no fault and 1 fault claim all in first 2 yrs - touch wood none since.

it is an all electric property so maybe why quiet high. I havent looked on uswitch but will in a mo.

no dependents as such that would be affected (parents would be left to deal with appartment if I died) so will cancel that.

it is a small 2 bed appartment but I feel it would not possible or practical to rent out 2nd room at present - would need lot of work and with no funds for one thing.

agreed can cut food costs down - a degree of that would include food while out on work business and would reclaim against expenses.

agreed re clothing - I do need a pair of shoes for work as the current ones have no soles and are dangerous in the wet and cannot be resoled unfortunately.

havent been paying tv license since i moved in as just another debt to avoid I guess so really need to start paying this.

phone is comprised of line rental from bt + calls (dont know if would save much by moving calls to somewhere else and just leaving line rental with BT?) I think that figure may factor in the initial £150 they charged me to put line in as it was a new property.

re employer debt - yes good that there is only the 3 x£200 left but then there is the other £850 and the £580 advanced against wages. And as I reckon I need about £500 to get through rest of month and cover car insurance and council tax I guess I have no option but to go cap in hand to them tomorrow and beg for a further £500 :-(

Im guessing there is no way I can get a secured loan or get my debts put on my mortgage.

I have tried to renegotiate my car allowance and mileage allowance but based on figues my finance director produced, combined they should cover wear and tear and depreciation.

It costs me approx £10/day to travel to the office when I am there as it is 50 miles away. It is a good job and salary is reasonable (will be £38500 from end july but that includes £3500 car allowance). Unfortunately due to varying working hours and having work away a lot I dont think a second job would be possible. I have good IT skills, can fix windows etc so maybe I could do something with that with any time I do have.

I did negotiate a pay rise - the 1st half takes effect from the end of this month and is included in my figures above and second part of it becomes effective from end July. With that in effect and if I had no employer loan I would have £2345 in per month.

If I do go into payment plan but snowball later will it help get a mortgage sooner than 6 years? Will I manage to get a mortgage anyway as long as I keep up my payments in future on this one but just get a high interest rate as sub prime?

would an IVA be applicable or advisable?

I separated from my partner and her son dec 06 and thought the best thing to do would be stop throwing money away on renting and to get on the property ladder (happily we are back together in the last 3 months but living apart for now). Due to my mortgage offer expiring as it was nearly 7 months from deposit to completion the mortgage rate I actually got was about .75% more than the figures I had been working on when planning the purchase. Obviously I was already committed to the purchase by then and advised that I couldnt and shouldn't pull out. I had quite a few things to purchase on moving and then some unexpected costs (damaging car engine undertray - £285, filling it with petrol instead of deisel £500 etc) coupled with some foolish spending going out a few too many tims etc and no savings or safetynet has led me to where I am now

dubsey

Please feel free to ignore me, because I probably have no idea what I'm talking about! I would think that the first thing is to try and sort the immediate problems, rather than thinking about what you can or can't do in a couple of years. If you don't do something now it will definately be a very long time before you could think of a mortgage.

You probably won't agree with me, but, if as you say you and your partner want to be living together in a couple of years can you not just rent somewhere first, especially if you have already split once? You may not like renting, but at least you'd be together and could then save together towards a joint property when the debts are sorted.

I started looking at these forums because of the huge debt my little sister is in. She added cards and loans together into a consolidation loan, then a remortgage, finally topping up on the cards again. The main reason stopping her going to the CCCS straight away was the fact that she was hoping to move to a bigger place in a few years, so she just kept trying to juggle everything. Please try to look at the now instead of the end goal, once you're back on track managing to live everyday then having a goal to work towards I think is a good idea.

Best of luck!

iolanthe07

I really would pay the TV licence if I was you. They can get nasty and quickly fine you £1000 which would land you in even more pooh. Good luck.

Alisonbel

I thought I had lots of bad luck!!!!! Are you really serious about sorting this out?!?!!?!?

robpw2

could you sell your property as this will give you some equity ? you could even sell to one of those companies that will let u stay there .?

have you thought about changing your car seems like your paying too much for this?
do you need a landline phone? even if you jsut pay 10.50 for line rental and use it to get internet? just dont make calls from there unless for emergency.

use sites like saynoto0870 and get local numbers and also freephone numbers for big companines so that you dont have to pay stupid amounts to them .

speak to sky reduce your package

you say its an all electric property do you have energy saving lightbulbs? do you switch off items your not using ?


i would pay your tv licence as priority or remove the tv completly as you dont appear to need an extra outstanding 1000 pounds


dont get cash advances on your wages- its easy and gives money when u need it but does not help you to budget.

i would say most importantly stop borrowing (regardless of who its off) and start saving .


Write letters to all companies concerend advsiing them of your monthly finances and see if you can set up regular ,cheaper direct debits so that you can keep with in your budget .

if you are living alone you can eat a healthy balanced diet for around 20-25 pound a week . little tip BIG savings- shop at places like aldi,lidl, tesco or asda making sure that you buy tins and packet stuff that will last longer ..

a bag of pasta you can get for 19p (500g) and a jar of sauce you can get for approximately 39p and yet you can have 3 meals out of this ..

also buy an extra couple of items each week , possible an extra tin of beans or an extra bag of pasta that way if you need to cut down your spending one week you still have items in your cuboard.


I hope some of these ideas will help sorry its so long

zoidberg

Hi, thanks for all the replies. Unfortnately I am at work at the mo so have just had a scan through them and will post later.

Briefly so - have phoned mortgage people who are happy to accept £50-100 in next couple of weeks and then £50 per month to pay off outstanding amount.

Called sainsburys car insurance but cant reduce to 3rd party only and business use is already included free so cant save anything with them. Did a quick search on confused but strangely nothing any cheaper even with just 3rd party and no business mileage. They are happy to retake payment for this month in a couple of weeks when my new acc is setup.

Will call council tax in the morning.
Will call sky after work to reduce package.
Will call TV licensing in the morning and setup monthly dd on that.
Will draft letters to Citi/Welcome re writing off remaining amiounts - would anyone have a template letter or advice on exactly what to say/details to include??

Spoke to RBS and explained and asked them if they would be prepared to refund charges etc and they are going to get back to me.

Applied for Natwest current account online this morning (no chqbook) - it said I have been provisionally accepted and paperwork would go out in post (although fully expect just to get offered a cashcard account inm reality)

Unfortunately at the mo (as mentioned in one of my essays above) its not possible to downsize the car etc as there would be negative equity on the minute which would need clearing and also guessing I wouldnt get car finance anywhere else at the mo.

Energy saving bulbs in most lights although some not - will change as soon as I have some cash.

re BT - will stop making calls and use my work mobile and also see if I can reduce which call package I am on with this to reduce outgoings.

am going to speak to my FD this afternoon to discuss outstanding monies to employer and sorting out money for rest of month including small payment to mortgage people and car insurance mentioned above. I dont see any other way to deal with those two in particular given the potential consequences and I guess it will in reality mean extending work payments for another 6 or 7 months.

Anyway, must crack on with some work. I will post later with an update and thanks to all who have helped so far.

mummytofour

RBS and natwest are connected a step account with natwest is not an option if your current bank account is RBS and you have trouble with them. RBS will be able to take money out of your natwest account to pay any debt you owe them.

Once you have a DMP or something sorted out and you can start to save money, you need to work a way of getting rid of the car, I understand that you need a car for work but a cheaper can that you pay for in cash much be an option?

Karmacat

robpw2 wrote: »

could you sell your property as this will give you some equity ? you could even sell to one of those companies that will let u stay there .?

Most people on here would say that is a very bad idea. Please don't take this as advice that the majority of dfw's would give.

zoidberg

Hi, I dont really see anyway of getting rid of the car at the moment as there is oustanding equity due to depreciation etc of around £3500 at the moment which would have to be raised to sell it, and still about 12 months to go until 1/2 way through the agreement when I could legally just give it back and terminate the agreement. Also even if I managed the above somehow I would still need to purchase a new car and exployer would expect finance+insurance etc to come to about the amount they pay for car allowance (e.g £300 per month) and mileage expenses to cover wear and tear and depreciation whist on work business (which at present is the majority of my mileage)

If anyone has any bright ideas on this one I'd love to hear them otherwise I guess its just a case of having to stick with it til 1/2 way through agreement and then terminate and more importantly put monies received for work mileage into a separate savings account and manage it properly and use them for car costs (not just as an extra form of income as had been woefully the case)

I did think about the link between RBS and Natwest and wonder. I will apply for a co-op account as well incase RBS are not willing to refund the charges on my account.