Ostrich syndrome

Tiglet

"Camelot £18":eek::eek:

I'd pay as much as you can afford off the Next card, and then get rid of it straight away. Once you've cleared the balance, get in touch with them and get them to cancel the card. In fact, that's a good idea in general - when you pay off a card, make a point of cancelling it. Not only does it make sure that you can't use it in future, it improves your chances of getting better terms in the future.

scaredandsad

Yes the Camelot needs to go.. and then the Next card..and I will take my own packed lunch
I travel to London and the ticket with car parking is £24, there's no way round that sadly.
I am signed in to the gym on a contract for a year - I chose that particular one as I have a knee problem, and they have a ssepcialist there, but at the moment I am hardly going because I am worrying so much about debt.
The food is for the family
And the social money is for the family too
I will check how long I have on my mobile contract too.

Anyway I have just called cccs and they were helpful and gave me advice about changing banks etc letters to creditors but it's all so scarey. I am really petrified by it all. I am worried it will affect my mortgage and my husband's pay... Has anyone else done the same thing?

tyllwyd

Are you claiming child tax credit?

And is there any possibility of increasing your hours at work?

sharon59

I am a novice at this but wondered why you had a joint life insurance and also a seperate one for you -or have l misunderstood-easy for me to do!Try to think positive-you are now dealing with your debt which is far better than adding to and ignoring it as you were yesterday-well done and good luck x

dancingfairy

Hi here are my thoughts:

Alliance and Leicester loan £150.22 until 5/1/2010
HSBC loan £137.58 until 2011
MBNA minimum payment £80
Tesco minimum payment £80
Marbles panic payment! £200
Joint life assurance £33.75 is this the cheapest - does it cover what you think it covers you for?
Gym £41 - use it or ditch it I'm afraid
Home insurance £26.52 - when's it up for renewal - shop around and see if you can get it cheaper? check what it covers.
Mobile £44.64 - seems a huge amount - need to phone and threaten to cancel - negotiate a better deal/move suppliers
Broadband/phone £34.87 - is this the best deal?
Personal life insurance £23.04 - do you need this? does it cover what you think it does? does work not provide anything? check this out.
Camelot £18 - gotta go
Travel to work: £240 a month- can you get this cheaper? car share or anything? work from home a bit?
Lunch at work: £40 a month gotta go I'm afraid- packed lunches for you.
Petrol £50 a month
Food and odd-bits shopping £200 a month-can you get this down at all - go to Old Style they should help
Social stuff: £30 a month what sort of social stuff - can you go to the cinema on Orange Wednesdays? or go to a friends house for a meal rather than restaruant- work out what you want to do then ask on here for cheaper versions.
Total: £1430

There's quite a lot you could save here I reckon which is good as you're overspending by about £80 a month.

Anything you can ebay/carboot? do online surveys or clicks to get more money?

Good Luck

the_cat

Hi
the first thing that jumps out to me is that you only work 10 days per month. You earn good money considering that, so could you add an extra day per week maybe? More would be better obviously, but realise it is a balance when you have kids.

RE OH. Are you sure that you can't tell him? A lot of the savings that could be suggested are not in your budget (so presumably he pays them?) If you could tackle it as a whole you could get much further much faster!

scaredandsad

Thank you all for your suggestions. I am going to implement some immediately.
FYI the reason I got personal life insurance out was so that if I died, my debts would be covered - the joint assurance covers the (Enormous) mortgage..

I can't work from home sadly but I am trying to work more days, but at the moment there's not much possibility because we are facing a massive round of redundancies (Which would give me £16K I was made redundant which actually makes me wonder whether I shouldn't have volunteered for redundancy) I am also looking into a couple of other job possibilities for the extra days.

We really don't have an extravagant lifestyle and have reclaimed bank charges/mortgage fees/and I ebay lots.

I am really worried about going on some kind of debt management programme incase if comes back to haunt me in later life in some way.

I am actually really tempted to borrow a massive sum from Alliance and Leicester over 20 years, pay it all off and start living again, this time within my means. Would that be so wrong?

the_cat

For 99.9% of people that would be the worst thing you could do. Firstly the loan is in all likelihood going to be secured on your property (and OH Will have to agree to that) so if it all goes wrong you lose your house. What if the redundancies affect you and you couldn't get another job?

Secondly and the reason most people will fail with this plan is that you haven't addressed the problems that got you here in the first place. You say you could 'pay it all off and start living again' which strongly implies you would go back to your old pattern of spending - except that you wouldn't have really paid it off would you, just moved it around a bit.

Add it all up and work out how much interest you would pay over 20 years, then do the snowball calculator on www.thatsthecost.co.uk and see what the difference is, that should put you off!!!

nomoneynomoney

Can you try to work out different solutions then go armed with these to your OH.
Work out the loan solution
Then the DMP solution
Then the redundancy solution
That way you can say we have a problem but here are the solutions.
You need to be able to discuss it with someone - I know he'll be upset but he'll be more upset if it makes you ill or the situation gets worse ( for better or worse, for richer for poorer)
good luck

tyllwyd

scaredandsad wrote: »

I am actually really tempted to borrow a massive sum from Alliance and Leicester over 20 years, pay it all off and start living again, this time within my means. Would that be so wrong?

My personal opinion is that it isn't a matter of it being 'wrong' as such, but it is very inflexible if your circumstances changed, and even at a low rate of interest, borrowing money over 20 years is going to cost you a lot in interest.
And you might find it difficult to get an unsecured personal loan for that amount of money over that amount of time. And of course, the danger is that you get a loan and continue spending (which I guess you have been doing?)

Before you rush to make any applications for credit, I think you should have a look at the 'whats the cost' website, and have a good think about how you could swap things around and play around with some figures to see what would be the cheapest option. And to be honest, you really should think about telling your OH because it is much more difficult to try to fix this in secret.

Could you look for a new job maybe?