Help - cant see the light yet....

dudley14

Hi group,

Well this appears to be the place to come and get help and support so here I go....

debtor outstanding balance monthly premium lloyds TSB £8,317.99
£262 lloyds TSB cc £9,711.33 £196 Northern rock 18199.77
£210 student loans 4500 £130 Egg card 6408.64 £131 Morgan stanley 6673.71 £135 Barclays credit card £8,113.58 £182 Amazon credit card 6500 £126 car finance PCP 3500 £166 totals
£71,925.02
£1,537

phone
£45 gym
£46 total
£1,628.29


rent
350 total minimum month cost £1,978.29


income base
2011
left over per month £32.71


quarter commission divide by 3 600 requires min £1,800


monthly budget £632.71
yearly budget £7,592.52
weekly budget £146.01


car fuel maximum £50 per week £96.01

From the £96.01 a week I need to find my food and any clothing.

my commission although has potential to not be £1,800 per quarter also has the potential of being much higher and based upon the last 4 averages at £3,000

not once in 3 years has it been below £1,800 net.


extra complexity i have is that the northern rock was a loan that initially was secured against a house and since that relationship finished the house was sold and the loan became my debt unsecured. this loan was there from an initial attempt to debt consolidate for my debts. the complexity is that the loan has my former partners name on it too. but the debt actually was not hers in the 1st place.

so going down iva or bankruptcy or anything to do with this will automatically involve her into the situation, either by effecting her credit rating or having to bring her back into my life.

I have looked at debt shuffling the 5 credit cards but none of these have offered any extension to my credit limit to allow this to happen.

barclay card have offerred a freeze on my account and i am too make payments over the coming few months where they will then assess the rate to pay back to them and what APR to charge.

my lucky break.

my current partner and fiance has been a bed rock of support and understanding of the situation and is completely in the picture to my situation.

We are to marry in July of this year.

When we become married does she automatically get brought into being a debtor due to my existing debt?

Potentially she would pay off some debts for me with her savings, but we are unsure which to do 1st and why.

looking at this debt shuffling - perhaps an idea is to clear the large limit off one and then shuffle into the freed gap?

Well as this site warns i wait on being picked apart.

yours in £71,925.02 debt as of 9th Feb 2008

Dudley

monkey22_2

Hi Dudley,

Welcome to the site and well done for facing up to your debts - it looks grim when its written down in black and white doesn't it?:eek: But fear not, there will be more peolpe online later who can offer you loads of advice. Don't worry about being pulled apart - no-one will judge you on here, after all, we're all in the same boat.

One thing though, can you add the APR'S to your SOA, it will help people see how can juggle these cards.

Keep posting....

dudley14

ah yes sorry

lloyds loan is 13% (3 years left)
Lloyds credit card 18%
northern rock (20 years left) 12.9%
egg 16%APR
morgan stanley 20%
amazon credit 15%
barclay card - currently frozen account with expected APR settlement to be 6.9% APR

student loans 2.5% (3 years to go)

car 7% 20 months to go

thanks for the initial chin up message

Tiglet

Hi Dudley, and welcome:beer:

I'll just post a few random bits to begin with.

The first thing I noticed is that your SOA doesn't include things like gas, water, electricity, council tax, TV licence,insurance, car tax - in fact all the routine spending. Do they come out of the £96 weekly budget?

You've been quite conservative with your estimate of your future commission, which is sensible. But you've been earning more than that for at least the past year. That means that you've been spending an average of £400 a month above what you've put in your SOA. I don't know whether these things are going on essentials, or just sort of "disappearing" each month.

I think that's a good starting point. If you make a point of keeping track of every penny you spend, and keep it up for at least the next month, you'll start to see exactly what is happening to your money. Keeping a spending diary will change the way you look at money, and I think that that's what needs to happen before you can get to grips with your debt.

I wouldn't advise your fiancee to pay off any of your debts just yet. In fact, I would imagine that she might not need to. You seem to be keeping up the payments so far, albeit with some of the interest frozen for a while. I suspect that, once you've got a clearer idea of where your money is going, the picture will start looking a lot less daunting.

You mentioned shuffling your debts around. That's a good idea, but it would help if you could post the credit limits on each of the cards.

I can't think of any more for now but that should be enough to be getting on with

dudley14

Hi and thank you for responding.

the cards are around currently sat around £500 on average short of their limits.

The missing money has all gone on clearing my overdraft over the last year (£10,000).

I pop into my overdraft if i over spend my quartley budget based upon my commission.

So a year ago i was always around the bottom of my overdraft (10K)when the next commission cheque came in. where as with the last years worth of commission cheques coming in this has helped me now be around (worst case) £1,000 overdrawn come the next commission cheque - hope that makes sense!

none of my creditors have given me 0 interest - barclay card have just frozen the account and advised me to make what would be the minimum payment over teh next 2-3 months and then they will review the settlement APR.

all other credit card vendors have referred me to CAB to complete a pro rata sheet and then submit my proposal.

i have yet to explore teh potential of asking for incresing my loan - but i doubt they will....

thanks

andy

In_Search_Of_Me

Hi there & welcome,
Have you contacted one of the free debt agencies such as CCCS? Just wondered whether it would be a good idea to consider a formal debt management plan...? May make things easier fr you to manage & less stressful. Have you looks at why there is debt - where the money s going etc and are you able to make more money by selling stuff, car boots etc? Fab that you have a good woman behind you!

Tiglet

Hi Andy,

You've mentioned about trying to shuffle the balances between your credit cards - have you read Martin's article on this - it's got lots of helpful ideas covering pretty much every set of circumstances.

I would have thought that, even if they have turned down your requests for lower rates, they may still give you a deal for balance transfers if you close down your other card, because then you won't be increasing your borrowing overall. The Morgan Stanley card has the highest interest rate, so that's the one to get rid of first.


(I appreciate that you might have tried some of this already but with any luck there should at least be some new angles for you to try)

dudley14

Thanks for the posts.

I have had no help from the credit card companies they simply are telling me to go to the CAB, which to be fair may be the best bet to start a debt management plan.

just wish they would let me try some of the debt shuffling as that may help all round.

sorry someone else asked if i had to pay for bills (electric, council tax etc) form teh reminder i had per week.

well no luckily my rent covers all the above.

it would appear then the best plan for me is a debt management plan to be sort with the agencies and not take the offer of my wife ot be to clear some debts and allow me to shuffle?

thanks again for your help