Determined to sort things

GettingHopeful

Dear All,

I am new on here and have read the stories avidly. I am so grateful to people for sharing their experiences, so I would like to share mine.

I saw a CAB advisor this week and since I have been reeling.

He advised bankruptcy and I am horrified that I have got myself into this position.

It goes back a long way.

In 1999 I had quite a good job, secure, but stressful. I left my husband, who drank a lot. He kept the house and I took the benefit of some shares, and I bought a flat with a mortgage. My daughter came and lived with me mainly and as time went on, more and more. She was 15 at the time, and choices of where to live were down to her.

I was very highly qualified in my career, but in fact not that well paid, but I did get a promotion and started to get a better salary. Stress levels increased, almost without me noticing, other than an increased absenteeism from minor ailments, which they forgave me for, because I was - well - bluntly - very, very good at my job.

It was good but still not brilliantly paid, and I had a better job in the past, for far more money, but the company concerned had lost their franchise, leading to an almost 100% work force redundancy.

Still the money in the new job, was good, but the stress was awful.

We had a couple of nice holidays. I always wanted my daughter to be as well - rounded as possible, confident in any situation. But I enjoyed them as well.

The debts were already mounting when I decided to take early retirement and retrain for a different occupation (which though I want to be honest on this site, it is rather too painful to admit to at the present., so please forgive this - it is a creative occupation.)

I took a university MA degree to make sure I was equipped and trained, and succeeded with a distinction, and got an agency to handle my work, which was a major plus.

I had taken a career development loan, I had some money from pensions, and I had a part-time job within a different university - some 10 hours or so a week, but I did the degree in a year and came out with a good body of completed work available to sell.

The credit cards were mounting up. I had a mortgage, but the value of my property also went up.

The building society lent me more money to clear my credit cards. I was on the up. My work would soon be sold - or so I thought.

My agency took ages to send out my work - I was new, at the bottom of the heap so to speak. And the initial work flopped.

The next flopped also. And the next. The agency was losing interest in me, and it was even longer before they tried to market my work.

In the meantime the creditcards were being used to pay my mortgage. The university where I did part time work - at increased hours - brought in a very peculiar system which meant that it wasn't worth me even going in - for 2 hours work!

Still, every single bill was paid, every credit card was up to date on minimum payments, and I would have died - or so I thought - rather than default.

I was drawing cash on the credit cards, which of course attracts fees and high interest rates.

I applied to my bank !!! building society and they granted me an extra #50,000 on the mortgage to pay my credit cards. On the application form they put down a salary that would represent the extra mortgage, and I signed it. It wasn't anywhere near what I was currently earning - but I still signed it because it would give me the money. They knew what my income was, because they could see it from my bank account, and so I thought it was all right. Now I think it could be construed as fraud.

So I paid off the credit cards, but the money coming in wasn't enough to pay the new mortgage, plus loans, and I was soon calling on the credit facilities of the credit cards to keep things going.

And I still couldn't see it.

I was absorbed with producing new creative work for my agent, which I did.

I also looked at new ways of working from home - as I didn't want the stress of going back into industry. I tried various things, believing every opportunity I read about trying them, and generally not successfully.

My credit card payments and every single bill was still up to date on minimum payments.

At last I found a home business that seemed to offer some profit.

Working selling second hand books which I could pick up quite cheaply - and sell on Amazon. Excellent I thought, academic books were sought after if I could find them, and find them I did, in libraries, car boots and charity shops, - and other sought after non-fiction. I had up to date academic experience, so I knew what to look for.

And I found other books that sold well, or so I thought, but a great heap of books where the value went down and down.

In the meantime, I was paying the minimums, transferring across where there were rate reductions on balance transfers.

It was all in hand, and of course, my agent would sell my work, though I hadn't heard from him for months. I reminded him, and it didn't seem that interest matched his initial enthusiasm, or indeed that he was doing very much actively.

Still these things take time.

My daughter, now with her own degree, (a 2.1 of which I was very proud because it was established at uni level that she was dyslectic and she had little support in her final year, which I filled in to the best of my ability as my MA was in a different area), left to follow her career and her boyfriend, and her room was ideal for storing even more books to sell - which I did.

Now comes the interesting part. I thought I was making lots of money, from the books, from a bit of part time work at the university, with still amazing belief that my agent was selling my work, the credit card and mortgage payments would be a doddle - but how delusional can I get?

I was running out of space on the book front, apart from working 12 hours a day and producing no new work for my agent.

And so I tried ebay - prints, researched some areas, found some popular artists that were not particularly well represented, and started to make money.

Or so I thought.... ebay and Paypal fees are a collosal 25% - 30% -

In the meantime I had my 60th birthday and wanted to celebrate and went on holiday with my lovely daughter who was having boyfriend problems. The holiday had actually been planned and booked and partly paid for a couple of years before with pension cash benefits. The rest went on the one credit card which had been kept relatively clear for years - the ccs had been set up when I was working and the companies had very kindly been increasing the limits for years, because I was such an on the dot payer.

It wasn't until I did the year end accounts for tax purposes that I realised I wasn't really making that much money - that what was coming in only represented 5o% or less when post, packing, petrol and initial costs were taken into account.

But what the heck! Businesses don't make much in the first year and I had nearly 3,000 books listed with sales every day and a couple of hundred on ebay with a few sales every week.

Then last November I woke up one day in terror, because I realised I couldn't pay all the minimum payments on my credit cards, plus loans, plus mortgage.

The university was able to give me some additional part-timework for 6 weeks, which I found shattering as time went on, as I was doing 10 or so hours still on the Amazon and ebay businesses.

I ain't as young as what I used to be.

And my agent still wasn't selling the work which had taken years to produce.

So I sacked him.

I talked to my family - and you remember the husband that I left 9 years ago, right at the beginning of all this? Well, we had remained friends, and there were no other partners for either of us, and he said I could go back and live in his house, books and ebay and all. Just as a house share. He'd had a bit of trouble with his mortgage and I'd helped him out from time to time - nothing major like my problems.

I went and saw my building society, (!!! bank, all the same group) and they couldn't help me financially, but they did say that if I sold my flat, and me and my husband ( technically we are still married) came to see them then they could probably do a mortgage on his house - lots of equity - for the whole of my debts. After all, I had £45k equity in the flat to go towards it.

I would be paying over almost the whole of my pension for the next 15 years, but then of course I would be earning oodles on ebay and Amazon.

I don't want to go on endlessly. To summarise, I had a buyer who was twisting me and quite frankly according to my solicitor had an agenda to get the price of my property down in what is a difficult property market.

I had moved out in anticipation of a promised early purchase which never happened. The flat went back on the market in early March at a figure my estate agents now say was by far too excessive and the flat has gone down £30k since November.

There isn't much equity left in my flat.

Most of my creditors have not been paid since mid March apart from my bank connected loans and cards and a payment holiday from my BS is due to expire this month - the mortgage is again due from 1st May. I have written to all creditors explaining my predicament, and the BS who have offered an interest only arrangement which it will be difficult to pay. I've looked at renting the flat out, in the absence of a buyer, but I did not really fancy dealing with tenants, a nd it would only just cover the mortgage/maintenance anyway - assuming I could get tenants in there quickly.

I went to the CAB who advised bankruptcy and living off my pensions, just doing a bit of work ad hoc for the university to keep the connection live, and the local paper where I do some very limited occasional work. Taking out a new bank account for my pension payments, and they would have a look at my application for bankruptcy.

And I'm selling the 3000 books to pay the bankruptcy fees.

And incredibly, all the work I have done on the home businesses looks to have produced no more than about £3k in the last year.

I have debts of £132k unsecured and a mortgage including early settlement of £112k.

And I am not sure if I will be done for fraud on the additional advance from the building society.

But amazingly, all this is going on, but what has upset me most today is that the next door neighbour has had a go about fallen down fencing, walls, overhanging overgrowth on my husband's house, and I am just too fragile to deal with her nagging and martyrdom. I might have massive debts but this really got to me.

The good news is that my daughter has found a lovely feller who she is engaged to, - the earlier boyfriend objected to the holiday we went on, because he didn't go, even though it was planned and booked a year before he entered her life.....but the new guy is an absolute sweetie, not just to her but to me as well.

I am happy to publicise my further experiences on this board - I am already grateful for people who have done so already. At the moment I have just one question ( I have decided to simply come clean about the Building Society application mentioned, so that isn't it) but my daughter and fiance are giving me a 5 days holiday at the beginning of June. I suspect abroad, but it might not be It will be modest as they haven't much money. I am not contributing anything, it's a birthday present, and I don't know even where to.

If I apply for bankruptcy now, will they fit in a court appearance and OR meeting around this holiday, or be concerned that I might be leaving the country?It will upset her if I don't go, as she knows I am stressed out, and its her way of helping and if that's the case I won't start bankruptcy until afterwards - some things are simply more important.

Thanks for getting through this tome.

Ta2dUK

I'm sorry to hear you're going through so much at the moment.

I have no words of advice for you, but I just wanted to offer you some support.

Hopefully someone should be along soon with some great advice for you.

Keep your chin up!

10past6

Hi :hello:

Welcome to the forum, sorry to hear of your situation, however, there is always a solution to every situation, others will be along soon to give their expertise, but what I suggest you do in the meantime, take a look here, and post your SOA: (Statement of Affairs) the members will need it to help deal with your debts.

Then, take a look here, it the bankruptcy forum:, post any questions / queries you have.

Also, take a look here, contact any or all of the debt free charities, be very, very, careful about using a fee paying company.

As for bankruptcy, do as much research before making the decision, to break it down, there are basically 3 levels of managing debts

DMP = Debt Management Plan = In place for as long as it takes to clear the dent, creditors always have the upper hand to issue a CCJ, or charging order.

IVA = if you have equity in your property, in place for 5 years = year 4, required to remortgage property.

BR = Bankruptcy = lose home, or no assets = debts cleared = requires very, very careful consideration

The above is a very basic outline, although you need to do much more research as to what category you fall into.

As I say, contact any on the debt charities, most are open on Saturday.

Good luck