Just need some support and encouragement...

milliemonster

saver6, I just want to say hello and you sound just like we were a few years ago, I just wanted to say that perhaps with your hubby being the splurger, you need to take a tight rein of his spending now, so make sure he doesn't have his own access to credit or you could find youself in the position of this going round and round in circles and you still having the same amount of debt in a few years time, especially if you want children, if you work hard you could have all this paid off in a couple of years

i hope it works out for you xx

saver6

Thanks milliemonster.

I think finally he may have had his lightbulb moment so hopefully we are now on the right track. As I'm the more financially responsible one it looks like I'm just gonna have to start dishing out the tough love if he tries to justify any more expenditure...

And look on the bright side, our mortgage is still lower than a lot of first time buyers nowadays!

Verbatim

Be wary about converting unsecured debt to debt secured on your house. If you had the misfortune to be made redundant or lose a job through sickness your home will be at risk if you can't pay the mortgage. Also you'll be paying debts that you could have paid off in 5 (?) ish years for the lifetime of the mortgage which will be a massive amount more in interest. Have you asked the advisor how much commission he'll make if you remortgage at the same rate as now and how much if you take out a larger loan? I believe they have to tell you this if asked. It may well be more in his best interests than yours! And what if house prices continue to fall, how close will you be to negative equity which would make it hard to remortgage next time.

Thirdly is there a danger that you'll feel you've sorted the problem without changing spending patterns so that you could find yourself in a similar or worse situation a few years down the line?

Good luck to you both whatever you do.

saver6

Our financial advisor is on a fixed fee - he earns the same whatever mortgage we take. This new mortgage also includes all the income insurances we need. This guy has been recommended to us over and over again by friends and is completely independent. I don't go into these things lightly or ignorantly (thanks to MSE of course!).

I would never normally think about securing this debt on the house but the fact is we are living very close to the unaffordability line, and when cash emergencies happen (such as our boiler blowing up last November) we end up having to rely on credit cards, and everything is snowballing as the fixed costs are thus increasing. I also thought that we could pay this off in just a few years, but the fact is I can't sleep and am stressed up to the eyeballs about it all - just remortgaging to the current value would have gone up anyway as we got such a low rate the first time out (4.85% back then), and then fixed costs would have gone up even more. This way our fixed costs are way down and the flexibility is now there to pay for cash emergencies, and if they don't happen, we can stick the cash back on the mortgage.

I've already told hubby that if we're not in a position to have kids after another 2 years then there'll be trouble, and his spending habits will be at fault. Hopefully that will be his motivation to do this sensibly. Which is why I think I'm gonna take charge of ALL our financial affairs.