Did consolidation work for you..?

ferry

Just want to hear from those who took the path of consolidating a debt and it actually worked out for the best,despite the stigma surrounding turning unsecured into secured debt for the length of the loan.


Ferry

MrsTinks

Hi Ferry

I haven't personally but my OH has... the loan was with NEMO and in the end when I finally got involved in sorting his debt with him we added it to our mortgage. Some people would say that's wrong BUT... if you have a secured loan and a mortgage and you run into trouble it's the secured loan people who are likely to cause trouble before the mortgage company.
I would really advise against it though Especially in the current financial climate - don't turn any debt that is unsecured into a secured unless you absolutely have no choice.

Beerworshipper

Hi Ferry,

I have no mortgage and so didn't have the option of turning unsecured debt into the secured kind.

However, I did consolidate three times in the past, all over a 6 year period. During this process I turned £5.5k of debt into over £15k's worth of debt because each time I never tackled the root cause and so once my credit cards were clear again I just continued to spend.

I was at the point of consolidating again when I had my LBM, thank the powers that be I did and well here I am today.

Therefore, in my experience, consolidating gave me a short term high (and a little wriggle room) but ultimately never worked for me. On its own it merely tackles the symptom and seperate action is required to tackle the cause, if thats left unchecked the the cysle can so easily just begin again..........

katyw

Beerworshipper wrote: »

Hi Ferry,

I did consolidate three times in the past, all over a 6 year period. During this process I turned £5.5k of debt into over £15k's worth of debt because each time I never tackled the root cause and so once my credit cards were clear again I just continued to spend.

I was at the point of consolidating again when I had my LBM, thank the powers that be I did and well here I am today.

Therefore, in my experience, consolidating gave me a short term high (and a little wriggle room) but ultimately never worked for me. On its own it merely tackles the symptom and seperate action is required to tackle the cause, if thats left unchecked the the cysle can so easily just begin again..........

I agree with Beerworshiper. I did exactly the same thing, and while it fixed the problem short-term.....it put me further into debt. I too had my LBM 3 years ago, and I've never looked back. DMP sorted me out in the end, and I wish I'd done it in the first place.

Broken_hearted

I took out a loan with the theory of paying off debt, in reality I took the kids to Florida and replaced the windows. So no it didn't work for us.

Keeping_Positive

Hasnt worked for me either.

doodledo_2

Nope didn't work for me either definately won't be doing that again.

I am happier taking the harder and longer journey to clearing my debts with extra money earnt/savings made.

Consolidation wasn't even a quick fix for me as I didn't clear my debts so all it did was add to my problem.

GirlRacer_2

In the past I took out a secured loan to pay off my debt despite advice from my mum who says you can't pay off debt with more debt!

I then carried on using the credit cards and it was a long hard slog getting those paid off. Will never do it again though.

ltm07

We nearly consolidated & added £32k onto our mortgage,but in doing so would have added £22k in interst onto our debt. We were also recently going to take out a £15k loan to pay off our overdrafts & CCs to help make our monthly payments more manageable,but have also decided not to do this. We have now allowed ourselves more slack & will occasionally dip into our overdraft as a short term solution. We will then do as others have said is do extra overtime & keep an eye out for more bargains & offers to try to stay on top of things.

Malky

I did it once and added £17K to my mortgage a few years ago. Thankfully with the upturn in house prices a couple of years ago I was able to pay it back when I sold my flat. The debt has never really gone though because when I bought my house I had £17K less to put down as a deposit if you see what I mean.
Moving in to this house two years ago was a turning point for me. Even though my mortgage payments doubled, I have managed to stay debt free for all of the last ywo years. I even have some money in a savings account now

Lozza001

My husband and I consolisated our debts and it has made our problems much worse. We went with Picture Loans and now have secured loans against our home which total way more than the value of it. (150% of the value to be precise) and as a few people said above, it did not solve the problem, we went back to credit cards. We have had a few LB flickers over the last 2 years, like when we realised that we cant move house for years now, but I only recently had my true LBM. If you can avoid consolidation loans... do. We have now put all CCard balances onto zero rated ones and we have cut the cards up, once and for all. So here goes!!