Did consolidation work for you..?

jak

I consilidated my overdraft into a personal loan then my credit cards into a graducate loan. Then I ran up the overdraft again and the credit card. Even as I consolidated I knew i'd end up doing that!
I'm happy to say that I am hopefully nearing the end of my DFW journey and I will NEVER do that agin. It created more problems than it solved.
J
X

SuzySu

Nope.....did not work for us either. Just gave us more power to get ourselves further into debt by thinking we had more money than we had. I think if we had been turned down by Picture, it would have forced us to focus at the time instead of 5 years down the line when we owe more than we did then.

Don't see one reply on this thread for whom it has worked in the long run.

Scarlett.1974

We consolidated so many times I lost count. As beerworshipper said above, we never tackled the cause of our spending though. Eventually we turned the huge unsecured debt into secured with the "help" of First Plus. H then lost his job, was too ill to get another....... we went bankrupt and lost our house.

So, I think it's safe to say that no, consolidation most definitely did NOT work for us.

tigtag02

My story is a little different as it worked for me BUT its not something I would alays advise ~ timing (house prices) was on my side amongst other things and you HAVE to be strong (re: getting back into debt) but here's what happened:

Me single: £35K mortgage, approx £10K bad, unsecured debt. Mortgage interest rate was mega high due to my credit scoring and the house was worth about £38K

Roll on 1 year, OH and I are stable and living together, house prices went mad.
We remotgaged for £50k (house now worth £80), pay off my debts and spend a bit on the house and a holiday. We remortgaged with a high street lender coz his good history negated my bad and the payments actually went down £2 a month.

I haven had a credit card or loan since and even morally struggle with the overdraft I am trying to get rid off :rolleyes:

I think I was one of the lucky ones that it did work for but that was down to circumstances, as I said, its not something I would advise.

HTH
tigtag
xx

RedDino308

Hi Ferry,

I can't add anything new here but can reiterate that consolidation for me was a bad thing in that I didn't tackle the root cause of my debts so they quickly racked up again! Fortunately for me they weren't secured so it could have been much worse.

RD308

cassy

we must of done this 3 or for times like others maxed out the cards after each time and it finally got to the level were we just couldnt go on,
now we are on a DMP and havent added to our debt for 2 yrs and its slowly going down BUT VERY SLOWLY

rosiedee

Having consolidated many times in the past and just getting into more debt, the best thing that ever happened to me, although it didn't seem like it at the time, was being turned down for a consolidation loan last year. This really gave me a wake up call and after the initial panic subsided really made me take stock of our situation. Funnily enough have just been playing around with the snowball calculator and hopefully with a bit of luck and a fair wind we will be debt free in about two and a half years, sooner if I have my way. Just have to concentrate on the mortgage then!!

Deep_In_Debt

Didn't work for me either. Like others, I consolidated to clear off credit cards but kept the cards and continued spending. I'm now on a DMP although I nearly considered consolidating again at my lbm earlier this year but luckily my light bulb was shining quite brightly at that time and I managed to resist. Mainly because I'm due to pay my mortgage off in 5 years time and a secured consolidation loan would take me a lot longer to clear and I didn't want to be in debt for the rest of my life.

clearmydebts

Beerworshipper wrote: »

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..........

I also agree with Beer worshipper. I started off by consolidating with a figure of £7,000 and ended up consolidating with a figure of £20,000 last year. I continued to spend on credit cards and finally had LBM in May this year. It defo didn't work for me. Luckily I can overpay on my loan (which I intend to do when CC's are sorted). I have learnt my lesson though and will never go from one consolidation loan to another again. It might work for some people though.

Bunnyinthelights

Nope, didnt work for me the 3 or 4 times I did it...each time I racked up more debt and then couldnt figure out HOW on EARTH I was over £50k n personal debt...
I would NEVER recommend it. Ever. To anyone.