What can I do?

PaulSOS

Hello I hope some of you may be able to advise me on what to do with my debt.

I have recently moved out of the family home, we weren't married and we didn't have anything in joint names. I'm back with my parents, I am self employed, the building trade has been hit hard recently and haven't been working as regularly as I have done, I have been struggling to pay for a long time but like many of you, I keep looking to that special day when everything going to be ok.

I have a loan with Halifax and 5 credit cards, the total debt I estimate I am in is about 40k. I do not own a home or car and the debts are all in my name. I haven't got guaranteed money coming in because my job hasn't been reliable this summer but hopefully things will pick up.

I have sent all my creditors a letter using a template form the CAB website just to explain about my lack of work and that I can't meet this months payment and to hold off interest for 2 months.

What shall I do? If I haven't got reliable wages coming in how can I pay? What will the creditors do after receiving my letter?

Thank you in advance for replying

Paul

Puzzledbubbles

Hi Paul,

I know that all of the experts on here will say to fill in an SOA (just click on the board guide and all the info is there)

Puzzled

slippalong

Just a bump.Not much help on the financial side but there are a lot of good and money savvy people on the forums.but I am the same as you being in the building trade and wondering what the future has in store for construction and considering the thousands of people desperate for a home we should be in the position of having enough work to keep us flat out for years.

fatbelly

No assets (not even a car), no income, building trade, 40k debts

...sounds like a classic bankruptcy case to me. Sign on for JSA and read this. The fee has gone up a tenner since this was written

PaulSOS

Thank you for the replies. I really don't want to go down the bankruptcy route. As much as I want to run away and hide I decided to send the credit cards a letter explaining that lately I hadn't worked as often as I had and could they stop interest and charges for 2 months to help me out.

So far I received a letter from one asking for 2 months payments as I missed the first and to call immediately. I want to know what exactly you pay PPI for? On one of my credit cards the insurance payment each month is about £90, I thought the whole reason for paying this insurance was to help out when you are struggling to pay and I am self employed.

I have only been to work 3 days this week, hopefully as the weeks pass I will get more regular work but this year has been really bad in the building trade. I have always managed to meet my payments but after having a really rough time with work which meant very little money I know I have to do something about the debts as I simply can't afford to meet the payments. On one credit card I was meeting a monthly payment of over £300 this is just the interest nothing is being paid off the amount.

So shall I contiinue ahead with saying I can't pay and wait for the debts to be passed to a collection agency? Should I offer a final settlement now? I have the backing of a very kind family member with money to help me out a bit.

Thank you

MrsTinks

I think PPI only kicks in if you sign on but you will have to check the terms - personally I think only specialised PPIs are worth their money if you are self employed so check and see if they were mis-sold.
If say you DID get regular work again in the near future - how much are we talking and how much would your monthly expenses be?
Really an SOA would be great for us to see ust how bad it is. I appreciate you don't want to go bankrupt, but depending on what the potential is for your repaying the money it might be worth doing it now rather than in a year or twos time if things continue with the slump at the moment...