My First Post - so here goes

:j I Am so glad that I have found this site:j until now I have been managing on my own, my partner lost his job in October 2005 two days after getting a loan out without insurance to pay off the credit cards, it has been very tough and scary, ( my partner tried to take his life in July through depression)and I must admit I am a much tougher person than I was this time last year, I finally got in touch with the CCCS and they have been great and have always been there when I needed them, there were months when we managed on less than £250 a month as the DHSS really messed my partners claim up ( they were paying him £4 a fortnight!) as I was on minimum wage and that just made up the shortfall ( we sold everything we owned on ebay just so we could eat), they have since said they were sorry, Everbody who we were told to write to were great except one and that was LLoyds TSB - it took an amazing 27 letters and a trip to see the bank manager who faxed my letter to them to get them to respond according to them the postcode was one digit out -since then they put my payments in the wrong account for my credit card and the comment from the collections centre was and I quote ' lets face it you owe us money so you need to get over it and you haven't paid it ' I have put in a complaint about it now
There were times when I thought things couldn't get any worse and they did and the light at the end of the tunnel was a speeding train, we decided that we were the only ones who could make this better, we tried to look on the bright side when things seemed unbearable we still had each other and our beloved cats
My partner was very depressed that he couldn't get a job, so I bought him a job lot of postcards off ebay and made him learn how to put them on ebay, and he was so proud when we made a profit, so that beacme his 'job' while I was at work. Our biggest expense was food so I changed my job, I now work at ASDA I work late so not only do I get my 10% discount I get a lot of reduced food ( best buy Fresh duck reduced from 7.99 to 50p!) My partner realised that I loved my new job so he applied and got a temp christmas job and he loved it, they let him go on Christmas eve and our 2007 looked as if it was going to be as bad as our 2006, but two weeks ago they rang him back and offered him a full time permanent job and to top it off they have changed my contract from 16 hours a week to 37 so as soon as we know how much we are going to get a month I will be ringing CCCS back up and going on a DMP and we can get on with living again:T
It was the feeling off being in debt and not being able to pay it that made me feel worthless but I finally think things are going to get better over the next few months
Thanks for reading this long post:j

Heres a list off what we owe
TSB Advance - £2124
TSB Overdraft- £1945
Barclays Overdraft - £570
Barclays loan - £4445
Capital 1 - £1210
Aqua - £1598


This is our outgoings before we were both working fulltime:j
Phone and internet - £30
Water - £18 - on a meter
Gas - £40
Electric - £20 - on a card meter
Tv - £13 - use a pay card
Household insurance - £16
REnt - paid by benefit
Council Tax - paid by benefit
Everyone we owed above got a £1 token payment

Will be on the phone to CCCS as soon as we know what our wages are going to be pay day is 16th March:T