Haven’t paid rent in months!

So your landlord has been happily going without rent from you until now? A full 6 months? What a very nice man.

Damn. My rent is about 1k I'd deffo notice 6k extra in my bank account. Maybe yours is owned by the council so a lot less? My friends rent is only 400 for a two bed house.

Have you spent the extra money you've accumulated? If not I'd just send it all to the landlord now. Surprised the landlord hasn't noticed

I think OP was trying her luck. She says the house was originally owned by the current landlords son who died tragically. Once dad inherited it he would have been all over the place for those first few months. It's probably only now he has started looking at it more closely and realised OP isn't paying.

Good luck OP
Reach out and get some help from CAB or a debt counselling organisation like Christians Against Poverty if there’s a branch in your area.

do you have anything to show for your spending? You must have been on quite the spree if neither rent or other bills were paid. Is there anything you can return/sell/liquidate?

Mental Health is not an “excuse”for poor money management.

It’s an actual REASON !!

Such a lack of understanding in many replies here OP. Good luck this morning x

You’ve really fucked up and can’t make excuses. If I didn’t pay my mortgage - I’d lose my home. I also have disabilities. You sound financially irresponsible. Maybe this is the wake up call you need.

This seems a very strange post.

How on earth did you not realise that you had at least £600pm extra in your account to spend and possibly much more depending on your rent?
A landlord will always contact tenant after first missed payment as from experience it is far easier to sort out one late month with a tenant than let arrears build.
If you have a guarantor then they should have already been contacted - I personally contact guarantors once a payment is a week overdue with no explanation as I find that the intervention of guarantor usually means rent is paid by tenant as guarantor will chase them
If I had a tenant 6 months in arrears then I would have commended eviction proceedings

Rent is usually people biggest outlay. How much is yours?

How could you have not realised an extra (huge) amount still in your bank and spending it

Since you know you have MH and is not to be relied on paying bills you need to have support with that. Talk to social services about getting a support person who comes over regularly to help you check that everything is in order. How are you managing taking care of your children? Are they fed/ tended to? Sorry for asking but you seem to need alot of help.

When you wake up this morning, write down a list of everything you have coming in and going out.

Go through the list and get rid of anything non essential that you can for now. Just have bills eg gas and electric, council tax, normal rent payment, water, travel and food on there and cancel anything "extra" that you are not in contract with

Work put how much you can pay your landlord on top of normal rent and ring him with a big apology and payment plan offer ready .

Set up a direct debit for this amount and other essential bills. Have it all coming out the day you get paid so you cant overspend

Show him that you take responsibility and have a way of trying to make up for this

Hopefully he will accept a plan and you can afford some extra to clear the debt. If not, speak to Shelter they are very good

Hopefully he will be understanding but you'll need to get it paid.

@Uppoopcreek as you are also behind with other bills it may be worth speaking to step change which is an organisation which can help with debt.

in regards to housing you do need to get the rent up to date as soon as possible. Currently your landlord could evict you on a section 8 rather than a section 21, and this would be considerably quicker and the council may find that you are intentionally homeless especially if you do nothing to address the issue.

speak to a medical professional asap as well

Some dreadfully bad and horribly judgemental “advice” here.
Hopefully you have health care professionals working with you, op. You may want to get advice from Shelter re your housing issues. I wouldn’t look for solutions on here; it’s full of people who have no experience of severe mental ill health or who think that because they’ve managed to cope with health problems, everyone else should be able to as well.
Good luck.

@Uppoopcreek Ive opened a Monzo account, it’s been a life changer. It predicts all your bills from one pay day to the next, estimates how much you will have left over. You can open pots to allocate money for different things (food shop pot, Christmas savings etc) so can keep track of what money is going where. Start today and it will be hard to start with but once into the swing of it, it’s life changing.

Poor advice.

But that is not the same. If you have a monthly budget and you are left with £1.50 at the end of wach month, and suddenly you have £151.50 at the end of the month, you would wonder where the 'extra' £150 was from. If iit went on for longer than a month, it would require some investigation
Suddenly discovering you can spend 'freely' on a credit card is usually a one-off experience!

Sorry but sounds like a load of BS to me.

Why did your landlord ringing you prompt you to check your bank account?

Presumably your rent is one of if not your biggest bill, how did you not notice all that extra money being available in your account to spend and whilst you say you haven't checked your account surely you noticed that you had a lot of extra money and your card wasn't being declined.

Anyway, this isn't going to go away.

1. go through your account and see how much of the money you have left
2. speak to your landlord see if they will accept a lump sum
3. Speak to your guarantor because they are now going to have to pay the balance.

Personally, I'd put a roof over my children's heads above morals but maybe that is just me.

I don't think lying to the LL is a good idea, simply because the bank making a mistake for 6 months is not believable, nor do I think berating OP is helpful.

When you're on a low income checking your bank is hard. I try my best not to check mine atm. I despise transferring people money because it means logging into my bank and checking how much money I don't have.

Couple poverty with mental health issues and you've a potential recipe for disaster. OP knows she has fucked up, she doesn't need MN kicking her while she is down.

OP, in some circumstances you can get the rent element of UC paid directly to your LL. I would look into this and discuss with the LL this is your plan so you both know this can never happen again. Then you just need to work out how much of a top-up you can afford to pay each week/month and what the best way to pay is (bank transfer, standing order, cash dropped off through his door etc)

Not in my experience. When you have no money and col is crippling you. You dont get a hot chocolate at the park, you dont pay for parking or lunch at soft play and you check your balance before doing the food shop then go round the shop with your calculator to make sure you don't spend more than you have to avoid the embarrassment of having to put things back at the till.

They do.

I have never forgotten that when I was at university I went home for a few days over Christmas and when I returned I realised I’d left my debit card at home. I ordered a new one but decided to use the credit card I’d never used before in that time and managed to spend nearly £200 in a few days! And that was a LOT given it was 2002! (I mostly used cash before that at a time when you could use cash.)

I can completely see how this is done actually - people are assuming you’re going out and buying a couple of big purchases for a couple of hundred but what is more likely is that it’s a small accumulation. There was a thread about this the other day. You go to the park and buy a hot chocolate; you go for a walk and have to pay for parking, you take the children to soft play and buy lunch. Nip to the co op and get a couple of things for dinner, drive to a new park and a bit more on petrol. It’s those sort of things.

When you have no money you don’t check your banking apps because they just tell you what you already know: you have no money. It’s when you have money, even if not much, you keep an eye on it.

The bank is absolutely not responsible for her standing order not going out, please don’t give advice that gets her hopes up! The only way the bank would be responsible is if it was going out but they had input the wrong account details (a mistake against what she had given).

Nobody just 'spends' extra money that hasn't been there before, they question why they have more money than they thought.
You also are happy to suggest lying to the landlord as an excuse for not paying what was owed to him?
Morals?

You need to get on top of this TODAY. I’ve been there and sticking your head in the sand doesn’t work.
First step is to work out where all your money is going, then next step is to work out a budget.
You need to speak to your landlord but any payment arrangement must be manageable. You also need to let your guarantor know before they get a letter from your landlord as well. Is this person you trust to help you go through your finances?

Not everyone lives in the south. My rent is £390 a month. I pay £100 a week because I like to pay ahead in case anything goes wrong.

OP if your LL hasn't noticed for six months he is clearly not in desperate need of the money and will probably accept a payment plan over the expense of having to evict you and find new tenants. Call him ASAP, be honest and apologise, and offer to pay what you can afford extra on top of your monthly rent. Be careful not to offer more than you can afford, otherwise, you'll end up in this mess again in a few months.