I can't afford life, I don't know what to do

[VirginMedium]

I earn a pretty good wage for the last 5 years or so. but I am a SP to a teen and a tween and I haven't always. over the years I have added to the mortgage and bought things on HP to pay for maintenance and washing machines, dryers etc. it has caught up with me. I have about £10k in loans and I am at my £2k overdraft limit and it's only the 9th of the month, 3 weeks until pay day.

I don't think we are extravagant, and my eldest works part time and funds herself mostly. it is pretty much just household bills and credit payments!

WTAF am I going to do??

There's loads of good advice on here. I would upload an app called too good to throw away which is cheap food & olio free food

Good luck.you will get the help if you do what the lovely Mumsnetters advise!!

We had this problem even though we had a food budget that we tried to stick to. It was all the small top up shops and we struggled to keep on top of those. I saw someone on mn recommend the Goodbudget app which basically uses the envelope method. It took me a while to work it out and get a routine going but it’s really helped us. I spend 5 minutes quickly checking the bank account and updating it every morning and then DH and I know exactly how much we can spend if we need to get some milk etc mid-week.

Good luck, looks like there is a lot of sound advice here for getting out of debt.

If you are in Scotland there are trust deeds available too. I had one

Only just a debt management plan if your debt really is unaffordable and you can't repay it. It's heavily impacts your credit score and stays on your record for 7 years.

I'm speaking from experience with a similar amount of debt. It took me years to pay it off and another 5 years to remove all trace from my record. It meant I had to pay above market rate for mortgage and didn't even qualify for a credit card to start with.

I wish I had found another way to pay the debt off without the Debt plan

• only use

If some of your debt is credit card, could you do a 0% interest balance transfer? I owed £3K to Barclaycard and was able to transfer the balance to Sainsbury's at 0%. I didn't use the card anymore, just worked out how much to pay each month during the 36 month period to pay it off.

I am hopeless with money and have to keep a running total in my diary, I don't budget. I've got three weeks to go to payday and have spent a ridiculous amount this week.

I'm going to diarise annual payments too - I've just been hit with a £60 Microsoft renewal I'd forgotten about.

Hi there - go to turn2us for a benefit calculator or contact CAB for a benefit calculator to ensure you are getting all your should be. Also step change for debt advice. Good luck and don’t be scared or overwhelmed you’ll feel so much better once you have something in place.

I used step change, they were great and it didn't take to long to sort my DMP. They told me to set up a new bank account as my overdraft was £2000 and I was being charged daily on this and they included it in the DMP. They halved my monthly debt payments, asked for interest to be frozen (some companies didn't do this initially) and applied for breathing space which I think was 30 or 60 days so creditors did not contact me and some even stopped taking payments for this time so I could get on track. It has affected my credit but I'm not looking to apply for credit any time soon. Good luck, u will feel better once you have spoken to someone.

Some very good advice here. Not much I can add, but have you checked your UC entitlement. With a disability and two children on a single income it’s possible you may be entitled to something. Hope you get sorted x

Could you possibly try a flexible round you job from home? I know with Utility Warehouse you can work when it suits you and do as little or as much as you want, might be worth having a chat with one of their reps?
also worth getting them to do a quote on your bills too as they’ve saved me a fortune!

Some very good suggestions on here for you, especially Stepchange and MoneySavingExpert.com - their DebtFreeWannabee board can be fierce, but very effective, and there are all kinds of planners on there to help you work out your budget.

The other thing I suspect you might not have looked at are the interest rates on your debt; it's astonishing what a difference it makes if you're able to have a 0% credit card or a low-rate loan from the bank.

When I left university in the early 1990s I was just £500 in debt. Some years later, due to dreadful decisions about jobs, reckless consolidation of loans without taking into account those interest rates, and, more so, idiot men who are long since gone from my life, thank God, I owed £15K, despite having decent qualifications and okay professional experience.

I did manage to pay it back and get out of what felt like that bottomless pit, though, and I can't tell you what a huge help MoneySavingExpert forums were.

Good luck for the morning - help is out there.

Before we could afford new appliances and furniture out right we bought off gumtree and reburhsment companies. I would never get in to debt for a new washing or sofa.as tempting as it is to get a fresh new item, there’s some really good deals out there.
I don’t know the answer to your problems, life is sooo expensive I know that. But don’t give up. Maybe look at drop shipping on Amazon or dog walking, cleaning etc.

www.gov.uk/benefits-calculators

Went to CAB last week. Waiting time was about 2 weeks from referral from another organisation. So they may not be so overstretched in your area.

Shop at Aldi or Lidl
Cook in batches and make different versions of your first day main ingredient.so mince lasts days.
For every item get the cheapest version.
Step back from branded use all supermarkets own.

If your budget isn’t working and gets ‘out of control’ then it’s a sign that you are not budgeting properly. Either your budget is not correct / unrealistic in the first place or you are not sticking to it - which is it?

are you tracking your spending? That’s the other side of budgeting. After you’ve planned how you are going to spend your money, you need to account for every penny that you spend. Then you can see where the overspending happens and take action.

i use YNAB which is a great tracking tool. It’s not free though.

Write down everything you spend on a daily basis. Even tiny amounts add up, you might then think that what is holding you back are the small amounts spent without even thinking. Years ago I worked with someone who was really skint, he just didn't take money or credit/debit card out with him unless he actually NEEDED to. He was really focused on only spending a) what he had , and b) when he should. He got out of debt and could actually save. And another vote for CAP or Stepchange.

For people saying to open a new bank account...I am in debt with a no doubt terrible credit score. We pay if off monthly and I earn well now, but it has been hanging over us for years. Anyway, I can't open a new bank account. I get denied. I assume it is because of the debt/credit rating. So, it may not be so easy.

@willowstar That's why the OP has been recommended to get a new account with a different bank before she goes into a DMP and her credit rating is affected. This is one of the first things StepChange recommend you do if you go down their route.

@VirginMedium StepChange do a no obligation assessment online where you fill in all your details/debt info/income & expenditure and they advise the best option based on that info. You can speak to someone over the phone for more advice. I would recommend doing the online assessment first and then speaking to someone so you fully understand and can ask questions.

I used StepChange many years ago before they had an online assessment and it was all worked out on paper and posted in which was hellish!

They work out exactly how much you have leftover to service debt once your essentials are covered and you have some disposable income. They also give suggestions when completing the budget calculator as to what you should be paying for things, I would never put down enough money for clothes or haircuts for example, and too much for my mobile phone!

It's well worth doing an online assessment. I went from maxed out credit cards and having pennies to last me til the next payday to actually having money between paydays. Yes, it screws up your credit but that's the price you have to pay to stop yourself going bankrupt, having sleepless nights and the stress of constantly trying to scrimp every penny. My DMP is a distant memory and my credit score is now excellent.

Good luck.

It is recommended that you get a new current account because once your existing one gets wind of your financial difficulties there's a risk that they will cancel your overdraft with little notice, often just after pay day, leaving you without any money for food etc.

There are basic accounts available with no overdraft and I think that Starling don't credit check if you don't apply for an overdraft so that might be useful to some.

I reccomend step change 100% my dp was nearly 5k in debt and with their help he cleared it in under a year. He rang all his creditors and they paused the interest. Some even reduced the debt if he offered them a lump sum there and then. He also got a new bank account and then eventually contacted his bank and they stopped the over draft charge but it did mean closing the account but without all the fees and interest it made it so much easier to repay it.

Oh! Just thought - once you have done all the major restructuring as suggested check all the places you shop to see if they do loyalty cards (boots advantage card, tesco clubcard etc etc).

If your children are students use their student discount on top of this.

As you are on PIP you will qualify for a free carers ticket at concerts, theatre, various different places like aquariums etc for days out. Each place may have a different scheme that you have to sign up to (eg. CEA card for cinema, specific national trust carers card) but once you have got all of that sorted it saves a lot.

Do all your shopping online having a TopCashback account as your homepage and access all other websites via this (including when you change phone/tv contracts etc).

Collectively I save about £2,000 a year for my family doing all of the above.

CAP were very good at helping me get the Employment Support Allowance benefit. They should also help you apply for PIP.

Have you talked to your bank? I know people who have had their payments made more manageable and I think they got in touch with the debt companies to arrange more feasible payments. Worth a try! Also, do you have a community shop near you? They are amazing. X