Ah, i re-registered to yell STOP to you Mrswhiskerton!! But i see you have also been given some excellent advice. Please do not borrow anymore money - we borrowed to get ourselves out of a hole and just dug ourselves a bigger one. I have a telephone interview with payplan on tuesday and i hope they are going to manage our debts for us. Sadly, i have longterm experience of debt and its very damaging. I would just like to say a few things.
Firstly - dont be afraid of having Gas and Electric meters put in, depending on what company you use you do not pay any extra and if you do, yeah you might pay say an extra £50 a year or thereabouts but i tell you what, it makes such a difference. Its the best thing we ever did. Contact them as soon as you can to tell them you are going to struggle to pay and ask for time to pay but then ask them to be put on a meter. Its so easy, you don';t have that awful worry of the gas and electric bills which we were getting £700 gas bills it was ridiculous. If you communicate with them they will be helpful about finding a solution. I was really reluctant to have meters but our debts got so bad it was taken out of our hands (we owed Brit Gas over £1,000 at one point) and we were forced to have meters, we will be making our last payment of the debt this week actually, and i will be keeping the meter, it was by far the best thing we have ever done. British Gas dont charge extra to have it (but some companies do) and even if they did, i still think we would save money because it really makes you budget the gas you are using and it has saved us a fortune.
Talk to payplan anyway, they will help you with your debts but if you are struggling with credit cards you can write to them and request that, so long as you stop using the cards (and i strongly suggest you do this anyway) they will freeze the interest. Some lenders are more likely to accept this than others, but if you are only able to meet the minimum repayments the majority of what you are paying will only cover the interest and a nominal amount anyway so cut the fuckers up, they are the work of Satan! Easier said than done, we didnt think we could manage wihtout credit, well we are still in debt but i promise you i will never, so long as i live ever have anything on credit ever again. You manage, we were using credit cards to pay mortgage, buy food etc etc - it just makes things worse and now we cant use them, yes it can be a bit shit sometimes (we had to raid savings bottle (2 pennys) for food and petrol) but actually, you CAN manage without credit. Ok, so when the dishwasher borke i had to mend it myself - it was a great sense of achievement, probably before we would have thrown our hands up in the air and purchased another one on credit. Our van broke down, DP fixed it. It is possible to live without credit - our society doesn't make it easy, but it is possible and much much better.
Credit card companies and banks handing out their loans and overdrafts so easily have alot to answer for, i only wish the credit crunch had come sooner!!
Best of luck with it all, do get it sorted sooner rather than later as you dont want to have to do this long term, it just destroys everything.