I am financially screwed. I really need advice

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I have never been bad with money. I’m not well off at all but I moved out at 18 after saving hard for a deposit. I’ve lived in various places and I have never been late on rent or bills. For a few years I constantly had above £5,000 in savings.

I was in a relationship during this time but in the last couple of years my ex lost his job and just didn’t bother looking for a new one. I had to pay everything alone and used up all my savings to support ourselves and him. He then cheated on me, and left. I couldn’t afford the rent any longer so moved to a cheaper place. I ended up having to take a loan out to support myself. Since then I’ve constantly been in debt. I’ve always been self-employed but for a long time was PAYE, I have a chronic illness and so when I had to go of sick/have operations I didn’t get any sick pay. I then ended up taking out a large overdraft and am constantly stuck in it. I feel like such a failure now and I hate how I’ve borrowed so much money.

After getting pregnant I decided to move closer to my family with my partner because my mental health was suffering and I needed support. I couldn’t move in with them because they don’t have the space. For a while I was doing okay, I even managed to get out of my overdraft and save £4,000 for rent stability after having my baby.

When I had my baby I went on maternity for a few weeks and my partner wasn’t working for a few weeks to support me because I had quite bad mental health. I didn’t qualify for a self-employment grant due to having been PAYE. I couldn’t afford to stay on maternity so decided to start working again. I’m a writer and do many good money when I get commissioned and have a few long-term relationships with editors so get frequent work. However I’m constantly having to wait for invoices to be paid so I’m always in my overdraft until I get paid and then it goes on bills.

My partner is working part time so that we don’t have to pay for childcare. I am the higher earner so he has DS when I work and vice versa.

I am working as much as I physically can while dealing with my mental health and having a new baby (he’s 17 weeks now).

But I just can’t get out of this debt, and my anxiety is horrendous right now because I’m constantly worrying about rent. I can’t move to a cheaper place because I can’t afford another deposit!

I’m just wondering if anyone has any advice on this? I’m going to include a breakdown of my bills in case that helps.

Rent: £950
Council tax: £180
Car insurance: £140
Loan repayment: £150
Car finance (I took this out when I was financially stable and could afford it): £130
Electric/gas: £62
TV licence: £11
Water: Not sure as they got our water bill wrong
Internet: £22
Phone bill: £50

I got declined CBT on the NHS so I’m having to pay £70 a week for that too, and £30 a week therapy. These are absolutely vital to me as I am struggling so much that I honestly don’t think I’d be able to work without it.

I’ve stopped paying for things like Netflix and amazon. Phone/finance was taken out when I could afford it.

Bar these things I rarely spend money on myself and any money I do have leftover goes on things for my baby.

If anyone has any advice I would be so grateful, anything I can check prices on, debt advice, things I could cancel, anything like that?

Thank you

@Graphista When I got the phone I was in full time employment. I worked for a national newspaper for five years as I am a journalist. I get quite frequent work but struggle with the invoices as they can take a while to be paid. Minimum I earn is £2,000 a month. I went freelance after having DS because I couldn’t commit to 5 9 hour shifts a week

Im sure with a jiggle of finances it can be sorted, DH must see that it is a saving to just have one car, that will help solve in the short term.

Have you tried asking for help from your union?

www.nuj.org.uk/work/nuj-extra/how-can-we-help-you/

Your monthly outgoings per month, including therapy are £1800.
You now say you earn a minimum of £2000 a month and your partner earns approx. £700.
Which leaves you with £900 for food and incidentals?
If those figures are correct you can have a few no/low spend months where you only spend on necessities and build up some savings to use while you wait for invoices to be paid.

[quote tiredandunoriginal]@Graphista When I got the phone I was in full time employment. I worked for a national newspaper for five years as I am a journalist. I get quite frequent work but struggle with the invoices as they can take a while to be paid. Minimum I earn is £2,000 a month. I went freelance after having DS because I couldn’t commit to 5 9 hour shifts a week[/quote]
You're not fucked, then. You've got plenty, especially as you'll be getting CHB paid soon.

Unless you habitually overspend on food, clothes and activities, there's enough there to cover everything, including your therapy sessions and gradually reduce how deep you are in your overdraft over about 6 months, even before your DH works more hours.

In my area you can just book yourself onto IAPT OP. I can't believe they have turned you down (I don't mean that I don't believe you by the way )
You've had some fantastic advice here, it will get better. I think once you've actioned things a few things people have identified (where's your health visitor in all of this? Are you in contact?) you'll start to feel a bit better.
The NHS IAPT is really useful, it's an excellent service, changed my life

Sorry I thought id RTFT but I'm sat outside and it hadn't loaded.

That car insurance is very high! My sister lives in London. As a new driver in 2017, she paid £55 a month on a brand new skoda fabia. Are you sure you shopped around ??

I just wanted to tag on and say how much I agree with Buttery Puffin -
"I also really admire how resilient you are being. You may not think it but you are. Things will get better for you because of this."

I also agree with the posters who say do NOT ditch the mental health support. By all means, try as hard as possible to access it more cheaply if you can, but those who haven't suffered mental health issues don't always understand that this sort of therapy can be the single thing standing between you and utter collapse

You of course will be aware that bowel problems and mental health problems are quite strongly linked, so people in your situation often suffer a double and quite underserved whammy.

Other than that, I'd echo previous advice to reapply for PiP and go through the appeals process to the bitter end. Seventy percent of appeals finally win.

I do wish you the very best here. It's a horrible situation while you're in the midst of it, but you have every prospect of eventually coming out the other end of it.

Is there enough money in the car to sell it pay off the finance and buy a cheap second hand car that you could insure TPFT for 200-300 a year?

There is already plenty of advice here but might I just suggest that for the future it might be best to never buy anything on finance again? It's better to buy a (cheaper) car and phone outright. At least you're then not tying your future self to payments that you might not be able to make.

How are you with basic spreadsheets OP?

Hi OP.

I have been thinking about you for a few days. I haven't re-read the whole thread to see if anything has changed since your first post and my last post but I would really recommend going to get in contact with a reputable debt agency like Citizens Advice or TURN2US. It will take a while to get the process kicked off but they will do a financial statement of all your incomings and outgoings and can help you negotiate with creditors who may be able to lower payments or freeze things for a while etc.

You do not have to do this alone. They will help. They may also know places to get additional help.

No one should be charging for debt advice services so do not go to anyone who charges. There are enough free good ones around.

But as I said before, well done for facing this head-on and trying to sort it.

Could you look into cheaper counselling, perhaps somewhere like www.manorhousecentre.org.uk/counselling-service/charges/. Places that train therapists also often provide a service and clients pay what they can. If your library is open, they may have info on similar local services, as may your gp surgery. Good luck