Advice please ...

[SarahR91]

So I know this is going to cause lots of angry comments and back lash but I need advice so I am hoping someone can help ...

• I have been married nearly 5 year and have two young children
• We own our own house which we have been in 1 yr (we owned a house prior that we lived in for 4 yrs)

So heres the problem

• £3500 on a credit card 0% for another 2 years
• £12000 on a loan we pay monthly
• no saving

Now these debits have come from buying a second hand car on the loan (£6000) having many car troubles and our youngest child being unwell so drop in wages for husband from time off and expenses from traveling to hospitals etc. We have a spreadsheet which has all of our outgoings and expenditure etc. We have no sky or anything like that so bills are the 'minimum' they can be. I have rung all the companies and made sure we have the best 'deals'. We really want to rid ourselves of the dept and we have drawn up a plan of how to do so as quickly as possible with over payments when we can etc. I have rung the bank to see if we can get the £40000 equity out of the house but we can only loan it for 10yrs not add to the mortage as its 'debt consolidation'. Can anyone think of anything we can do, I hate being terrified that the boiler or car will brake and we have no savings to cover it .... I KNOW THIS IS OUR FAULT, I just want to see if anyone can see of something that we could do that we may have missed

Use uSwitch to see if you can find a cheaper energy provider.

Also, £600 seems quite high even for 2 cars (we have 3 cars and a motorhome insured for less than that). It may be worth checking what insurance groups the cars are in and looking at whether you can look at selling them and buying something with better fuel economy and cheaper to insure, and make sure that you use one of the comparison websites to get the possible deal come renewal.

And definitely have a chat with a benefit adviser to see if you might be entitled to DLA for your youngest. If he/she needs more care than a healthy child of the same age, eg because you have to give them regular medication/therapy, or can't leave them, then you should definitely apply, but get an adviser to help you with the forms.

@TalkinPeace just tagging you into this as you always speak such sense