Firstly I am a regular wwho has name changed.
Not sure where to start....
DH & I have massive debts (I class it as both of coz we are married although it is mostly in DHs name). We are both self-employed, DH is a company director. When things were going well for the businesses we had a few loans credit cards which got racked up when we moved house & got married. The intention was to pay them all off within 12 months. Then we had DD, and I subsequently got diagnosed with a long term illness just as the 'credit crunch' hit, DH had to take time off to look after me & a young baby & then subsequently had a breakdown. The interest on the credit cards was then pretty much doubled (if not trippled) at this time & the repayments were (and are still are) crippling. (We actually didn't have PPI which in this case could have been handy!!)
We have two mortgages, one for our house & one buy-to-let (which has been empty for about 2 years :(). We always make sure the mortgages are paid so currently have no arrears on either, but the credit card repayments are in default & things are getting pretty nasty. DH lost his biggest contract and his business income dropped massively last Novemeber. DH has spoken to all the companies and explained that basically he is currently unable to draw a wage from his company, (well, not enough to cover everything) and they insist that there is nothing they can do (or are willing to do) to help out. We have offered all sorts of solutions & they simply aren't interested. We asked for a payment holiday from the mortgage so we could get the CCs back on track, but it was declined as they have too many people currently applying.
Yesterday our mortgage company (for our home) informed us that they are getting rid of their interest only mortgages & we will probably end up on full repayment, this will double our mortgage. It couldn't have come at a worse time. Their advice if you can't make the new payments is to consider selling. But our property is now worth less than the mortgage so that wouldn't solve the problem. DD is due to start school locally in a months time so moving back to the BTL property (30+ miles away) would be a disaster & again, because of the negative equity in our house wouldn't solve the problem. My family have been bailing us out for months just so we can afford to eat & pay our mortgage & they can't do that indefinitely (and I wouldn't expect them to).
Due to the nature of DHs work an IVA would cause all sorts of problems & would mean that his income stream (small as it currently is) would stop. Going bankrupt (as suggested by CAB) would not help us either as he would no longer be able to be a company director so again we would lose all our income. I am self-employed also, I work for DH mostly doing his admin. I applied for some part time work when DD was younger but got no where, and although proving it was because of my illness it's impossible (I have to disclose as technically I am classed as disabled) I suspect that it was a factor. We number crunched after the failed attempts at me finding work & actually worked out that after we had paid childcare costs we would be left with about £10 a week which wouldn't cover my petrol cost & we would be worse off so I have just stuck with working for DH & given up looking for work. We live semi rural & jobs locally are really limited & of course everyone wants to work during school hours.
Neither of us are sleeping properly. The stress of it all is making us ill. I just can't see a way out of this. No idea what we are going to do. Everytime there is light at the end of the tunnel it turns out to be an oncoming train! There are improvements in the business, but not enough to help us out yet! Just don't know how much longer we can keep going like this. We could throw the towel in & go & live with my mum, but it's 120miles away & would have massive consequences for all of us. Not even sure what advice I want or what I want anyone to say. Just needed to get it all out, can't tell anyone in RL & at the moment it feels like I'm drowning.