Thought this would be an excellent place to anonymously write this all down.
I got into minor debt at age 18 and it spiralled from there. I had huge mental health issues and tried to just ignore it. I then fell pregnant with my first son at age 20 and started slowly paying back bits and pieces.
By the time I was 21 my credit rating had gotten better, but my son was on the Autism Pathway and life was extremely difficult. My mental health got significantly worse and myself and my husband took out a lot of credit that we just could not afford. I was on sick pay for severe depression after a miscarriage and my husband was working a minimum wage job so he could help care for our son. The credit was covering things like clothes and phone bills. Luckily I had had a well paid job so had a bit of savings to cover rent etc.
My mental health then got so much worse. I started not paying electric bills, council tax and water. On the outside, we were dealing with our son's disability brilliantly by attending appointments and being extremely dedicated parents, but really we were accumulating masses of debt and had no idea how to deal with it.
At age 22 (and a half) our second son was born and I swore we'd start to get things back on track. I approached the gas and electric companies and got put onto a meter, we pay our debt off weekly. We also sorted out our water debt by having them take payments from our income support allowance.
As our second son approached 16 months old it became apparent that he too was also disabled. By this point neither myself nor my husband could work because of how high both DC's needs were. We are solely reliant on benefits and are just about getting by.
My eldest son has no school place for September because of how severe his ASD is and all the special needs schools are currently full. Our household costs are absolutely ridiculous, we're constantly having to replace broken furniture, electrics and carry out maintenance because of how severe our eldest behaviour is. (Today he's broken the last valuable item in the house and I have no idea how we'll replace it)
On top of all this, our Landlord died 8 months ago and nobody will claim responsibility for the property. We have had no central heating for almost two years and no hot water for about 2 months. Our electricity bill is ridiculously huge during winter months. We're hoping to move, but we have a rubbish credit score, no money for a deposit and nobody who can be our guarantor.
But today we did it. We sat down and went through our credit files. We wrote down all our debts and phoned StepChange. We now have a strict budget and are finally starting to pay off what we owe. To others it might not be a huge amount, it's about 4k, but to us it seemed impossible we'd ever get out the whole we'd fallen into.
Up until this month, I'd never realised just how bad my mental health had been in the past. I would never be able to even open a debt collectors letter, nevermind calmly discuss it over the phone with a stranger. I'm so so proud of myself and feel positive that we can stick to this and make a better life for our two boys.