How do I tell him?

[LiarLiar]

Right...

Im in a mess and my partner doesnt know

i have lots of debt that i have been trying and failing to deal with.

im responsible for our families income and its fair to say that i have f*cked it up.

i have taken the big step of breaking it down and seeing where we are and its not good.

Monthly Income
Income Amount
Net Monthly Salary £ 150.00
Partner's Monthly Salary £ 1,500.00
Benefits £ 270.00
TOTAL MONTHLY INCOME £ 1,920.00

Essential Monthly Outgoings
Outgoing Amount
Mortgage/Rent £ 583.00
Council Tax £ 107.00
Electricity £ 25.00
Gas £ 25.00
Water Rates £ 40.00
Telephone £ 67.00
TV Licence £ 10.00
Basic Groceries £ 400.00
Petrol £ 200.00
Car Tax £ 17.00
Car Insurance £ 60.00
Other Travel £ 0.00
House Insurance £ 35.00
Entertainment £ 300.00
Clothing £ 50.00
TOTAL MONTHLY OUTGOINGS £ 1,919.00
NET MONTHLY SURPLUS £ 1.00

Monthly Debts
Debt Total Debt Min Payment Rate
Overdraft £ 1,600.00 £ 0.00 0.10 %
Mint £ 1,148.62 £ 27.00 10.90 %
HSBC Gold £ 5,197.00 £ 148.00 14.90 %
Barclaycard £ 800.00 £ 20.00 17.90 %
Egg £ 6,000.00 £ 121.00 14.90 %
Next Directory £ 400.00 £ 40.00 10.00 %
TOTAL DEBT £ 15,145.62

I have been taking advice from people and ive started rejigging some of the debts to pay less per month but i think i need to take more drastic action to get out of this hole.

My dp knows nothing about it except that i have 3k on a credit card - when he found this out he went totally mad so i darent tell him of the real picture.

i dont have much of an income so i cant get a consolidation loan on my own but im very scared to tell him and cause problems in our relationship.

Would you tell? If so How?

If you see from the breakdown we are already living beyond our means before any of the minimum payments even come off

H E L P

Do you know how you find out about doing that?

Well, have never done it but I'd either a) contact them direct and ask or b) ask JanH when she comes on cos I'm sure she does something like that.

Have started a thread about money making ideas, hopefully JanH will see it.

To add to everything else we had a little car crash last night, DP slipped on pedals in traffic and dunched into guy infront. Everyone fine thankly but looks like this will be a costly shopping trip :(

Temporary donning the hairshirt is required. Your outgoings equal your monthly income before taking into account the monthly payments. Firstly you have to reduce your outgoings by about £250 to £300 a month: the likely candidates here are petrol, basic groceries, and entertainment (does this include holidays?) which is incredibly high. This will give you room to make the monthly payments, which in your original message were £ 356 per month. This I understand you have managed to lessen by reducing the amounts due on the higher interest accounts.
You then need to restrucure your debts: apart from the overdraft all the loans are on interest rates higher than a mortgage. Clearing the debts with an additional mortgage would increase your monthly payments by GBP 75 per month. Your partner's monthly income which I presume is quoted net should be sufficient to cover. Is there sufficient equity in the house to stand the withdrawal of £ 15K? The additional cost of the mortgage would be about £ 75/£85 per month more. Agree with previous comment that pensions are sacrosanct and should be left untouched. What are you doing about yours?
Good luck! (dh)fruitcake

Addendum/clarification to previous message. Taking out mortgage increases your outgoings by £75/£85 per month but of course eliminates the monthly payments completely. You need to achieve permanent reductions in your other outgoings to be able to finance the additional cost of the mortgage and give yourself some headroom.
(dh) fruitcake

Thank you so much Fruitcake's DH!

Im now excluding my sisters debt which is 4k so including DPs overdraft the total is about 11k.

DP's salary is 27000 a year we have a 100000 mortgage on a house we paid 146500 in July this year.

Do you think remortgaging is the way to go?

Your mortgage is at 7%. Is this is a fixed rate? You should get a quote for a further GBP 12K because you will need money in your account to cover the fact that some costs are not paid for monthly but in advance (car insurance etc). Against an additional the value of the house, it's just about doable. You should lock in the interest rate if you can.

(dh) fruitcake

Coo, just lurched in here and then saw my name, how queer is that?

Haven't done catalogue parcel delivery, have done Yellow Pages and IKEA catalogues, would not do it again though. 3 rounds-worth of yellow pages occupied an area about 5' square and 4' high in my living room, and you have to personally unload the bundles from a lorry into your car, and into the house the other end, and then out again to take round, and you only have a week to deliver them, aaaaargh!

I have seen people doing parcel delivery with kids in car btw - it works.

Are there any call centres in your area, Becca? They seem to pay quite well - if you could nail DP for regular child-minding duties? There was an ad in my MIL's local paper for a communications place in Gtr Mancs which pays £6+ph weekday evenings, £9 ph on Sundays.

Good luck - have been there, more than once, and have remortgaged to deal with it - it works but only if you have the willpower to STOP SPENDING AFTERWARDS!!!!! (Chop up cards and deal in cash defo best way. Wish I had followed that advice myself years ago.)

Hi everyone

Received a letter in the post today for teh 0% card I applied for the other day (in Dps name with his knowledge)

We have been given a limit of 6k - Im not sure which debts to move over?

Also, shall I keep applying for them until the whole amount is covered?

Don't just keep applying, as each application shows up as a search on your credit file and too many will start to ring alarm bells. Generally two in a month may be okay so long as you don't do it every month. They will look at what you've applied for in recent months and make a judgment. They will also look at the amount of credit available to your DP in relation to his income. With a good credit record he may be offered 75% of his income on cards, but this would be fairly exceptional. Also, you have to be careful who the card provider is - lots of cards that appear to be from different companies are all actually offered by one bank - eg: Bank of Scotland offers a whole range. You don't want to apply for more than one from the one group, and you cannot transfer debt from one card to another if they are from the same ultimate provider. Once again, I'd recommend going to the FOOl.co.uk for advice. As far as which cards to transfer over is concerned, whichever is charging you the highest interest is usually the one to start with. You could then get into a process called "Snowballing" (see the Fool for details). And it goes without saying, that all the cards should be cut up and the new ones you get for balance transfers should be disabled to prevent further spending. Hope this helps.

HELP HELP HELP

I have made the decision to get a loan/remortgage to just get rid of this debt into a manageable payment as the various payments are starting to really take their toll now. Also, my sister is incapacitated since her accident so cant earnt therefore cant pay minimum payment on the card she owes me on - there is another 150 a month we have to find.

We fell at first hurdle of remortgage as i have left the job i was in when we got the mortgage so they wont give us additional borrowing for the amount we need (15k) - only 3k.

That leaves 12k

I want to get a cheap loan - my partner will apply for this. His salary is 27k. I NEED TO KNOW that we will get it or the options have run out so need to think carefully before applying and getting refused.

Does anyone know which lenders are most willing to lend?

Thanks

have you even asked your lender? ask them first, worry later

Yep - I have asked and been told no, thats where the 3k figure comes from thats all they can do extra on his salary alone

Can I resume worrying now? ;)

LOL

who are you with?

we are with Leeds and Holbeck and they have been very understanding

C&G the same, but they are high %

have you tried going through a broker? I know they always fibnd something

Hiya
Sorry if i repeat what some ppl have said, but i havent read it all!!

Like others have said, get a decent creadit card, groceries entertainment and clothes can be alot cheaper (I'm currently living on my dh wage, and we have only £200 spare once all bills etc have been paid off.

Water rates seem expensive compared to ours, we pay about £25 for it, but we dont live in london.

Who are you with for your telephone bill? We pay about £25.00 with BT for all calls to land lines at any time of the day, for an hour. But all you do is hang up and call back!!

Hope this helps

Hi there, I've never even posted on mumsnet before, but I just read your post and really wanted to add my support because I've been where you are now!! At 24 I had about 15K of debt (although no house, kids or dp!), also had shitty job and just thought that there was NO way out.

But now i'm debt free (other than mortgage) at the (old) age of 32 (just kidding), and i'm a sahm of 2 so I justed wanted to tell you that you WILL be debt free one day... I only wish that I could wisk you into the future 8 years and show how quickly it passes, so that the living frugally doesn't get you down too much. Actually, some days, living frugally can be kind of fun (well, it's more of a challange than how to fold a nappy!). Anway, you've got a house, and that's brilliant.

You've had some great advice from the mums here! )

The things that I've been thinking while I read your post:

1. It's not as though you don't know this, but to be paying £150 a month towards somebody elses debt, as well as the (accumulating) interest is awful!! How does your poor sister feel about this? I think that she needs to speak to your younger sister about this asap. £150 a month would very nearly cover the repayment on a £9k loan (at 5.9% interest, which is available at the mo, over 5 years).

2. As you've said, your outgoings are VERY high - £400 food is incredible - how do you guys eat that much???! £300 entertainment??

I'm a spoilsport, aren't I?!

3. Your telephone bill, it was something like £65 a month? Last month I paid £2.66 to www.call18866.co.uk, plus £10.50 to bt for the line rental. We spent about 2.75 with telewest calling mobiles, and also used them for landline calls at the weekend (they are free). 18866 charge you 1p for every landline call, day or night, so last month I made 266 calls (works out to about 8 calls a day!! blimey, I didn't realise I chat so much!!). So our total bill was £15.91.

Forget about the £15 a month deals that you see, you'd have to make 1500 calls a month with 18866 to pay that! (unless those deals include line rental).

I'll go and have a quick look through your other monthly outgoings to see if I can stick my oar in there too! ;o)

As regards food, the ONLY way that I can stay on top of our budget (and have a savings account for the first time in my life!) is to work out weekly meal plans and stick to them. We eat really well (if I do say so myself blush) for about £40 a week (which includes things like bin bags, toilet rolls, nappies etc.) I do shop at lidls (don't groan) but I also shop at safeways when I fancy some glamour (!). For example (just to emphasise that we don't live on beans on toast) this weeks menu is:

chickpea curry with cardamon & cinnamon rice
feta and spinach pie with salad and crusty bread
homemade pizza with garlic dough balls & salad
Sausages and mash with broccoli (sp?!) and onions
Salmon & veg
Aubergine pasta bake with salad
falafel with homemade humous, yogurt mint dip and roast peppers.

now, at this point, I'm sure you're wondering when I get out of the secure unit and how come i've got access to a computer...! I STILL can't believe that i'm cooking food! from scratch!

I was a total shopping/spending/eating out addict when I lived and worked in london and lived a totally hedonistic lifestyle. I think I stepped through a rift in the space/time continuum and came to in the body of martha stewart (oh, except that she doesn't get woken up by someone going "I eat poo mummy" or have to scrape congealed banana off her cd's before she them play them, i bet).

How did you get on with the loan? With your dp's salary, you def. shouldn't have to pay over 6% interest, and you'll probably get less than that. Also, my dp is a teacher (hence our penniless state!), and is given access to free independent financial advisors (who come to your house! and drink lots of coffee and drone on for hours! :-/ but at least we're covered! (for just about everything now, i think). Does the NHS offer anything like that? You know that the first thing they're going to say is DON'T stop paying into the pension, don't you ;o)

Sorry to jump right in like this, but your post really touched a nerve with me! And sorry for the essay.

Steph

oh poo! all that and i didn't mention that i make about £200 pm selling on ebay, which is a great bonus!

Mosschop!!!

Not sure if you will actually see this - I have only just come across your post and its fabulous!!

Im going to try and CAT you as i think you need to become my debt counsellor ;)

I just want to say you MUST talk to you DH - it won't be easy I know but if you can't 'talk' to him about it perhaps you could write it down and give it to him.

That's what I ended up doing last year when I managed to get myself in nearly £2000 of debt (and I don't work - well I was doing Avon at the time and bringing in a reasonable amount from it and got £100 a month from my church organ playin) and we were already struggling financially.

The longer I put it off, the harder it got AND the more in debt I'd got - if I'd have told him about it when I first 'realised' it was spiralling out of control then it would have been around £600 debt - not the £2000 which I had to tell him about just a few months later.

I can't say he was 'happy' about it, and for a while he took full control of ALL of my money. But that was last July - yesterday he gave me my bank card back (yep that's how 'bad' it got!) and we're slowly getting back on track.

Mosschop - I just tried to CAT you but you have requested not to receive emails from mumsnet - can you post here if you see it?

Gwenick - your very right about telling him and I have sort of. We have got as far now as him thinking the debt is 9k. Which isnt too unrealistic if you take off his overdraft (which he knows about and my sisters debt)

The position at the moment is that we have now got a virgin 0% card with £5700 on. I have also negotiated with HSBC to reduce the interest on that card to 3.9% so I will transfer £6000 from a high interest card on to there.

On top of that I am in the process of talking about remortgaging to a cheaper mortgage plus an extra 6k.

Have also set up an ironing service to bring in extra money - although saying that the phone isnt ringing yet

Just thought I'd add my experience! We increased our mortgage to 75% of the current house value (we needed £21K to cover all our debts) and changed the mortgage provider to a fixed lower interest rate and it has worked out that we are paying only £70 a month more on our mortgage. Has decreased our monthly outgoings by £450! Might be worth thinking about?

By the way my DH had no idea about how much debt we were in yet when I pointed out where the money had actually gone (ie not on me!) he was completely supportive. It feels as though a weight has been lifted off my shoulders and now for the first time, instead of just burying my head in the sand I am actually enjoying the feeling of being in control of our finances for once!

charlie - I can associate that feeling - it's wonderful that feeling of really knowing you're in control (even if you're still in debt). I found I only got that once DH knew the FULL extent of my debts rather than a 'close' figure.

OOOOOOOOOKKKKKKKK

I darent even look what it was when I last wrote about my debt problem but have just done another rough tally and it is 24k

I am crazy, totally crazy - I think it is actually a proper problem - has been for a long time but it really is now.

We are still managing to pay min payments.

The big hike in the debt is largely due to wedding in 2 weeks and holiday we have just come back from.

In the back of my mind for ages Ive been thinking "after the wedding, I will sort it all out" and I do really want to - please help me - please dont tell me im silly, i know i am but i really need help. DP would have a FIT if he knew. I have made big progress with telling him - he knows that its not great but we both seem to just emerge our heads in the sand!

I have a cheque for 5.5k from a remortgage we have just done so that will go straight off. Need to work out where best to put it though.

fck fck f*ck - will i ever get out of debt?

Where do I start? How do I change? How do I stop being a shopaholic/not accepting how serious it is apart from in the fleeting moments i guiltily look at the accounts.

We have had so much money through our hands in the last few months - debt should be so much less not this much more.

I really think I am a shopaholic - Im so angry at myself when I think of the money I have wasted recently and the money we waste every day paying interest to credit cards.

Dp is stark opposite to this - wedding would not be taking place if he knew how much it had hiked up

Holy Moly

Hey at least you have told him. I keep trying to tell dp about our debts and chickening out.