Is this doable?

[Richteafingers]

Hi,not going to overshare as dh isn’t keen on me posting.

we’ve just come out of a financially disastrous 4 years but we’re now on good full time jobs with £7600 coming in each month.

our living costs including mortgage and bills are £2800. The problem is that we’ve been left with monstrous debts if £110k

do you think that’s it’s possible for us to tackle these debts despite the scale of them, without having to go into an IVA or bankruptcy???

This makes no sense to me. Surely any equity you have in the house would go to the bankruptcy court anyway. If you have little or no equity then bankruptcy makes sense, but I'd you have enough equity in the house to pay the debt then that is what you should do.

I agree. Op also has enough money coming in to pay the debt, albeit more slowly than she would like.

Debt Payoff Planner app (free version maybe sufficient) can help you to see when debts would get paid off and the difference between snowball and avalanche methods.

Staying motivated will likely be an issue as this could take 2-3 years. Listening/watching debt free screams from The Ramsey Show may help, as you realise that other people are able to pay off large amounts over many years, as they celebrate that achievement.

Do a budget, use tracking sheets, do whatever you can to keep on task. All your family needs to be onboard... children demanding icecream every time they hear the icecream van coming is not going to help. Eating out/take aways, these things add up. Use them as rewards... such as set a debt repayment target, say £10k and when you achieve that, spend a little on taking family out for lunch. Set achievable goals, reward, set another goal. It can be a long slog, so do what you need to do to stay motivated.

Thanks for the posts. I just want to clarify that we really don’t want to go bankrupt it go into an IVA- we want to pay it back. I posted as I was stressed and overwhelmed at the scale of it and felt like we would end up having to file for bankruptcy etc. I know that this was catastrophising

With that amount of spare cash to throw at it every month yes, it's totally doable, assuming your income and outgoings are stable.

Decide how much pain you want to go through in order to clear them and set your budget accordingly. Have a bit of cash held back for absolute emergencies.

List your debts in order of priority by most expensive first. Overpay that one as much as possible. Once it's gone, move onto the next one.

You can do this, focus on the prize of being debt free once and for all.

Have you stopped overspending, or whatever caused the debt to build up? You need to be right on top of your money and just pay off a chunk each month.

I don’t see the issue. Pay £4k a month back put £800 in a savings account till you have £5k as an emergency slush fund then up to £4.8k a month till paid off. If it’s too slow sell something or find extra hours to boost.

It’ll be a couple of years if that.

That is a daunting amount to contemplate chipping away at. However now you have a good income doable in a relatively short timescale. Lots of good advice with such large amount I would definitely start with the highest interest rates. For other credit cards if you pay the minimum amount plus a fiver this month and set that up as a standing order that will start to slowly decrease the amount owed in the background. There is a poster on here that has a spreadsheet to illustrate how it works.
The other side of the coin is to avoid it happening again. This of course depends on how and why it accumulated. One off money pit of a house renovation plus multiple rounds of IVF/private health care is very different to gambling, buying a new car and phone every year etc
Best of luck with your efforts. Definitely doable

I hope that this thread is helpful for you, Op.

It is thank you. Nobody in our real lives knows the extent of our issues, do just being able to talk about it helps.

How big is your mortgage and what's your equity in it?

We owe 90k and the house is worth about 310k, however we are very keen to not remortgage as it puts our home at risk if our income changes for the worse.

@Richteafingers I get that, but your mortgage is really small, a £200k mortgage on a £7000+ net income is nothing, way below average I'd have thought. So long as you trust you've got your spending habits under control, and are young enough to add that much to the mortgage, I wouldn't think twice tbh.

You have plenty spare cash every month, why are you not paying at least £3k to the debts?? Be cleared in 3:4 years.

I just wanted to add that the YNAB (You Need A Budget) app / blog / book /system is absolutely amazing, from firsthand experience and close family, who have been thru similar circumstances (admittedly not quite to this extent but their YouTube channel has I believe genuine reviews of people who have gotten help out of some crazy situations)

I'm nothing to do with them but we have genuinely found it life changing, just thought perhaps it may help x

Thank you I’ll take a look

This is what we are doing, I was just stressing when I posted. The total scale of it makes me go into a panic attack

Hi OP, debt can be scary. I think you have had an emotional response to a cold hard real time problem.
I have paid back all sorts of debts in my time for all different reasons, it is just a mind set. The total sum is irrelevant really it's more planning and reviewing and checking you are on track.
I do advise that instead of looking at your bills in a theoretical way ie £ 276 mortgage, £120 Council tax, you actually spend some time looking at what you and your husband actually spend each month. Do this for 4 or 5 months in the past and in that way you will find out a sum you actually spend and also how much you can actually put into your debts.
And I'm afraid you will need to address the elephant in the room, how you got into this debt in the first place.
Best of luck.

Mse forums are so good at this