We’ve been such fools- credit cards

[Janedoer]

Hi,
so went screwed up spectacularly! We’ve had two very expensive years of renovations to our house. In our stupidity we totally underestimated the costs. In even further stupidity we continue to overspend, using credit cards. We’ve played the 0% credit card shuffle game but it’s about to come crashing down. We fucked up and missed a loan payment and it impacted our credit files. We can now only get very high interest cards and no chance of a 0% balance transfer. This means that in February we’ll have £17k of credit card debt at 26%. This means that our current payment of 170 will be over £500. I’m sick to my stomach.
the good news is that despite the interest hike, we can afford the increase. It’s just a sickening waste of money. We were turned down for a remortgage and we’ve been advised to not apply again for at least 12 months. Probably not the best idea anyway.
were a couple of professionals with a 100k Joint salary. What utter fools we’ve been. I’m so ashamed.

I’d throw everything you have at it right now to get the balance down as much as possible before February so you’re paying that APR on as low a balance as poss. Then continue to overpay hugely at whatever rate you can.

On your salaries it really shouldn’t take you that long to pay it off.

Thorough spending review and reduce non essential spending as much as possible.

Even foregoing a summer holiday for a year or two. Perhaps do 'holidays from home' instead, where you take the time off and behave like you're on holiday. Little as possible boring day to day house stuff. Get some treat food in and have a few days out locally. Possibly get NT passes or similar so you can do things for free. Always take a picnic.

Make sure your finances are organised so you don't make any more mistakes.

Throw as much as possible at the credit cards and both apply for a new balance transfer every day 6 months and if accepted transfer what you can.

Unless you also have high fixed essential bills, a year from now you should have made significant inroads into the debt and things will be looking far more positive.

Have a look at:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/money-help/

Dave Ramsay offers good basic advice for getting out of debt. Essentially, rice and beans -- bare minimum with everything till you get the debt paid off. You're poor so only basic food, no eating out, no holidays, no new clothes, sell your second car if you can. Knuckle down and get it paid off.

So you can't get a loan I assume? Have you spoken to anyone about consolidating and getting some support with payments and your credit rating?

They don't need 'support with payments' they can afford to repay.

OP you have 3 months or so until the higher interest rate kicks in. How much spare do you have to reduce the debt before then, or is that already accounted for?

Don't forget that as the balance falls so will the interest cost. Plus if you can free up some head room on one of your existing cards, you might be able to get a 0% interest balance transfer from that card, without a credit check, so worth looking in to. The order of payments rules mean that any existing interest bearing debt will be paid off first.

Plus even if you can't transfer all the balance, if you can transfer some, it means you'll pay less interest.

If the new payment isn’t until next year then pay as much as you can each month now. Cut right back on everything until it’s repaid. You must be able to paty more than £170 a month on a £100k salary.

Start paying at least the £500 now, you will be paying off more capital before the higher rate kicks in. Just cut out all unnecessary expenses and throw everything at the debt, if you can pay £1,000 or more all the better. Pay off the highest rate debts first.

If you have £100k joint salary then you can afford to repay it.

I'm not sure why you're posting or what you expect?

Next time, save up before you do your renovations, rather than taking out loans.

£170 a month??

Could you not afford £1000 a month from now?

Then by February the total owed would be around £13k and the interest amount around half of what you'd mentioned.

Look at Martin Lewis ‘s website and cut up your cards.

Hi OP, I saw this same post on Chat.
Firstly sorry to hear about your Dad, I lost mine last year and it was and still is incredibly painful.
You had some crap advice and some unnecessary flack on the other post.
Don't beat yourself up over this. You made a mistake but it's not the end of the world. It will affect your credit record but I think you know this and it won't be forever. So much better to miss a credit card payment than a loan payment.
Like others have suggested from now until Feb throw everything you can at the debt. Make sure you have a really good budget in place once Feb comes. One that doesn't have you eating beans on toast for every meal but one that keeps costs down and allows you to focus as much money as possible to repaying the debt.
You definitely don't need to go down the debt management plan or anything like that
You're going to have a period of living like a pauper then once the debt is gone you will have lots of disposable
MSE forum is amazing for this type of thing.
Good luck OP, don't make yourself ill over this. Your debt is perfectly manageable