On the brink of losing it all

On the brink of losing it all

Author
Discussion

selym

9,544 posts

172 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
fesuvious said:
I forgot to add, (but then I'd drunk a lot of rum)
Op. Make sure you stay hydrated and fed.

Your mental state right now will be affected by your physical state. You're stressed and thinking hard. This quickly becomes a negative feedback loop with brain burning thousands of calories - physical fatigue - depression.

Water - it comes out of the tap. It's cheap, and a hydrated brain is less depressed and makes better, faster decisions.
Knocking them out of the park! Another good one.

OP, you have a big enough spade to dig yourself out of this hole. It might just take a couple of years of living to a tight script.

Shnozz

27,502 posts

272 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
EddieSteadyGo said:
Shnozz said:
gangzoom said:
How much is the credit card payments and loan?

5% a month payback on £24k is £1.2k.
Mortgage £1.5k + £300 council tax = £3k essential spend per month.

Your gas/electricity/water bill combined shouldn't be more than £200/month, if it is your can cut down by turning lights off etc or swtich supplier = £800/month left spare.

You need to dump the lease cars and get a sub £1000 reliable runner, Honda Civic/Nissan Almeria/Prius etc, these cars shouldn't cost you more than £100/month to keep on the road, and do you need two cars??

So you should still be left with £500/month+ spending money.

Dump Sky if you have it, Freeview is plenty and free!! Phone contracts can be had for £10/month with 1gig of data, again enough for anyone - certainly for me. Basic broadband is about £20/month these days.

Go through your direct debits, cancel everything you don't need, any non mandatory insurance products, memberships to gyms etc.

£20 shop in Aldi gets you so much stuff compared to even Tesco, don't even think of stepping into Sainsbury's or Waitrose. When out in town park for free and walk instead of using the mutlitstory. Don't go and buy a coffee/sandwich at work, make your own sandwiches for about 10% the cost and take a jar of instant cofffe to work, hot water is free at work I presume.

When kids wants to play on those £1 1 minute rides you find every where, tell you they have to earn be able to get them to work, they want a toy, tell them the same. We only buy our daughter toys on birthday and xmas, she doesn't even look at the toy aisles any more, instead we go to the library. For a treat we pay £5 entry to council run pool, thats enough entertainment for a whole afternoon.

Even after all your family out goings are done you should still have £100-200/month, use that to overpay the most expensive loan first.

Your on a very good salary, cut down on waste and budget you can clear your debt without risking the house. Be honest with your family, tighten the belts, and be ruthless with your cost cutting. Don't take on more debt you really shouldn't need too with your income!


Edited by gangzoom on Tuesday 6th August 06:58
That was sort of what I was getting at when I suggested OP should list his outgoing PCM. On the face of it, my cursory overview was similar to you, on a reasonable salary and without a crazy mortgage, uninhabited BTL properties, massive loans and CCs etc, it gave me the impression it would be manageable with some belt-tightening and repayments starting once the cars can be rid of and a few other expenses trimmed.

It certainly didn't scream bankruptcy or even a fire sale on the house.
All valid and logical points. Except the fundamental issue is that the OP is not sleeping properly, is feeling depressed and has no energy. And he has suffered these symptoms for a long period of time. And he refuses to seek medical help.

Objectively, there are more than enough astute suggestions in this thread to help the OP find his feet financially.

The failure of his business and the associated regret for decisions made in the past could have taken their toll on the OP's mental health. That is understandable, as it would be a very stressful period. The key though now is treating the health issues so the OP can then start to explore some of both yours and the other good suggestions in this thread.
Very true - and you are correct. Perhaps seeing it objectively from the outside in might at least allow for the OP to also do so. Very easy to lose sight of the wood from the trees, particularly if the OP has seen a big change of circumstances from comfortably affording his repayments to it being a squeeze by comparison.

It's perhaps a stark reminder for everyone else to not just live within means, but well beneath them if at all possible. I know its far too easy to think that the gravy train will always continue as it has done and I have been guilty of it in the past. I try now to be less so but we never know what is around the corner.

The situation here seems a lot less hideous than it could have been and despite the business defeat, the OP has walked into another well-paid position that should be able to service his debt and (hopefully) see him through it and beyond with some adjustment. Having some belief in that with a plan might at least give him/her some comfort to get his mindset in a better place.

stuthemong

2,285 posts

218 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
Sorry to hear of your problems.

I'm not 100%, but I think there are websites where you can transfer/sell lease cars. There may be someone out there who'd want a short term lease. Don't mean to get hopes, your mileage may vary etc... But worth a cursory look into in case it opens up some options for you.

Absolute best of luck. Look after yourself. smile

anonymous-user

55 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
Moneyvingexpert.com has a lot of fantastic forums that can be really helpful.

There’s a lot of information on there on dealing with debt and tools to help you get there.

Especially relevant to the OP is this section that has some great information on mental health and debt.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/health/

Specifically, a PDF booklet:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/men...

I’ve always lived within my means so cannot fully
appreciate what the OP is going through but I can understand it’s a crappy place to be so I wish you well!

pibby

Original Poster:

107 posts

64 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
Honestly, thank you everyone who has posted so far.
I'm just doing a spreadsheet at the moment and I'll upload it when done.

I do understand the 'live beyond your means' but when the business pretty much collapsed over night, I had no savings, no income and all I could do was live on credit cards to get through.
I was using debt to pay for debt which is an incredibly stupid thing to do but I had no choice.

Just so people know, I have no assets like watches or anything of real value as I generally only buy things for my kids/house.

67Dino

3,586 posts

106 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
Lots of good advice here. I’d just add two thoughts:

1) Seek some independent expert help (not just PHers!). The more expertise, insight and ideas on the options you can get, the better. May challenge your assumptions/biases about what it safe to do too. As PHers have said, Citizens Advice and government run Debt Advice lines are a good place to start. But get hungry for input, ask lots of questions, don’t go it alone!

2) Don’t blame yourself. Every successful person I know has been through bad times, so try not to take it personally. It’s normal and unavoidable to have ups and downs, it comes with taking risks in business (my wife and I even have a phrase for when it happens now: “time for economy pasta”). The trick is, as Rudyard Kipling said of success and failure, to “Treat those two imposters just them same”.

Solving for these times isn’t easy, and you can and should take real pride in your commitment and ability to get you and your family back on an even keel. Just don’t beat yourself up about where you are. Risk is an inevitable consequence of doing business, and it really isn’t right or helpful to blame yourself.

Head up, and am sure you’ll crack it.

pibby

Original Poster:

107 posts

64 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
TYPE AMOUNT
MORTGAGE £1,467.83
COUNCIL TAX £314.82
LIFE INSURANCE £87.00
KID ACTIVITY £25.00
PHONE £39.66
PHONE £15.37
CREDIT CARD £200.00
SKY £61.00
WATER £45.00
HOME INSURANCE £20.28
CAR LEASE £235.37
CAR LEASE £318.41
CREDIT CARD £300.00
LOAN £258.60
LOAN £289.76
TV LICENCE £12.83
FUEL £250.00
FOOD £400.00
KID ACTIVITY £20.00
PAYPAL DEBT £100.00
SPOTIFY £9.99
ELECTRIC/GAS £70.00
RANDOM KIDS STUFF £200.00
TOTAL £4,740.92

DavidY

4,459 posts

285 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
Car Insurance/Tax/Running Costs (not fuel) ???

p4cks

6,919 posts

200 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
gangzoom said:
Your gas/electricity/water bill combined shouldn't be more than £200/month, if it is your can cut down by turning lights off etc or swtich supplier = £800/month left spare.

You need to dump the lease cars and get a sub £1000 reliable runner, Honda Civic/Nissan Almeria/Prius etc, these cars shouldn't cost you more than £100/month to keep on the road, and do you need two cars??

So you should still be left with £500/month+ spending money.

Dump Sky if you have it, Freeview is plenty and free!! Phone contracts can be had for £10/month with 1gig of data, again enough for anyone - certainly for me. Basic broadband is about £20/month these days.

Go through your direct debits, cancel everything you don't need, any non mandatory insurance products, memberships to gyms etc.

£20 shop in Aldi gets you so much stuff compared to even Tesco, don't even think of stepping into Sainsbury's or Waitrose. When out in town park for free and walk instead of using the mutlitstory. Don't go and buy a coffee/sandwich at work, make your own sandwiches for about 10% the cost and take a jar of instant cofffe to work, hot water is free at work I presume.

When kids wants to play on those £1 1 minute rides you find every where, tell you they have to earn be able to get them to work, they want a toy, tell them the same. We only buy our daughter toys on birthday and xmas, she doesn't even look at the toy aisles any more, instead we go to the library. For a treat we pay £5 entry to council run pool, thats enough entertainment for a whole afternoon.

Even after all your family out goings are done you should still have £100-200/month, use that to overpay the most expensive loan first.

Your on a very good salary, cut down on waste and budget you can clear your debt without risking the house. Be honest with your family, tighten the belts, and be ruthless with your cost cutting. Don't take on more debt you really shouldn't need too with your income!
Great post. I also concur with the other poster about leaving the mortgage alone as it is priority number one.

Also in relation to your health/mental health I genuinely believe that once you've made one cost saving (such as getting a better phone deal/gas/electric/TV etc) you'll feel much better... it gives you a great feeling when you've made a saving especially when you're updating your spreadsheet (I have one too!) and you see your 'disposable income' column go into the green then continue to grow.

Your health is a result of other things happening/not happening but now you've acknowledged the problem and you make positive steps to improve your financial position the rest will fall into place.

Good luck and keep us updated.

CoolHands

18,696 posts

196 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
Sky.
Can you transfer some credit cards to new ones with 0% (I haven’t read whole thread)

designforlife

3,734 posts

164 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
As a super budgeteer myself-

-Ditch spotify
-Drop to a lower sky package, or cancel altogether until you are back on your feet.
-Renegotiate the phone contracts
-Lose the lease cars, if possible... that's a massive percentage of your monthly outgoings which can be drastically reduced.

The top 3 in that list could save you £50pcm for starters...those marginal gains add up.

pibby

Original Poster:

107 posts

64 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
DavidY said:
Car Insurance/Tax/Running Costs (not fuel) ???
Insurance was paid for on a credit card, tax is included in lease costs and obviously under warranty so no real running costs except maybe a £300 per year service.

anonymous-user

55 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
You can negotiate pretty straight forwardly with CCs to pay interest only in financial hardships and reduce repayment.

You have quick fixes, like cancel sky, and buy food from Lidl, should save 260 off the bat. Can you car share to help reduce fuel costs?

You can offload the leases there are websites available for this to try.

Could you look at renting a room out, they would provide an income stream?

DavidY

4,459 posts

285 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
pibby said:
Insurance was paid for on a credit card, tax is included in lease costs and obviously under warranty so no real running costs except maybe a £300 per year service.
You need to create a list of all your outgoing costs including annual ones and ones paid on credit cards/Paypal etc and amortise monthly to get a true figure of monthly spend, until you do this you won't know the true scale of the problem. £900 on insurance and £300 running costs is £100 a month,etc, etc

Saying stuff was paid on credit card, doesn't do you any favours when working out monthly budgets because that bill will come around again, and then how do you pay for it.

We are all guilty of doing a bit of creative man-maths, I've certainly done this in the past and got into not great financial situation's but its taken me a lot of false starts and many years to really get straight.

gangzoom

6,313 posts

216 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
pibby said:
TOTAL £4,740.92
Looking at that there are things which you can stop pretty much straight away, and things you need to reduce on, we struggle spend £40/week on a big shop at Aldi/Asda, let alone £100/week!!

Not needed -
LIFE INSURANCE £87.00
SKY £61.00
SPOTIFY £9.99
RANDOM KIDS STUFF £200.00
= £358

Need to reduce by 50%:
PHONE £39.66
PHONE £15.37
FOOD £400.00
= £227

So total amount you can reduce pretty quickly = £585.15

The other un-necessary cost is the car leases, contrary to popular belief used cars don't cost an earth to run/maintain, our old Honda Civic was a fab family car, I see used ones are now barely over £1K, get one that's had its clutch done and your be good for 100K+ monitoring. Also if you can live with one car it'll cut your fuel bill etc, so if you can clear the car lease debt, even budgeting £100/month for repairs on the older car, that frees up another £400/month.

To get rid off:
CAR LEASE £235.37
CAR LEASE £318.41
=£553.76 - £100 for older car bills.

Overall reduction - £1,000/month.

Use any spare cash to clear the most expensive debt, and your surplus cash will build up very quickly and your be out of your hole before you know it.

Badda

2,675 posts

83 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
Can I be brutal here with you?

You are in debt up to your eyeballs and have a £400k house that you cannot afford to pay for. You're effectively paying the mortgage with borrowed money.

There is a very obvious solution: sell the house, pay the ERC, pocket the £43k, pay off ALL of your debt and rent a 3 bed semi for a year to find your feet.

You say you won't sell as you don't want to pay the ERC, well I don't think you have a choice in this. You are losing money on a monthly basis and need to reset your finances and start living to your means again.

Do this and you'll have a decent surplus of cash every month to start saving with, have zero debt and even get to keep the cars. House prices aren't going anywhere anytime soon so no need to worry about being off the ladder.

Sarnie

8,046 posts

210 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
Rule Number One: DO NOT MISS MORTGAGE PAYMENTS.

It's one of the single biggest grenades you can roll into your credit file........if you can't pay for the roof over your head, who would even give you a phone contract.

If you are newly self employed (under one year) then don't bother asking your mortgage company for more money....to pay off debts because you can't afford your outgoings.......and will not have sufficient history or HMRC documentation to evidence your income.

All you will do is raise red flags. You can ask for a mortgage payment holiday but the first thing they will ask is why you need it........personally I would leave them out of it, as currently aren't close to missing a payment with them.

You have things in your budget that can be cut........"random things for kids" at £200pm...........Spotify........I have Spotify but just the free version........two mobile phone contracts.......me and Mrs Sarnie are on Giff Gaff...about £6pm each and free calls and texts between us. It doesn't sounds like you can afford to maintain and run two cars..........

£87pm on Life Cover..........that doesn't sound like Life Only Cover..........sounds like CIC or IP too, which you can't afford currently, strip it down to Life Only and get CIC/IP again in a year or two.

What you may need to do as a last resort is default on all of your unsecured credit agreements........this stops the interest and brings the minimum payments down to a few pounds each month you can then agree a repayment structure that will mean all your payments will then be reducing the capital. It will however mean that your credit will take a huge hit as every account will be listed a Defaulted for the next six years........but its not the end of the world, I'm a Mortgage Broker and do mortgages for people with defaults (once they are two years old) every month........you have another three years on your current mortgage rate.......take a three year product switch with the current lender when the current rate expires and before you know it six years has come and gone and the defaults drop off your credit file. This should be one of your very, very last options though, if you can increase your income, reduce your outgoings and can get this under control organically, then do that for sure.........

Finally, well done for posting this.......everyone needs a release from stresses like these.......look after yourself, physically and mentally.......this isn't the end for you.......see it as the beginning of your recovery smile

pibby

Original Poster:

107 posts

64 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
I understand where you're coming from but I can't just get rid of sky or car leases. They're on contracts and cost £££ to get out of.

As for food shopping, even taking into account baby stuff, that's probably £20/week just for that stuff. I'll admit we can definitely reduce the overall food cost but definitely not to £40/week.

I've just reduced my sky bill by £12/month, cancelled netflix (which I forgot to add).
I'm hesitant to get rid of spotify as being completely honest it's kind of my thing I need. I listen to a lot of podcasts when in the car which help my stress massively.

Pothole

34,367 posts

283 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
pibby said:
67Dino said:
Well done getting this off your chest and seeking help. I’d recommend you contact the government set up Money Advice Service and get some professional debt advice. There are phone numbers and details at:

https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/tools/deb...

They should be able to help you come to new arrangements with the institutions you owe money to, most likely a combination of writing some of it off and rescheduling the remaining payments to be more manageable.

Best of luck with getting it sorted.
Is this pretty much the same as declaring myself bankrupt in regards to our future?
NO. Stop asking questions here and make the call. How much worse than your current mindset can their news/advice be?

designforlife

3,734 posts

164 months

Tuesday 6th August 2019
quotequote all
pibby said:
I understand where you're coming from but I can't just get rid of sky or car leases. They're on contracts and cost £££ to get out of.

As for food shopping, even taking into account baby stuff, that's probably £20/week just for that stuff. I'll admit we can definitely reduce the overall food cost but definitely not to £40/week.

I've just reduced my sky bill by £12/month, cancelled netflix (which I forgot to add).
I'm hesitant to get rid of spotify as being completely honest it's kind of my thing I need. I listen to a lot of podcasts when in the car which help my stress massively.
Spotify free version will still work in the car, you just get a couple of ads every 30 mins.

I used to pay the £9.99, then decided i would rather just have the ads and pocket the tenner.