Help Please - Debt Disaster

Your situation sounds difficult Fiona but you are clever and seem committed to improving your position and I'd be confident you will. A few suggestions for you (some have been mentioned, some haven't) If I was you I would be careful of how this debt will affect your outlook on life and your relationship etc.

-Try switch one card onto another company and get the 6 month interest free.

-Its easy to say cancel SKY but when you arent going out and staying in to save money, having the TV with plenty of channels is pretty handy. I called SKY's bluff recently, I rang to 'cancel' and they put me on a 'special offer' package, reducing my sub from 60 quid to 41 until january. The free to air boxes are looking very attractive, more and more stations are going this route. I might get one myself in january.

-Advertise to car pool, yes you say you need the car to get to work, maybe someone close to you could do with a lift also, share expenses...

-Cook more. Dont buy pre-cooked or pre-prepared food, cook more of your own food and take lunch-boxes. Ask another couple over for recession busting dinner on a saturday night, get them to invite you back to theirs. Keep the budget low and all of you can enjoy a cheap night.

-Can you type or have a computer, could you type CVs and students thesis etc? Could your partner use your car to do pizza deliveries etc.

-Your partner, could he do a flyer offering direct labour. With the housing market the way it is, some people are looking at extending their house or converting a garage into a bedroom.

-I would also shop around for every single purchase you make, from car insurance, life assurance, home insurance etc. Be absolutely sure each of these is to the absolute minimum and you are not paying for anything you dont need.

-Reconsider direct debits. If you pay a lot of your annual bills monthly, there is very often a lot to be saved by paying in one go. This is obviously very difficult to do when your finances are tight, but consider it, see if its possible.

Last suggestion which might sound very contradictatory, plan a small holiday in the spring. Maybe a long weekend, low budget but a break away from your problem for you and your partner.
 
Hi all,

Thanks again for the responses - great ideas - I'll be just short of growing my own veg out the back garden!!

Im hoping my partner will get a job offer next week as he has two interviews - fingers crossed. One of them is for three 12 hour night shifts a week in a warehouse (crap pay but better than nothing!) which would allow him time to do some nixers on the other days to bump up his pay. He found a website for a company called Vistaprint a few weeks ago that allowed him to order 250 flyers/business cards for free so thats been done and his nephew is coming out tomorrow with his friend to help him post them around in letter boxes.

In terms of the bills we have already got rid of our Setanta package and have a fairly basic Sky package. what is this 'free to air' thing?? I think we definitley need to monitor our gas and elec to try cut costs a little bit. We did a good bit of shopping around for the health, life insurance and content insurance so I think we have the best rates we could get. My car insurance is already discounted by 50% as my brother works in a motor insurance company and got us a 'family and friends' rate.

One lady suggested that I do flyers up for babysitting in the local area, particularly as its coming up to the festive season so many people will be going to parties or want some time to do Xmas shopping without their kids in tow. Did this last night so am gonna go to the noticeboards in all the shops locally and post them up!

Im hoping that if I can do this for a few months and we live really frugally for the next while that we can a) stay head above water with all our debt b) get some savings together with a view to securing a consolidation loan at a low rate and c) start to make an impact on the money borrowed rather than just the interest.

Im kind of annoyed though that the government dont seem to have done anything at all to address the issue of the numbers of laid off construction workers. Whatever about those who made a packet during the boom and have a nice little nest egg now to rely on, what about all the recently graduated apprentices who slogged for four years on apprentice wage and now have nothing to go to. Or worse still, the ones who are in the middle of their apprenticeships and have no jobs now and so cant complete their time. I definitely think its something they need to address quickly. I think a significant number of these guys probably left school early too and have no other skills to fall back on now. I feel really sorry for my partner - he literally just got his papers after 4/5 hard years on apprentice wage when the industry crashed - its very disheartening for anyone. I looked up the SEI courses and they are about €1800 a pop which is a lot when you have nothing and you are still not guaranteed a job when you complete it anyway. Id love to hear from anyone who has done one of these courses and whether or not it has opened up any opportunities for them??

Anyway, rant over!

Im so glad I posted on here and grateful for all the replies and advice!

As for the holiday next year the only way thats going to happen is if I win one - what are my odds?? Ive applied to every competition going so maybe my luck will change - its nice to think about anyway!!

Fiona
 
Fiona free to air is just a satellite dish and a set-top box which you install yourself - it'd cost you 150-200 for the equipment and you'd have no monthly bills after that. The equipment picks up the freely aired channels like Ch4, BBC 1,2,3,4 News 24, SKY news, CNN, E4, E4+1, Film 4, Film 4+1 and a whole slew of music channels, shopping (eek) and God channels. RTE and those channels will be picked up by your TV already. I just watch Bloomberg these days.

Think of it - no monthly bills for SKY or anyone else ! That's 24 quid or more per month for you to spend on yourself ;)
 
Hi there,

Sent previous post and now wanted to ask advice on my own situation. Reminder of my situation is as follows:-

Mortgage Outstanding: €263,000 (paying €1,375 pm interest only)
MBNA Loan €15,386 (paying €365 pm) - 4 years left
Credit Union Loan €16,950 (paying €420 pm) - 5 years left
Current Value of House €280,000 (probably less at the moment!)

I incurred my debts when my ex and I split about two years ago as I was trying to keep the mortgage repayments myself and was on a low income.

I now earn €2895 per month after tax so its not too bad and I can manage to service the debts.

With the credit crunch taking hold I am unsure if my job will be certain in a couple of months. Also my mortgage is due to revert to interest and capital in April (although I've been told I can apply for another year interest only). It is unlikely I will get a job on the same salary here with the way things are so am considering going to London (worked there for a couple of years before) and am fairly confident can match my current salary with the sterling rate etc.

Unfortunately I have been unable to buy out my ex as I missed a few loan repayments about two years ago and my credit rating has been adversely affected. It will be another 4 years before it is good again. I have tried to sell the house twice but it is literally impossible at the moment plus I've worked so hard to keep it it would be hard to let it go.

I am thinking of renting it out if I go and work in the UK. I can get approx €1,300 pm which will be ok if I can get another year on interest only. However even if this works out it will still revert to cap and int in 2010. My question is this - is my ex liable to pay half the shortfall? It is a joint mortgage and the deeds are in both our names. Also what is the situation when its eventually sold. Would he still get 50% even though I have been making all the mortgage payments for the last couple of years? I really don't know what the best thing to do is - should I try rent it out for 4/5 years and then buy him out when my other debts and cleared and my credit rating has been restored? Any advice very much appreciated!
 
Hi,
You should put this on a new advise request post i think. Not an expert in this area but I have to imagine that your X is of course liable for half of everything with his name on it and would get half of the sale proceeds too.. You should get proper legal advise on it i would imagine.

If you rent it out, he should be paying half the balance to make up the mort payment.

Lou34 said:
Hi there,

Sent previous post and now wanted to ask advice on my own situation. Reminder of my situation is as follows:-

Mortgage Outstanding: €263,000 (paying €1,375 pm interest only)
MBNA Loan €15,386 (paying €365 pm) - 4 years left
Credit Union Loan €16,950 (paying €420 pm) - 5 years left
Current Value of House €280,000 (probably less at the moment!)

I incurred my debts when my ex and I split about two years ago as I was trying to keep the mortgage repayments myself and was on a low income.

I now earn €2895 per month after tax so its not too bad and I can manage to service the debts.

With the credit crunch taking hold I am unsure if my job will be certain in a couple of months. Also my mortgage is due to revert to interest and capital in April (although I've been told I can apply for another year interest only). It is unlikely I will get a job on the same salary here with the way things are so am considering going to London (worked there for a couple of years before) and am fairly confident can match my current salary with the sterling rate etc.

Unfortunately I have been unable to buy out my ex as I missed a few loan repayments about two years ago and my credit rating has been adversely affected. It will be another 4 years before it is good again. I have tried to sell the house twice but it is literally impossible at the moment plus I've worked so hard to keep it it would be hard to let it go.

I am thinking of renting it out if I go and work in the UK. I can get approx €1,300 pm which will be ok if I can get another year on interest only. However even if this works out it will still revert to cap and int in 2010. My question is this - is my ex liable to pay half the shortfall? It is a joint mortgage and the deeds are in both our names. Also what is the situation when its eventually sold. Would he still get 50% even though I have been making all the mortgage payments for the last couple of years? I really don't know what the best thing to do is - should I try rent it out for 4/5 years and then buy him out when my other debts and cleared and my credit rating has been restored? Any advice very much appreciated!
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Fiona - You said it is difficult to rent a room where you are, but is it possible to rent the whole house and rent somewhere smaller and cheaper elsewhere so that you can make a surplus? Also, if you rented closer to where you work you could get rid of the car?

Bob.
 
here'sjohnny said:
Fiona free to air is just a satellite dish and a set-top box which you install yourself - it'd cost you 150-200 for the equipment and you'd have no monthly bills after that. The equipment picks up the freely aired channels like Ch4, BBC 1,2,3,4 News 24, SKY news, CNN, E4, E4+1, Film 4, Film 4+1 and a whole slew of music channels, shopping (eek) and God channels. RTE and those channels will be picked up by your TV already. I just watch Bloomberg these days.

Think of it - no monthly bills for SKY or anyone else ! That's 24 quid or more per month for you to spend on yourself ;)
Click to expand...

It won't cost the OP anything as she already has a dish and a box. We cancelled sky last year and use our digibox to get the FTA channels.
 
ok cool, so what do I do? Sorry clueless here!! Like do I literally just ring Sky and Setanta up and cancel my subscription and then my tv/dish just picks up those channels automatically?? confused?

Like when I just use my normal remote control I can only get rte 1 and 2, tv3 tg4 and utv.??

Sorry for sounding thick but Im not technically minded at all - evidently!!
 
information in the above thread seems to indicate that it's just a matter of unsubscribing from sky and having the Free to Air channels 'left' on your system.

i haven't done this as we never had sky in our new house, but we have FTA in three rooms.We had to get three separate boxes but i think that the system can take a maximum of four boxes. However, the tv in our spare room has a feed from a FTA box in another room so the tv can be used, but you have to watch whatever is on the tv the feed is coming from.

We find FTA fine. there are still nights when i can't find something decent to watch though. and i would love to have some of the documentary and nature channels but for the amount of tv we actually watch sky is just a luxury.

as mentioned in a post in the thread above, you should watch out for some channels which appear quite tame during the day but switch to 18+ content once it gets dark. (i don't think you mentioned kids, but just in case you had younger visitors)
 
Technologist said:
You just stop paying the sub and when you card is deactivatd, you're left with just the FTA channels.

Or just buy a FTA or a 'FreeSat' compatible tuner and attach that to your dish instead. The FTA tuners can get more channels and work with more satellites than an unsubscribed Sky box. The FreeSat tuners are quite easy to use but only work on one satellite.
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That's from Woodbine's link above. Sorry but it occurred to me later that you had all the equipment already - you have a satellite dish, a box on top of your tv and the LNB which is part of your satellite dish - it's the end of the arm that looks into your satellite dish and looks like a kind of microphone.

Stopping your subscription will leave you with the Free To Air (FTA) channels. You might have to tune it yourself after that or perhaps the FTA channels will automatically be left. If you can tune the set-top box yourself you'll get all the UK channels and a bunch of news ones all for free. There's tons of other rubbish for free too but if you get handy with your remote control you can eliminate them. As the Technologist says, you can alternatively get yourself a new set-top box which will cost around 60 quid and will be compatible with the Sky satellite dish and LNB. I found this easy to tune and if you're stuck, someone on the internet somewhere will guide you through the process for free. You'll have loads of fun.

Is saving the cost of your Sky subscription per month worth thinking about doing this now ?
 
Wasn't this something Eddie Hobbs was suggesting at one stage? Basically, cut the magnetic strip off the credit card so you can't use it in shops but you still have all the relevant numbers for booking online flights etc.

The other tactic is to bury it in a drawer. That way, its not to hand when you are out shopping and you have to deliberately dig it out when you want to use it. You have to put it back afterwards though!!
 
I dropped my credit card in a bowl of water and stuck it in the freezer. There if I need it but lots of time to change my mind while it defrosts.

One more bit of advise (maybe mentioned above but I didn't see it), keep a record of ALL your expenditure. Every cent you spend should be noted. At the end of the month have a look through it and determine where money was spent unnecessarily. It's a cliche because it's true 'mind the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves'. Become aggressive with your savings, treat it like a game. Set aside €X amount every month to treat yourself to whatever if you stick to your budget. If any of my friends got into financial difficulty I'd like to think I'd be understanding & supportive. I'm sure your friends are/will too. :)
 
fio1978 said:
€8k - MBNA credit card costs me about €200 per month min repayment (now cut up and not used anymore)

€4.k - MBNA second credit card - costs about €120 per mth min repayment (now cut up and not used anymore)
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Contact MBNA and ask them is there anything they can do for you with there interest rate, i done this on the off chance and reduced mine from 14.99% to 10.99%
Didnt have to give a reason or anything
 
Re: Go Green!

you dont even have to install a free to air sat as your existing sat dish from sky will suffice and if you cancell your contract you will still have the likes of the bbc's and itv's e4,c4 more 4 and sky 3 and no extra cost then you could just pick up and antenna from woodies or b & q or 1 of them for the rte 1,net 2,tv3,tg4 it will save you a couple of quid each month anyway,if you got a halifx visa card you could transfer over whatever balance they give you ie if your limit is 1500 transfer over 1500 and at least thats 0% for 6 months and only 9.5% after so its still cheaper than the mbna and try and knock as much off the mbna in the man time
 
Rusty Cogs said:
I dropped my credit card in a bowl of water and stuck it in the freezer. There if I need it but lots of time to change my mind while it defrosts.
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You can probably still read the card details for "card not present" (e.g. internet) purchases without defrosting it.
 
Hi,
Just as an update on my original post. My partner still has no work despite literally searching constantly and signing up to every agency!

We've cut out everything - no alcohol, Sky is gone, we bought the free to air box at Christmas and Im now 42 days off the fags!(The only positive thing thats come out of this recession for me!!)

Ive also got a second job. Ive my full time job during the week and then I work two night shifts in a call centre at the weekend.

Im totally wrecked but at least Im getting somewhere with the credit cards.I cant do this forever though - im so tired!! god im really paying for the stupid decisions I made over the last few years when it came to money.

Im hoping to get a credit union loan in 6 months time to cover whats left on the car loan and the two credit cards. That should make things a bit easier and will allow me some breathing space and to give uo the 2nd job.

Now I think Im working illegally as the combination of the two jobs means Im in breach of the working time directive. Does anyone know anything about this, like, if I plan it strategically that my average working week over the period of a year is under the 48 hr max, is this ok? Would it really be noticed or would I get away with it? Who monitors this kind of thing?? Is it still illegal to do it if its just for a shirt period of time to get yourslef out of a whole??
 
Fio...well done you.
I wouldn't worry about the working time directive...as I think it applies to employers expectations of employees. If employees decide to work 2 jobs each less than 48 hrs but the total being more...I can't see what anyone can do about it.

My OH used to work 60+ hrs every week and no one was complaining except me!
 
Hi Fiona - just wanted to say good for you. You are really doing your best to keep the show on the road. It won't be forever I'm sure. I hope your partner has a nice dinner on the table for you when you get home!
Also don't be too hard on yourself about decisions you made in the past. You are working very hard now to make up for it. You weren't the only one making similiar decisons over the last few years.
Good Luck - I hope it works out for you.
 
[broken link removed]
more info on employee rights and laws regarding the working time directive. Can i ask - why can you partner not get a job in the call center?
 
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