# Massive debt is it too late for help ?



## rath1 (9 Jan 2010)

Age: *mid 20s*
Spouse’s/Partner's age: *mid 20s*

Annual gross income from employment or profession:* 35k* lost all overtime and weekend work. Shift bonus gone also.

Annual gross income of spouse: *0*

Type of employment:* employed*

In general are you:
(a) spending more than you earn, *YES*
(b) saving? *no*

Rough estimate of value of home *300K*
Amount outstanding on your mortgage: 190K
What interest rate are you paying? *TRACKER 2.1%*

Other borrowings – car loans/personal loans etc
*Personal loan 1 - 12000
Personal loan 2 - 
Personal loan 3 - *

Do you pay off your full credit card balance each month? *no*
If not, what is the balance on your credit card?
*Credit Card 1 - 9500
Credit Card 2 - 5000
*
Savings and investments:
*Online Savings - NONE
CU Savings - NONE*

Do you have a pension scheme? *no*

Do you own any investment or other property?* no, JUST MY HOME*

Ages of children:* Six - Four - 10 months*

Life insurance: *no*


What specific question do you have or what issues are of concern to you? 
*Lots of debt, low enough income, is there any hope of getting out of it.*

*Monthly outgoings:*
Mortgage - 680
House insurance 25
Car Insurance - 60
Loan 1 - 390 3 years left.
Bins - 30
eFlow - 30
Credit Cards - 300
Phone bill - 60
Petrol - 150
Shoping - 750
Gas and elec - 250
Broadband and sky gone.

There are also a lot of other smaller expenses during the year but these are the main ones.


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## Mommah (9 Jan 2010)

*Re: Massive debt is it to late for help ?*

It's never too late.

Things look grim but not unfixable at all.

Your personal debt is less than 30k
Your spouse isn't bringing in an income and therefore there is an oppourtunity for him/her to do that.

You are not in negative equity.
You have 3 lovely kids,a partner and a home that isn't costing the earth. Looks good to me.

You have obviously been chronically spending more than you earn. 
That must stop now.
Your earnings are very low for a family...I imagine you would be entitled to some sort of Family income support.  Talk to MABS or your local community welfare officer.

Could you get rid of the car and get a cheap run around??
That would clear 12k.

Your expenses don't include discretionary spending.
Occasional night out...things for the kids etc.
You need to figure out your costs on all these things.

Personally I like the www.totalmoneymakeover.com approach to problems like yours. Gives you baby steps to aim for. Its very american but very practical. Good luck on becoming debt-free!


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## Protocol (9 Jan 2010)

rath1 said:


> *Monthly outgoings:*
> 
> Bins - 30
> 
> ...



This is not much help, I'm sorry, but I have 2 points:

Gas and elec = 250 pm, this seems high????

I pay 40-50 pm for elec for a 4-bed detached house.

Also, bins at 30pm seems high???


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## browtal (9 Jan 2010)

Try Money advice & Budgeting service.  They will, if necessary and you desire, negotiate with your creditors.  They will find a suitable arrangement with your creditors that will match your finances. They also, if necessary pay your bills through your local credit union if you wish. You can lodge your outgoings to the CU and they will pay them.
They are most practical, understanding and nonjudgemental and will go a long way to finding a solution for you. Good luck monol


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## davidoco (10 Jan 2010)

It seems that you would quality for FIS.  It's important to be aware, that no matter how little you may qualify for, you will still get a minimum of €20 each week.  With 3 kids the limit is 703 net pay so it seems with a gross pay of 35k you will easily qualify.


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## D8Lady (10 Jan 2010)

What interest rate are you paying on the credit cards? Can you swap to a 6 month 0%  credit card?. Any payment made pays off your debt, not interest. 

Tesco 
0% for 6 month on balance & purchases. 14.9% thereafter.
[broken link removed]
0% for 6 months, 9.5% thereafter.

Swap credit card as each 6 month term runs out so you never pay interest and the debt reduces faster.

This will work if you do not add any more debt. You need to stop using the cards. 

750 on shopping - this needs to be looked at in detail. Take a look through the key posts in this forum for day to day money saving ideas.

You will pull through this, age is on you side. Get all the help you can from the suggestions that other posters have made.


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## circle (11 Jan 2010)

Outgoings: 2665
Income: 2596 (salary) + 487 (child benefit) = 3083

You need to do everything you can to increase your income and reduce your outgoings, putting all excess into your borrowings until they are paid off. (Stating the obvious!)

*Income:*
*Social Welfare support:*
http://www.citizensinformation.ie/c...amilies-and-children/family_income_supplement
- FIS (268/month for three children and an income of 599/week)
- Back to school allownace (€200/ year per child at school)
- Medical card - would cover medical expenses and also mean that you won't have to pay the health levy (€117/month)
- Fuel allowance - €17/month
*Tax credits:*
- Check that you are claiming for medical expenses, environmental charges (bin charges) and that your mortgage interest relief is being applied correctly.
*New Income:* 3502 (added FIS, BTS, Fuel allowance, removed Health Levy) 

*Outgoings:*
*ESB/Gas:* Change ESB to Airtricity or Bord Gais and change Gas to Flo Gas to save at least 10% on these. (€25 / month)
*Phone:* Get rid of home phone if this is included here and make sure you're both on the cheapest PAYG option you can get.
*Bins:* This is very high. Make sure you are recycling, composting and reducing this all you can. 
Once you have your black bin volume down, you can trade down to a smaller black bin which will reduce your annual service charge.
*Car:* This is costing you more than €600 a month, nearly as much as your mortgage! Could you use public transport instead? If that's not an option, you need to sell the car and buy an old one for 2/3k.
There are great deals out there now, you will be able to get a reliable small car.
*Shopping:* This is very high - look to reduce it. If you look at the price on anything you're buying, multiply it by your highest interest rate as this is what you're really paying for it!

*New outgoings:* 
Just reducing by €25 as the rest may take a little while to pay off:
2645

This gives you €444 extra a month which would pay off your credit card bills in under 3 years. (move them to 0% now) If you sell the car, use the money to pay off the highest interest rate borrowings first. You really need to sell the car to get on top of things.

Make sure to eliminate any other outgoings (the rest of your money is going somewhere if things aren't balancing at the moment). Put any holidays, expensive gifts etc. on hold for the moment, you can't afford them.

A further option might be for your partner to look at minding other children at home?
Best of luck, I hope everything works out and you are soon looking at a steadily reducing amount of debt!


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## euclid (11 Jan 2010)

Protocol said:


> I pay 40-50 pm for elec for a 4-bed detached house.


 
I pay Euro 92 per month for electricity for a 3-bed detached house.
Where do you get such cheap electricity from?


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## Gorbashow (11 Jan 2010)

Try Airtricity for the good rates. I recently changed ESB for them and can't complain.
Also 30pm for bins seems expensive. Check Panda.ie - 1 year = 282E = 23.5E/pm or segregate really hard and you might even go below this.

Contact MABS, with their help, try to consolidate all the loans. They might be also able to help you negotiate with CC company, to stop the interest on your CC for couple of months.


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## michaelm (12 Jan 2010)

Lots of good advice here, and a lot of work put into circle's post.  Definitely apply for FIS today, and if you don't get a full medical card you'll get a GP card instead. 

If you're paid monthly and mortgage comes out before your pay-date then you could get the bank to change your mortgage date to late in the month (after your pay-date) freeing up a once-off €680.  

Re: Pay-as-you-go mobile.  I run mine and my wife's mobiles for €260 per year: €20 top-up monthly for her, giving her free calls and texts on the same network (vodafone) and €10 every six months for me to ensure I can make/receive calls. I IOU from her account as required.  Granted we don't make lots of long calls but it doesn't feel restrictive.

Get a family finance book.  I hadn't bought one in years but picked up 'Family Finance 2010' (Colm Rapple - balloons on the cover) this year in Easons.  It's very good, €12 well spent.


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## Complainer (12 Jan 2010)

michaelm said:


> Get a family finance book.  I hadn't bought one in years but picked up 'Family Finance 2010' (Colm Rapple - balloons on the cover) this year in Easons.  It's very good, €12 well spent.


Get it in your local library for free - €12 saved!


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## sadie (13 Jan 2010)

Also if someone is minding children full time in the home, you are entitled to the Home Carer's Tax Credit. 
It is always worth contacting your local tax office, if you are not great with the online Revenue sites etc, it's worth calling in to them. 
There may be taxes you are due back from last year, or unclaimed credits for previous years, specially if your income changed over the past year or whatever. 
If you are entitled to FIS, then you may be entitled to things like Back To School allowances and stuff. 
It's what you pay your taxes for, so that you can get help in the hard times.


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