30k in personal loans plus 220k mortage. Now income dropped to 45k

Age: 42
Spouse’s/Partner's age: Single

Annual gross income from employment or profession: 45k
Annual gross income of spouse:

Type of employment: e.g. Civil Servant, self-employed : Private Sector
In general are you:
(a) spending more than you earn, or
(b) saving?

Trying to payoff the credit cards which is proving difficult with reduced net pay.

Rough estimate of value of home : 350k
Amount outstanding on your mortgage: 220K
What interest rate are you paying? 2.5%

Other borrowings – car loans/personal loans etc
CAR - 19K

Do you pay off your full credit card balance each month?
Meeting a little over min repayments only
If not, what is the balance on your credit card?
C/CARDS 12K

Savings and investments:
None

Do you have a pension scheme?
Yes but have not paid into since 2006

Do you own any investment or other property?
No

Ages of children:
N/A

Life insurance:
N/A


What specific question do you have or what issues are of concern to you?

Have 30k in debt plus a mortage of 220k.
Made redundant late 08. However have now secured permanent employment albeit at a significant drop in Salary.

I am current on 6 month payment holiday from mortage provider/ car loan to enable me to tackle the credit card debts. I have not used the cards since Dec 08, however as the interest continues to mount up i am barely making a dent in them.

I missed four payments in late 08 on one credit card and it has affected my credit rating. Before this have had a clean record.

Any advice how to approach clearing my credit card/ car loan debt ?

Is it possible that my mortage lender would increase my borrowings & term in order to clear my short terms debts and ease up monthly cashflow?
OR/
Would another lender consolidate the credit card/car loan debt over a longer term.

Any advice / suggestions would be appreciated.

hi badwithmoney,

I'm sure other people will be able to advise about best place to consolidate etc but before you do that you really should try and figure out how you've got into such debt. Personally I would consider 45k a year a really good salary so if you've got into debt on a higher salary than that you need to address that or else this time next year you'll have a consolidated loan and all the credit cards run up again.

At 45k, really rough estimate is that your bringing home about 2,500 a month. Given that you've no mortgage or car loans to pay at the moment surely you should be able to throw at least 1500 a month at the cards. It really depends on how badly you want to clear the debts. Personally I'd try for those 6 months to live as frugally as I can and throw as much as I can at the cards.

Pay minimum payments off everything except the highest interest card and throw everything at that until its paid off and then move on to the next highest interest rate etc etc. It might be worth contacting your credit card company to see if they'll do a balance transfer. I was recently offered 3.9% from Ulster Bank up to May 2010 for any balance transfers.

Best of luck with it.

Try transferring your credit card balance to a 0% rate card
e.g.
Tesco do 6 months at 0%, 14.9% Apr normally.

So any payment you make for the first 6 months is paying down the balnace,not paying interest.

When the 6 months is up, transfer again e.g. ryanair are now doing credit cards 10 minths 0% but I suspect the devil will be in the detail of that one.

[FONT=&quot]Given that you have a break from other loan and only yourself to look after, you should be able to make a major dent in the card balances soon.

[/FONT]

D8Lady said:

Try transferring your credit card balance to a 0% rate card
e.g.
Tesco do 6 months at 0%, 14.9% Apr normally.

So any payment you make for the first 6 months is paying down the balnace,not paying interest.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, she hasn't a hope of getting approved for ANY other credit card these days with even ONE black mark on her ICB.

OP: I'd suggest you speak to MABS ( http://mabs.ie/ )

Make an appointment and speak to someone there. They can help.

I would also suggest selling your car. Get a cheaper one. NOBODY needs a 19k car (unless you're a chauffeur of course).