Looking back, I guess my debt problem started a very long time ago. Borrowing my pocket money before I got it, having to pay it back, leading to me having to borrow it again!!!! My life was pretty much like that for a good few number of years, I used catalogues, Provident etc to get by and give us a bit extra for treats.

My first dealings with high street creditors was when I first met my hubby and he added me to his bank account. We were offered an overdraft!!! Handy, because we had decided to get married even though we had only really just met.  After the overdraft, we got a mortgage, then a credit card and so on and so on, you all know how it goes…….

My mam fell ill in May ‘04 with a stroke and while in hospital recovering, she was diagnosed with cancer. Terminal cancer with no treatment available because of her age and health. Devastating wasn’t the word!!!!! In the September she passed away peacefully at home surrounded by her family. Looking back, I reacted to my mam’s death by spending trying to comfort myself. This went on for around 1yr, adding to the increasing debt.

 Anyway, everything was ‘fine’ and we were managing to pay the bills until we came back from holiday in Setember 2006. There had been an influx of cheaper labour from Eastern Europe and the building sites, hubby is a bricklayer, had been flooded by them. As a lot of sites use agencies, and agencies are in it for the money, there was no work for my hubby and his squad.  We ‘managed’ by using the cards and overdraft until he could find work, after all, all the building work that is happening it wouldn’t be long…..how wrong!!!

After Christmas, hubby tried to claim Job Seekers Allowance. After 10 weeks of DWP dawdling and wrongly cancelling his claim, even though he was ’signing on’ he was notified that because of his NI contributions were low, he wasn’t entitled to anything. Could he claim Income Support then or help with the mortgage—a big fat ‘NO’ because I was working. The fact that I was employed by an agency and only worked part time and term time only had no relevance, I was still working and expected to run the house and support my family. The essentials had to be paid so we stopped paying the cards and loans. Working out the amount of we payed out  per month astounded me, over £1000, no the wonder we wern’t managing. We tightened our belts a bit more and I got in touch with Payplan. Their advice was good, contact the creditors explaining the situation and request that we paid a token payment of £1 until hubby found employment. This we did and got replies rejecting our £1 and asking for full minimum payments. The bills still come, adding more and more onto the debt. We kept writing asking for them to accept the £1 and the rejection letters continued. DMP was suggested if we could cut back even more but we couldn’t. By this time we were in over £45k worth of debt and getting deeper at rate that wasn’t even funny!!!!

After nearly 1 year without work, hubby finally found some work. As he started I finished as my contract had ran out due to the end of the academic year. We continued to try to solve our problems direct with our creditors but all they kept coming back with was a reduced payment which was still far too high. So the bills kept coming, the debt kept rising and the phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing…….

In October 2007, we received a letter from the land registry stating that there had been an application for a charging order on our house. I didn’t know what this was so I decided to contact the CAB, try to get some advice face to face. The lady looked at our figures. Worked it out and stated that we were spending more than we earned……..we had no disposable income at all…. After she  ‘tweaked’ our expenditure, she came up with £13, enough to offer £1 to each of our creditors. Then the ‘B’ word came into it…..No way!!!! Our house was our children’s home, they couldn’t be uprooted. What would our families say????What would the neighbours say????? There must be another way????? I walked out of there fighting back the tears and feeling numb. This couldn’t be true, we would find another way, we had too!!!!!

The look on my eldest daughter’s face when I told her tore my heart out. My eldest son was very logical about it but it was still very hard.