In the middle of all this my brother put life into perspective when he took an overdose and ended up inhospitel everything else had to take a back seat. Once again my new ‘friends’ were there for me X

15^th April 2008I got a call yesterday morning from my Mum who lives 200 miles away to rell me that my brother had taken an overdose and was in my local hospital.

I haven’t see him for over a year and we weren’t brought up together but he is still my baby brother (not quite a baby he’s 28). He had a really bad childhood with my Mum abandoning him when he was 2 then just turning up when he was 6. She never had any maternal feelings for him and so he was in and out of care. His dad (mums 2nd husband – she’s had 5) died when he was 17 after years on drugs.

DeeThank you to everyone who has posted messages of support.

He is here now and although we had a very difficult meeting with the crisis team he is in better spirits. We have made an action plan and I have arranged a couple more days off work to spend with him. My other sister has persuaded my mum to take some responsibility and so she is coming up next week to take him to her house for a break while he gets used to his medication.

I’ll keep you posted, its nice for me to have someone to talk to about it

DeeYour’re all so lovely. I came on this forum for support with my money problems but it offers so much more.

Thank you x   18^th April 2008

Just thought I’d give you an update. I took my brother to the doctors yesterday and she gave him some anti-depressants. I have to administer them daily and hide them. He was also perscribed some tablet to repair the damaged he has done to his stomach linig which is causing him a great deal of pain. He is really wanting this medication to work cause he feels that he cant go on as he is. I’ve really enjoyed his company and he said that he is kicking himself that we haven’t spent more time together over the years.

I went to meet his children yesterday (I haven’t seem them since they were babies) they are a bit uncontrolable but gorgeous all the same. I have invited them over on Sunday so that he can spend some quality time with them before he goes down to stay with my Mum.

ÂÂ
Dee

My brother is much better now. He is still getting himself sorted out with a place to live but I think he has hope for the future now and is staying with a friend at the minute. 

 

I know that seems an odd title but for us it was a blessing as my next post explains.

Hi All

Just had my house valued at £125K and so as we owe £124500 then there is a chance that we could keep our house through the bankruptcy. Trying not to get too excited and as we had stopped our payments inorder to save for rent and br fees we would need to quickly get back up to date. This shouldn’t be a problem cause we have it in our savings account.

What a rollercoaster!

With the knowledge gained on the forum I was in a postion to make a considered decision when my circumstances changed. I now needed support for my BR and as always forum members were there to supply it in abundance.

12^th March 2008 Hi

Not been on for a while. The presure of it all got a little too much and what with other family issues and the difficulties in my marriage I just sort of shut it all out.
Since deciding upon an IVA and going through collating all my paperwork my daughter has decided to go away to university. As my income will drop when she leaves further education ie maintenance, child benefit and tax credits but she will still require financial assistance my disposable income will be insufficient to fund an IVA.

12^th March 2008

 

Started looking at rented properties today as I had a day off work. Rang one of the companies who advised that as a bankrupt they would require 6 months rent in advance but family would probably help us out and if we stopped paying our current mortgage and secured loan for a couple of months then we should be able to get this together.

I also contacted my local court today and they are sending me the pack.

Sounds crazy but I am quite excited about the future and the ability to help my daughter through uni gives me more satisfaction than owning my own home so it doesn’t really feel like a sacrifice.

25^th March 2008

 Just come back from a very snowy visit to Great Yarmouth to visit my Mum.
Went to visit the rental house last Thursday. We really liked it and have decided to apply. The landlord was a bit taken aback by my honesty on our financial situation and although the agent said that it wouldn’t be a problem I don’t think that he saw it that way. However, he liked us and appreciated our honesty. I said that we would be happy to pay 3 months rent up front to alay his fears so he is going to speak with the agent for more advice.

Dee

26^th March 2008

 Still not sure how the next few months are going to pan out and because a lot of things are out of our control ie whether we are accepted for the rental house, how quickly the house sells etc.

If we are accepted for the house things will become much clearer. They would want us to move in in May. I’m still not certain what to do about our house in terms of the bankruptcy. After looking into house sales in this area I tend to agree with Melanie on this issue and let the OR deal with the sale of the house. Some of the best Estate Agents in the area have only managed to sell one property this year. If it takes months I am going to be in the position where I am dealing with calls from not only my unsecured creditors but also the mortgage lenders and the secured loan lenders until the house sells which could take months.

Dee

Although my IVA jouney was short lived at least I knew I had explored the option before eventually going bankrupt and it feels a little like we were eased into it if that makes sense. At this time more people in the family were aware of our circumstances and took some comfort in the knowlede that we were taking steps to resolve it.

19^th January 2008  
Just an update. Melanie has agreed to take up our case and I am in the process of getting all the paperwork together. I’m still feeling positive about the IVA and at the moment trying not to think too much about it not being accepted. I feel that if can be done then Melanie is the one to make the proposal the best it could possibly be for both my Creditors and myself. If it isn’t accepted……..I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
I spoke to my Dad the other night. He lives in Spain and I don’t get to see to him very often. When he came over at Christmas although my sister had made him aware of my situation I didn’t feel able to talk to him about it directly so told him everything was fine. When things took a turn for the worse (when Abbey decided to withdraw my overdraft)I emailed him to tell him how bad things actually were. He didn’t respond which left me to believe that he either didn’t care or was too disappointed in me to respond. His computer had broken and he called me the second he picked up my email (11pm our time). Dad can usually be quite patronising and braggs a lot about his achievements but to be honest he couldn’t have been more supportive. He said he wished he could help but that his money was tied up in property. He did say that he could send me some money but I told him that we needed to get used to living on a budget and the sooner we learned how to do this the better. We decided it would be much more useful if I felt I could come to him in an emergency ie I dont think our car will last 5 years. I still hid a lot of my feelings from him because I could tell that he was really upset and although I’m learning not to be ashamed of our situation I’m still very aware that this is also effecting those people close to us who can see the pain we go through but aren’t able to help. Helping ourselves by tackling the issue also makes them feel a little better which in turn makes me feel less guilty.

Thanks for reading

At this point the phone calls from creditors started and the reality that there was no turning back hit home.

29^th January 2008  We have been receiving phone calls from NR every couple of days chasing payment. We advised them last week about the IVA but have still been receiving regular calls. I am always polite (the loan is in my husbands name but he always passes the phone to me) and explain the situation. Tonight we received a call from a young lady called Celeste from NR and I can honestly say she was really lovely and very understanding. She told me that 3/4 of IVA’s proposed to NR are accepted which I wasn’t aware of and she made me feel like she believed that we were doing everything we could to pay back as much as possible. We had a lovely chat and at the end of the call she thanked me for my time. Just wanted to reassure people who are worried about ceasing payments its not all pushy call centre staff just be open and honest and if they are rude then at least you know that you are better than that debt or no debt.

I dont know whether her information was correct or that our IVA will be accepted but I do know that a little compassion goes a long way.

Dee

Well I did take the advice of the forum members and ‘made that call’. I was still struggling with my husbands anxiety over the whole situation which was putting a huge strain on our marriage. In my next posts I open up about these problems and again I’m overwhelmed by the support.

12^th January 2008 Just thought I’d give you an update. I have been in contact with Melanie’s team. I spoke to a lovely lady called Tina who went through my situation with me. She was very thorough which was just aswell because I had under estimated my expenditure by quite a long way ie not taking into consideration car maintenance and other incidentals. She was very honest about my options and in fact sought advise on whether my husbands proposal was something that they would look at as he owes 57% to Northern Rock. Any way she got back to me and said that it would be agreed that they would go ahead. So will speak to her again on Monday with more info on the loans etc.

I have successfully open a new bank account with Alliance & Leicester. I opened it on the internet on last week and have already received a cheque book and a list of my direct debits to confirm for switching

Most people don’t even know that he has these problems and as they have been going on for the last 20 years we have all just learnt to accept and love him even when he doesn’t make that easy.

Do you have any tips on how to deal with stressed husbands? (Keep it clean)!

 

I definately began to feel more positive as a result of the forum and there genuinly seemed to be a solution in the form of an IVA. The next stop was to get my OH onboard with the help of other forum members.

4^th January 2008 Thanks for the advice that makes sense. I have filled in my details on Melanies website and although there is a long way to go I already feel quite giddy and I slept much better last night.

Just completed my first budget shop and it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Perhaps if I had been doing this for the last few years I wouldn’t be in this mess. My debt has been a slow process with only 1 holiday abroad (my Dad does live in Spain so paid for accommodation) and an old banger for a car and a donated motorbike for my husband. We rarely buy new clothes for ourselves and dont smoke or go out. my situation has been totally caused by mismanagement of money and not adjusting standard of living when the 2 youngest came along.

And to think I worked in a bank for 9 years. What is it they say about builders/decorators own homes!!5^th January 2008 Hi

I am hoping to get my husband to look at this sight with me. He is really struggling with the idea of having an IVA (not that we are guaranteed to have one agreed).

Your stories truly make me feel positive. I think the hard thing is that he has never had any involvement in the finances so this is really the first time he has had to face the issue – never worried about the bills coming in just trusted me that everything was fine. I dont accept full responsibility though cause I did try to tell him on many occasions but he just never got his head round it and as ignorance seemed to be bliss I joined him in ignorance.

Dee

At this point I truely was addicted to the forum and in total awe of the community spirit. I have heard stories of everyone pulling together in times of trouble but I don’t think in this day and age it happens very often so I feel blessed to have stumbled across this forum and witnessed for myself the true meaning of this.

 5th January 2008
Has anyone ever thought about publishing some of these threads? They are interesting, comforting, supportive, inspirational…..I could go on. Some people don’t have access to the web and I feel for anyone going through what we are all going through (I know every case is different but there is definitely common stories, situations, emotions etc)that don’t have access to this forum.

Thanks to everyone who had shared their experiences. My husband read through them this morning and definitely feels more positive about an IVA. Unfortunately he is now fretting as to whether we would have one accepted.

We owe £47k and unfortunately approx £27k is with NR and we only have approx £390 to offer to an IVA. If its not acceptable then BR is the only other option for us.

Thanks again

Well as I am writing this some way into my journey I wanted to be sure I could capture my feelings along the way and I felt that the best way to do that was to look at some of my posts on the forum.

 It started back in December 07, we had just about managed Christmas but the future looked bleak and I wasn’t sure how we would get through the next few months. I started looking for a way forward and remebered this site from earlier in the year before I went down the route of another secured consolidation loan.

This was my first post:

27^th December 2007I am looking into IVA’s. I have a query councerning my daughter. She will start University in September so obviously all the income I get for her ie maintenance, child benefit, tax credits will cease but as she wont be working I cant expect her to pay board. She will however be getting a student loan to pay for her tuition fees and have a part time job to pay for her clothes and social life etc. How is this looked upon. I will need to include her when calculating food, electricity etc as she isn’t going away. She may be entitled to a small grant do I have to take the whole of this from her for the IVA? I dont want to discourage her from going to University as she has worked very hard but I am scared that if my financial difficulties effect her standard of living she will give up her dream of being the first member of our family to go to University and get full time job.

Then I got cold feet about an IVA and and wanted to explore other options. Around this time aswell my bank withdrew my hefty overdraft and wanted it paying back over a relativly short period. HELP!

1^st January 2008

Can I arrange a DMP myself rather than go through a company. If so what is the fairest way to distribute excess income after expenditure. I owe £43k to 5 diferent creditors with varying pecentage of amount owed ie 55% to NR, 35% Abbey, 7% egg credit card,4% MBNA credit card and 1% store card. Should I take my despoable income and offer the equivelant percentage as a monthly payment? This would mean that NR would get £213 as appossed to £298 but Abbey would only get £132 as appossed to £265.

2^nd January 2008

 Just wanted a moan really. I have been looking at our finances as we are really struggling. Today I found out that my bank (Abbey) have decided to remove my overdraft facility. I am the first to admit that I haven’t been running my account very well of late but I received no notice. To top it all it will take them 5 working days to sort it out so when my husbands wage goes in tomorrow we cant access it. When I asked how I was supposed to feed my kids she said she didn’t know. They are cancelling my debit card and cheque book and want me to pay it back at £132 per month.
I thought that now my options had run out there was only one route to take – IVA. However I have just calculated my incomings and expenditure and I am only left with £140 per month which isn’t enough to enter an IVA with.
We have our own home but very little equity and my husband is very reluctant to give up our home. He has been breaking down a lot recently and saying that he doesn’t feel like life is worth living anymore.
Things are only going to get worse when my daughter leaves school to go to University because her maintenance will stop along with Child Benefit and her allowance of the Family Tax Credits. Then I fear we will have no surplus income.
Not sure what to do next and feel that very understanding family members are tiring of the whole situation and feel totally drained by something that they are not responsible for nor have any control of.

Dee

This when I realised the support on offer was second to none as the response I got from this cry for help was fantastic. 

3^rd January 2008

 I have been up all night fretting. I try and tell myself that its only money and I still have my health and my beautiful girls but it doesn’t make things any better. My husband said something the other day “the more I think about how much I love my kids the harder it becomes”. We feel like we’ve let them down. All this pressure is making us both ill, I’m already on medication for depression.
When you file for bankrupcy what is your first step?

Dee I cant tell you what a lifeline this site is. The people around you give you advice but they dont really know what is like to be living like this. I am one of these people who puts on a brave face to the outside world either because I am embarrassed by our situation or because I dont want to worry my close friends and family. I had to ask my little sister for money for my food shopping this week, I feel absolutely gutted.
Just being able to talk about on here is such a relief, I can sit here and cry now because there is no one else in the house and I dont have to pretend I am holding it all together. I cant tell you how silly I feel. I have just recalculated our expenditure and realised that for Car Tax I used the annual figure rather than the monly figure which means we would have £389 available for an IVA proposition. Do you think that this would be acceptable for our £44k debt?

I just goes to show that getting stressed about these things only make it worse because you cant think straight. I have spoken to my husband tonight who has been brilliant. He was always against an IVA but because for a couple of hours the alternative was bankruptcy he is quite relieved about the IVA option.

 Thanks for your words. I am preparing myself for that call tomorrow. I will hopefully have a better sleep tonight although I have to say that this site is a little addictive in the support that it offers. Tearing myself away is a bit like getting out of bed on a cold morning. My family are snuggled up on settee watching TV so I’m off to join them in that respect I feel the luckiest person alive.

DeeI think you get the picture about how much I relied on the people on this forum in the early days.

The next post will be headed “The Fog begins to Lift”

Welcome to Blogs.iva.co.uk. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!