More History and a bit of a plan

So back to the original reason for the blog, we were in debt and sinking rapidly.

Firstly I think the resounding "light bulb" moment was when I realised we were struggling and couldn't cope.
I think the biggest problem that most people in debt face is not realising its out of control, thinking they are managing but just sinking slowly further into the mire. It's almost like having an addiction and being in denial.
At the end of the day, if you are paying as much as you can but your debt is getting worse, even by a penny, then you are in trouble and its time to sort things out.
I was paying everything I could yet we were still getting into more debt.

So we sat down and worked out exactly how much we owed....no recriminations, all hidden accounts out in the open ( thats another tell-tale sign of being in trouble...hiding credit cards from your partner) and believe me it was a real shock !

Anyway, a couple of days later we had an appointment with a financial adviser. She basically went through our figures and we looked at remortgaging the house.
Obviously remortgaging isn't for everyone. We had a couple of things in our favour, first lots of equity. The house was worth £200,000 and the original mortgage was only £104,000 so we had nearly 50% equity...very handy.
Secondly we were still relatively young ( early thirties ) so we had plenty of time left to pay it off.

So we went for a 30 year flexible mortgage at a fixed rate for two years. The reason it was 30 years was to try to get the monthly outgoings lower so we could actually save a bit of rainy day money ( for emergencies such as the car breaking down...lol)

I have also done a bit of reverse engineering on my finances. What that means is that I took out all the "must" pay items then calculated a required amount to save for annual bills then what was left was used for the mortgage. Hopefully this means that we can pay everything we need to without having to put it on a credit card or pay it off monthly at a higher rate. Most people pay the mortgage first then hope to have enough left for bills which is really the wrong way round.

And thats roughly the position we are in now.