stopping-shopping

So , back from a week in Centre Parcs and we had a great time. I was a pillar of restraint in the Aqua Sana shop after my birthday present treatment of a "mum to be oily rubdown and facial". In years gone by I would have fallen for the therapist recommendations hook , line and sinker and bought £50 worth of product...but I did not! Been home for a week and have made progress with the IVA, it's been nearly a month since I made the call to see if we'd be eligible! Finally I have all the paperwork together including the house valuation (worth a smidgen more than it was 5 years go) and I posted it all off today. Hopefully the IVA will be on the way to being agreed by Christmas, and fingers crossed it will be in place by March when the small person arrives. I bought some Christmas presents today in the Sainsbury's half price toy event, it was bedlam in there but I got good bargains for my niece and nephew. I also got a couple of Disney DVDs for DD1 as they were on ...

After my little brain purge on the subject of things I want but can't have, a truly amazing thing happened. A perfect stranger who doesn't know me from Eve offered to send me a barely used tube of Liz Earle Cleans + Polish. Well bugger me there are kind people in the world! To say I'm touched is a mahoosive understatement, I may even have had a little cry. Thank you again perfect stranger :) My resolve soared to a new height this evening when I opened the post and handed over a perfectly gorgeous unused pristine M+S chargecard to DH and asked him to cut it up. I didn't freeze it as I've defrosted my plastic before now when in the grip of a buying frenzy, I didn't get him to keep it in his wallet as I've snuck in there before for plastic that I'd asked him to keep out of my paws. I have done some truly shameful things in order to maintain my spendability which is why I know I'm a recovering addict and not just a spoiled tart with impulse control issue...

I am unexpectedly at home today with DD who has a stinking cold and a temperature. She's wrapped up waching the Disney channel and eating crumpets so I'm just going to have a quick brain purge of the things I want to buy but won't. Liz Earle cleanse and polish - nearly finished my current tube and I love this cleanser (along with everyone else in the blogoshpere!) but at £13 a go I can't afford it right now so NO! New clothes for DD to wear on holiday - traditionally I buy her something new and snuggly to wear on our hols as we have been away in October for the last 3 years. However she has lots of clothes that fit her and I'm not going to bung it on the Next account which is what I'd usually do, so NO! New boots for me- I am hankering after the new UGG biker boots, sensible heel for slippy pavements and toasty and warm, but at £250 they are absolutely staying in the shop! Stuff for the new baby- nope I'm not buying anything until the 20 week scan is...

Today I posted the ebay thing I sold for £52, made a loss of £4 on the p+p, I'm too lazy to weigh stuff at home and use the online price generator. Lesson learned there, I must be more on the ball with charging correct postage. Also made calls to day to get some more of the IVA needed paperwork sent to us, 3 months bank statements, cat insurance, loan redemption figure and mortgage statements. Could take 10 working days for them to arrive, but it feels proactive to have made those calls and not buried my head in the sand. Trying to get an estate agent through the door is a proving a little trickier, but am sure persistance will pay off. I'm on the countdown to our holiday, we're off to Centre Parcs for a week next week. Paid for out of "real" money a couple of months ago, I had a big ebay sell and used the cash to pay for the hols. We have some money put aside for holiday spends and will also use the money that we're saving by not using the childminder that w...

I made a start today trying to collate all the paperwork the IVA people want, this involved going through the expandable box file which is supposed to be a neat filing solution for all our paperwork. HA! Needless to say it was a total shambles, but I did find it quite cathartic to sort out what we need to keep and what can be shredded. I've probably got 2/3rds of the required paperwork and will need to call the bank and my cat insurance company(!) to get the rest. I also need to get the house valued just in case a re-mortgage is necessary in year 4 of the IVA, so will be blagging an estate agent on Monday. We went out for lunch today at Chiquitos, which was a treat I think because I blubbed all over DH last night before falling asleep on him at 10:15pm...pregnancy is sooo attractive ;) After lunch we looked at pushchairs for the new baby, DH is firm that we need a new one and is equally firm that we'll buy it in the January sales. Old me would plan to buy an aspirational brand ...

Feeling low and decidedly weepy, hoping it's just my preg hormones but I feel overwhelmed today. I got a list of the paperwork I have to send to the IVA company and it looks like this: All of these will be tricky to lay my hands on, but the ones in red are going to be a total pain in the arse and I don't know if I have the energy at the moment. Yes I know I have to have the energy but I feel lethargic and pissed off. 1. 1 x Signed Copy of Authority to Act (Copy attached) 2. Latest credit card and/or store card statements 3. Original loan agreements and written balance of loan account 4. Latest letters from debt collection agencies/solicitors 5. Copy of Photo ID (passport; photo driving licence; official ID card) 6. Last 3 months bank statements for all accounts held by you 7. Last 3 Months wage slips 8. Copy of council tax statement 9. Copy of latest mortgage statement and a mortgage redemption statement 10. Could you advi...

"You should hear from your Case Administrator Darryl - either today or tomorrow. Before your proposal is drafted we need to collate all your paperwork and get final balances from your creditors. Then you have a telephone meeting with Melanie to finalise the proposal afterwhich it gets sent to you to approve. This can take 6-8 weeks." So there it is, I am on the path that leads to the road to freedom from debt! There are a couple of forms to fill in and letters to send to creditors etc but I'll crack on with those tonight. The IVA company have two payment schedules in mind, one that fluctuates for the first year and includes a period of no payments when I'm on maternity leave or a lower payment that would continue for the full 60 months. I favour making identical payments for 60 months, and will see if the creditors are happy to go with that. DH will be paying off his credit card and our joint overdraft with a consolidation loan, so he gets to keep a good credit rat...

If DH were to consolidate he'd rather get a loan fron his current bank the HSBC, but as I'm a joint account holder this could be jeopardised by my (hopefully) imminent IVA. In order to consolidate and keep his financial footprint seperate from mine, we might take my name off the joint HSBC account into which his wages (our spending money) is paid. This would leave me with no access to cash other than asking him for money at the start of each week. I'm honestly not that bothered, I do trust that he won't run away and leave me penniless and honestly there's a small part of me that would almost be relieved to not have any access to cash or credit and therefore temptation. My wages would still be paid into the new Co-op account, but that would strictly be for bills only. What do you think? Is it bonkers to pass control of all our spending money to DH? Should my inner feminist be freaking out? Obviously we'd have the same amount of spending money but I just won...

I've heard from the IVA company they want to propose an IVA for me and a DMP with a sister company for DH, the snageroo is that I'm less than enamoured with the sister company. I initially approached them about the IVA thing and they weren't reassuringly thorough AND they wanted a £600 payment upfront before the IVA had been agreed by my creditors so hmmmmm is my thinking on them being in charge of DH's DMP. For those not in debt hell acronym mode : IVA Individual Voluntary Agreement- legally binding, done after 5 years writes off interest and possibly some of the debt, but banjaxes credit rating. DMP Debt management plan - not legally binding no guarantee that creditors will freeze interest no debt written off and banjaxes credit rating. It's possible that DH would be better to take out a consolidation loan and pay off his credit card and the overdraft he is joint liable for. When I go on an IVA the bank can pursue him for all the money we jointly owe, so his DMP...

Such an uphill struggle at the moment. we haven't heard anymore yet from the IVA company, but I'm trying to not to worry unduly. The adviser thought we were a strong case so I'll just have to let them do their paperwork and come back to us with a proposal or not... Spending has been ok, bought some maternity tights from New Look in the sale £1 and a dress and a pair of black cord trousers from Ebay for a grand total of £13, again from the paypal balance. I do actually need maternity clothes, as I charity shopped all from my last pregnancy because I never thought we would have another child (pnd, a whole other blogs worth of material!). I have another item on ebay at the moment which *should* bring in about £40 all being well. I've paid a cheque for £130 into the overdraft from Hell rather than into our "spending money" account, so that is pretty positive. Need to start thinking about a budget for Christmas, we had a windfall of £600 from Dh's ex employers ...

So it is 5 months since my last post and I should tell you what's been happening. I'm still on the straight and narrow and haven't taken out more credit since April. We are in the process of starting an IVA (individual voluntary arrangement) which would agree a repayment schedule with our creditors and see the debt cleared after 60 months of payments. IVAs are legally binding and have to be arranged by an insolvency practitioner, they are one step up from bankrupcy and would nuke our credit rating. Having no credit is probably the best thing for us as a family as we have quite spectacularly proved we can't manage credit :( I have now sold all of my Mulberry handbags, which felt virtuous at the time but now I just feel like a woman bereft of designer shinies. I should have put the money from their sale back on my CC but it inevitably got swallowed up in day to day expenses. I've also been ebaying other items that I won't miss and might raise some spending mone...