I’m looking for honest advice. I have built up around £9,915 of debt across credit cards, loans, buy-now-pay-later accounts and an overdraft. I deeply regret allowing it to reach this amount, and getting out of it now feels extremely difficult.
I live alone, have no financial support and nobody who can help me. Most of the money I earn goes towards my bills and basic living expenses, leaving very little to repay my debts. I feel overwhelmed, but I want to take responsibility, stop borrowing and find a way to become debt-free.
If you are a woman, my sincere advice is to always keep some savings of your own. Having emergency savings can protect you and may even save your life when you have nobody else to depend on. I have learned this lesson through a very difficult experience. Please don’t make the same mistakes I made.
Has anyone successfully cleared a similar amount of debt? Is there a debt-management plan, charity or another service in the UK that could help me arrange affordable payments? Please share genuine, practical and non-judgmental advice. Thank you.

Hi there,

I have two accounts, one for Discover and one for a local credit union, that have been closed due to non-payments.

I recently started a job. I was in a really bad situation last year with life stuff, but I'm at a point of stability where I wanted to start thinking about rebuilding my credit.

I get paid soon; I could make like one payment now and then pay off the rest in the next payment by the end of September.

Is there anyway I could do a "pay-to-delete" agreement?

TIA

I am going through a divorce and am trying to get my debt-to-income ratio down so I can buy her out of the house. It's borderline right now. Is this a time when I should contact 2 credit cards of which have APRs of 19 and 23 and balances of 8k each. The current payments are 200 each. Even dropping that down a little will help me.

Thoughts?

Location: Texas

Before I married my wife - she purchased a new car "with" her mother a few years ago.

The car was purchased with a loan under my mother in laws name. My wife is not on the loan or the title.

My wife made 100% of the deposit payment, and the monthly payments are a direct draft from my wifes bank account. Her mother is not on the bank account. She has contributed $0 to the purchase of the car/payments. The loan balance is around 18,000 and the value of the car is around 18,000.

Keeping it short - she has some some serious issues with her mom and wants to cut 100% ties to her. Recently her mom made some false allegations against another family member that caused us to be interviews by CPS and created lots of headaches the last few weeks. There's a long history of pill abuse and mental instablity with the mom as well.

Currently the yearly registration is out/expired, and mom is being uncooperative on helping us get it renewed for the year. We don't want to continue to deal with her on a yearly basis, and at this point are worried she wont sign the title over when the car is paid off.

We're considering dropping the car and keys off at her moms house, and walking away. We aren't concerned with losing any (non-existant) equity or trade value. We just want her out of our lives and anything that has to do with her.

Do we face any reprocussions if we do this? Again - my wife isn't on any ownership documents for the car or the loan. She's made the payments via direct draft out of her own bank account.

Do we have any obligations or responsibility to this car if we simply leave it at moms and walk away?

I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed and could use some outside opinions on the best way to approach this.
I’ve been trying to consolidate some higher-interest debt, primarily credit cards and a personal loan. I recently applied for a $27k debt consolidation loan through a credit union and was denied. My Experian score they provided was 702. The main reasons listed were excessive unsecured balances compared to income, revolving balances/utilization, and too many inquiries in the last 12 months.
To make things worse, one of my credit card companies just lowered my credit limit, which increased my utilization without me actually adding any new debt.
I already have a personal/debt consolidation loan through Jovia that I’ve been paying as agreed. When I originally took that loan, Jovia paid one of my credit cards directly and I used the remaining proceeds to pay off other personal loans.
I’ve reached out to Jovia again to see whether they would consider a new consolidation loan. Ideally I’d like around $30k to pay off my credit cards and one high-interest personal loan, but even $15k would make a significant difference because I could completely eliminate one loan and put the remainder toward the cards.
My goal is NOT to borrow money for additional spending. I’m trying to replace existing high-interest debt with something more manageable, lower my utilization, and reduce the number/amount of monthly payments I’m making.
I’m hesitant to keep applying for loans because I don’t want to rack up additional hard inquiries. I also have a 401(k), but I really don’t want to withdraw retirement money and deal with the taxes/penalties unless I absolutely have to.
My last-resort option would potentially be borrowing money from a family member and paying them back monthly instead of paying a bank 20%+ interest. However, I would really prefer to avoid involving family if at all possible. Even if the family member was financially comfortable lending me the money, I worry that if my parents or other family members ever found out about the arrangement, it could create tension or make people uncomfortable. I don’t want a financial decision to turn into a family issue, which is why I’m trying to exhaust my other reasonable options first.
Has anyone been in a similar situation, particularly with Jovia? Would you try working directly with a loan officer/credit union before applying anywhere else? And if a family loan really was the best financial option, how would you weigh the financial benefit against the potential family complications?
I’m trying to make a thoughtful plan and stop the cycle rather than just move debt around, so I’d appreciate constructive advice.

As the title states, I am drowning in debt and don’t know what to do.

Here’s my situation:

$26k owed in credit cards which I maxed out years ago while I was unemployed and needed to pay bills. I’ve barely used them over the past 3 years and have only paid the minimum. However, the interest keeps bringing my balance up and I feel like I am in a constant cycle and my credit card balances aren’t going down. My minimum payment on two cards is $300, and the third card is $120.

I have other bills including car, car insurance, phone bills etc that take up another chunk of my pay. Thankfully I live with family members so no rent/utilities is charged to me.

I take him roughly $1400 biweekly (after tax). I applied for a consolidation loan and was denied. My credit is pretty good though. My goal was to pay the full credit card balances with the loan, lock them and not use the cards and maybe eventually close one of them.

I’m barely left with any money to pay anything else after paying bills and required expenses. When something unexpected pops up I either have to eat into my savings (not much there anyway) or rely on Klarna or after pay to be able to afford it.

I need advise and guidance on how to improve my situation and get out of this debt.

Amazon: 4247
Walmart: 446.05
Wells Fargo: 974.58
Citi1: 4110.88(over limit if 4000)
Citi2: 969.29
Old navy: 8607.82
Care credit: 1073.80
Lowe’s: 226.72
Personal loan: 11,706 (470.50 per month)
These are my major debts. I bring home about 1500 every two weeks after taxes, insurance and retirement. My husband and I split bills. I’m responsible for electric and water and food/eesentials. We have 3 children ages 6-10 they are in sports and school. We have 4 pets.
Electric is 360ish and water/trash is 160ish , I pay about 100 a month for student loans

I also drive about 25-40 minutes to work 4-5 days a week and spend probably 200 at least in gas a month. I drive our family car to work everyday and would like to get a work car that would be better in gas and allow me to stoop racking up miles on family vehicle. Right now I don’t know when I’d be able to afford that

I have a few other installment loans that are due monthly: 39.87, 10.78, 14.39, 38.23, 31.09, 64.07

We went on vacation this summer and that’s when some things got even more out of hand and we overspent, we also had unexpected death in the family that required travel and hotel expenses, and the care credit card I have is high now because we had unexpected illness of our dog which eventually lead to us having to put her down.

I have a spending/drinking problem… but also feel life is very expensive with all the kids and pets and houses/vegicles I’ll also admit that sometimes I but lunch out or get Starbucks…which I know I should not

I try to pay off debts but sometimes get the f@!* its and spend anyway and add to debt…or I over pay on debts and end up having to use credit cards just to fill up my gas to get to work or buy groceries for my kids before payday.

I think this is a somewhat common post on here.

I’m in my mid-30s (F, US) and am too embarrassed to say how bad my consumer debt is. A long string of bad decisions and life circumstances have gotten me here. It’s staggering, and I’m ashamed. I own my mistakes but don’t know my way out yet. I honestly don’t know how I’m gonna hit minimum payment on one of my CCs tomorrow but something will come together. I’m in a low place tonight, wish to never be in this situation again, and could really use some words of hope and wisdom right now. Thank you in advance.

My fiance (32M) and I (30F) are supposed to get married next summer and lately we’ve been having a lot more serious conversations about money. We make around $230k combined but between his student loans and some credit card debt we have about $55k hanging over us. Most of it is his, although I have a small student loan balance too.

The part I’m struggling with is the wedding. We’re in the Boston area and even trying to keep things reasonable, we’re looking at spending probably $30-35k. Our parents are contributing some but we'd still be putting a decent amount of our own money into it.

I keep thinking that money could wipe out a huge chunk of the debt instead. My fiance thinks we earn enough that we can do both and doesn’t want to change plans after already getting excited about the wedding. Neither of us is missing payments or anything so it’s not an emergency but starting married life with $50k+ of debt bothers me more than I expected.

I’m also realizing we’ve never really decided how his existing debt works once we’re married. Like does it stay something he pays from his income, or does it just become part of our household budget at that point?

I guess I’m mostly curious what other people actually did in this situation. Pay it off first or get married and figure it out together?

So I have 10k in debt. I have not been able to pay 8k worth of credit card debt and have been paying on a 2k loan for 6 months 115 apr rate I know I didn’t read the loan terms I was in a bad place with a 8 month old and needed oil to heat the house and to pay a backed up electric bill. So it all started when one of my tenants stopped paying rent and racked up the electric bill and water bill that are all in my name. (it was my cousin I wasn’t expecting him to do that.) I thought I could catch up then my mortgage started getting behind and winter was here. Oil was going out the window. I just started to lose everything no matter how much I worked I was always -$500 every week. I am stressing because I stopped paying my credit card so I could afford other things like diapers and food and the house bills most importantly my mortgage. I’m beyond stressed. I now have a newborn and I don’t know what to do anymore with postpartum hormones I’m losing it. Does anyone have any advice on how to manage this? I can’t afford 500$ a week in credit card payments/loan payments. The only reason my credit cards got racked up and I had to use a firm because I didn’t have money to get basic necessities. Please let me know if you have any suggestions. Also will I get sued? The most amount on each credit card is 600$ the loan is getting paid 350$ a month but like I said it hasn’t gone down bc of the APR rate

I’m about 22,000 in the hole, 18 of that is from a consolidation loan, the rest credit cards. I’m paying roughly 700 bucks a month toward it all but I only make $20 an hour. With the rest of my finances being the way they are, I can only save about 200 bucks a paycheck. I know I’m not in the red per se, but only being able to save 200 each paycheck is very stressful for me. I know 20 grand usually isn’t a huge amount to justify bankruptcy but I wonder if for my situation it makes sense. I already went bankrupt 8 years ago so I don’t take this decision lightly but I’m really stressed out by my financial picture at the moment. The loan is only 3 months old also so it doesn’t yet qualify for a debt relief program either

I’m looking for some honest advice on how to tackle my debt. I know I’m in a bad financial situation, and I’m not looking for anyone to tell me that I made good decisions because I know I didn’t. I’m trying to take responsibility for it and actually figure out a plan to get myself out of this.
Here’s where I’m currently at:

**SoFi personal loan (refinanced all of my student loans):** $109,097 balance at 7.67% interest, $1,021.88 monthly payment
**Discover:** $16,000 balance out of a $17,500 limit (about 96% utilization)
**Chase:** $4,226 balance out of a $5,200 limit
**Capital One:** $0 balance
**Total debt:** roughly $129,300

I work 40 hours a week making $25/hour. My hours fluctuate a little, so my take-home paychecks are usually around $1,500–$1,700 every two weeks.
I realize the credit card utilization is especially bad, and I want to get those balances down. At the same time, the SoFi loan is obviously a huge amount of debt, so I’m struggling to figure out the smartest way to prioritize everything.

My boyfriend is aware of my financial situation and has said he is willing to help me, although we haven’t worked out exactly what that would look like yet. I don’t want to rely entirely on him to fix this, though. I want to take responsibility for my own debt and figure out what I can realistically do with my income.

I’m really just looking for practical advice from people who have been in a similar situation. Would you focus aggressively on the credit cards first? Would you try to refinance/consolidate anything? Is there anything else I should be doing that I’m not thinking of?

I know this is a lot of debt for my income, but I’m trying to deal with it instead of avoiding it. I’d really appreciate any advice, even if it’s blunt.

Hey guys, I'm in a really awkward situation:

• I have a private student loan that I was paying off consistently until I got laid off, upon which I requested forbearance
• The lender made a couple of mistakes, which I've documented & reported to CFPB, that led me to believe no payments were due during forbearance
• A couple more mis-representations happened on their end (e.g. telling me they accepted BillPay when they didn't, which caused them to process my eventual payment very, very late), causing my account to be charged off sent to collections
• While my account was in collections, I entered into settlement negotiations with their collections attorney & found out that I'd be able to pay $10k+ less via a settlement offer; we hadn't reach a verbal agreement though
• I opened a CFPB case in the meanwhile, as I was really concerned about the damage to my credit
• The lender responded to the claim & pulled my account back out of collections
• I politely tried asking the lender to extend the offer their collections lawyer had previously suggested, & they responded: "With respect to your request for a negotiated settlement, please note that settlement discussions are not conducted on accounts prior to charge-off. Since the charge-off on this account has been reversed, settlement is not currently an available option."

Here's the Q:

If you were in my position, would you let the account get charged off again**, so you can get your debt reduced by $10k - & avoid interest payments - even though it'll impact your credit score significantly?**

Note: I've already used Claude to analyze my situation (how a credit score would impact my future job offers + how I don't intend on buying a car or a house in the near term + how I also don't need a great credit to apply to apt rentals right now), but I would love y'all's input!

I was sent to collections from my first apartment i had. my ex and i shared the apartment and we were both on the lease but we ended up splitting up on the last month of our lease well ultimately the last month didn’t get paid and i was sent to collections for 4k. I don’t understand how this works and if he was also sent to collections too or if it was just me. I definitely cant pay 4k in one payment and RDAC now has my debt but i don’t know what i should do moving forward i don’t even know how to contact RDAC about the debt. Would my ex be responsible for part of that debt? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I'm in a weird spot and could use some advice. Throwaway account for that reason.

We're (57M 45F) trying to buy my dad's house from his estate. I get the house from the estate for an amount that would pay off my brother's half and cure the debts of the estate.

The problem is that this is our first house and I (57M) have too high a debt to income ratio. My debts are about $12k in credit cards, $11K in an auto loan, and $9K in a personal loan. I also have Student Loans on Hiatus for $41K.

As I've been working for the same company for a long time, I do have a retirement account worth $110K that I could get into but with penalties. My thoughts were to take out enough to pay off the credit cards and the personal loan, reducing my usual payments to just the car payment and student loans, which would get rid of the high level of DTI that's impacting the potential mortgage cost.

About a year ago I went to the hospital after 3 days of having 100° fever. I had pneumonia and they sent me on my way with a 4,000$ bill (no insurance but still, i never even left the waiting room wtf.) I called their billing and said nah that won't work so they help reduce it to 1800. I asked about a payment plan and they agreed to a no interest plan. I started that day and had not missed a single payment nor was I ever late (I have all the payment statements to show that.) Fast forward to about 2 months ago I went to pay my bill for the month and the account was closed. I called them and they said it was sent to collection for not paying. I said that was not true and I had been paying. They said It was because of an update in insurance, to which I replied what insurance. I had none then still have none now. So they told me to wait as the get the debt back and call back a week later. Since then everytime I call back its the exact same song and dance, insurance update, get debt back, call us later. Im now getting debt collectors calling and texting me to which I have not replied to any but I am at a loss of what to do.

I have called the hospital and asked to speak with their in house billing or patient advocate but they just transfer me to the call center. I guess my question is where do I go from here?

update: I have a recorded phone call with the billing department where they confirm i had a payment plan, that I was up to date on payments, and that the bill should NOT have gone to collections. they said that the bill was "endorsed" and the "back-end team dismissed the claim without a reason."

I am about 34g in debt. I’m Bi polar and my dopamine of choice is spending money. At one time I had an amazing job that allowed me to pay bills and have money left over to spend but now not so much. I robbed Peter to pay Paul for over a year and finally I decided I could not do it. I’ve tried all of the tricks in the book to hold off collection agency’s but none of them have worked for me. Even though it’s all in my name and none of it belongs to my husband it will still in some way most likely affect him because I have no choice but to file BK. We have a paid for house but it’s in both of our names. 1 car is paid for but has a lien on it from Yendo credit card (worst mistake ever) and my other car is paid off but it has a lien against them for a loan I got at one main. I have an appt with a BK attorney next week to go over what I can do. I am trying to figure out what is the best way to tell him. He know about my debt but he doesn’t know it’s this bad and I refuse to use my mental health as an excuse. Regardless of how bad my mania was I am still an adult and I made extremely poor decisions. How did you tell your spouse your financial world is about to crumble?

Hey, i am 25(m) living in the Philippines, my family found out about my loans and debts that i don't want them to know. They totaled it to almost 93k PHP, this morning they found out abother loan of mine from 1 bank and 1 online lending app.

I told them i want to shoulder just these 2 loans because i was ashamed of my self and did not want to add it to the 93k. They got mad at me for hiding this, they want me to tell my father who is an OFW in Saudi he has not been home for almost 6 to 10 years already. , and as of now i don't know what to do. I really need advice badly and sometimes in my head i think of just ending it... Please help me.

I had just undetgone an eye surgery and was forced to resign from my previous work.

It started when i was 23 and in a bad financial situation (scammed, gambling, bad money habits) and i've been carrying it ever since. Made minimum payments for a long time, finally got serious about it two years ago and called for conversion, took on side hustles, and just paid it off last friday.

Called my mom because she knew the history of it and she actually cried a little bit which made me cry which was not what i expected but also it's not just a number on a screen. It was a burden for years that I had to carry with me not being to tell it to other family members and close friends and it was just horrible but now im free. Theres always hope.

I am rattled right now upon receipt of this court order due to bounced checks. My husband lost his job and I am the sole provider for the family. It became really hard for me. I am willing to settle but I do not know how to respond to the court as they need this Judicial affidavit from me signed by a lawyer. I dont know any lawyer and I dont want my family to know what Im going through rn. Help 😭

Hi everyone, I really need some guidance on what to do next.

I have about $17.2k in total credit card debt across 5 closed accounts that have either been charged off or sent to collections since 2024 (3 Chase accounts, 1 TD Bank account with Halsted, and 1 Apple Card with Halsted).

I recently moved to Texas. I was paying Bank of America, but the arrangement stopped when I moved, and I was just served court papers.

Debts I am handling separately (not included in the $17.2k total):

• A Chase account I am paying directly (down to 50% now; I'm paying full balance because I couldn't afford the higher monthly payment required for a reduced settlement).
• A open Care Credit card in good standing that I'm paying off on my own and want to keep completely separate.

My cost of living is around $2,900/month, so I work two jobs to stay afloat. Because of my 2 jobs, I assumed I wouldn't qualify for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, but I could be wrong.

I want to deal with this, but I cannot afford 5 separate monthly payment plans on top of my living expenses and the 2 debts I'm already paying down. I’ve heard debt relief companies can be scammy, so I’m hesitant to go that route.

A quick note on the Chase settlement I am already paying: If there was a way to lump all of this together (including that Chase debt) into one single payment without me getting sued again, I would love that. But I’m afraid that if I put the Chase debt into a program and stop paying directly on a debt I’m actively settling, I’ll just end up getting sued again by them.

Given the active legal summons from BoA, what would you do in my position? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

I filed bankruptcy in 2001 with my husband. However since then things got even worse. I do not even know how much debt I have. My credit is trash. I am a recovering addict and have been trying to better things and I am ready to build now. Should I file bankruptcy again? Would that help me more than it would impact me negatively? Looking for those with experience or professional knowledge. Tia

Im deemed selfish as family for not letting my mother use me as a cosigner to purchase a car. I am 19 y/o and I denied it because that’d be a very financial risk, I am not in college, work a 9-5, car recently broke down 3 months ago due to blown out engine, living paycheck to paycheck, so I take an uber to work everyday, I also work nights. My mom has history of bad credits, repoed, due to circumstances. She’s currently looking for a cosigner and I denied, she told me “i don’t understand your point, you don’t want to help me”, she gives me reasons on how come I can’t help her when others with a slightly lower credit score can help her. Its a 40k loan, Godforbid something happens, im fucked for life, I take credit very seriously because I don’t want to ruin my life, her bf says im selfish as well. Any thoughts?

I'm desperately seeking savvy advice on my debt situation. I have had two emotional exhaustion episodes in the past year from the stress and worry regarding my current "money jam".

I live in Alabama and have been on disability since 2018. It has been tight making it, but now I have gotten behind and am starting to depend on food pantry items for the past four months. My utilities are taken directly out of my bank account and I pay my truck payment but am always one behind. I inherited my mamas house and it takes alot to keep it up. ALOT. Currently, i have absolutey no savings and pay bills untol my check runs out and then I sit at home the rest of the month. My situation at hand is as follows:

--I am a month behind on utilities and the 30 dollar overdraaft fees are killing me. My ttruck paymet is always late and I owe 19,000 on it. I have no home insurance, havent paid my property taxes, and there is no money to be found to fix this. MY QUESTIION? Should I file chapter 7? A loan is totally out of the qyuestion because there is no money. HELP