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I should mention, the black mark from the fraud will be removed in December 2023. This should allow me to get lower APR. Hopefully that info helps too.

Without knowing any bankruptcy laws in the UK/Scotland, I'd say you need to start cutting everything but the necessities and give an honest overview of what you have you can sell to help rectify the issue.

If you cut TV, Xbox, Spotify and other non-necessities You could save ~$75/ month, but you don't have the income to support the loans and necessities. Do you have a car you could sell to eliminate the insurance cost and ride bus or train?

I'd focus on the loan with the smallest balance or the highest APR loan first in either case. You need breathing room, and the smallest balance will create that when you pay it off. The highest APR makes sense as it will limit the amount of interest charged.

Does your significant other know about the extent of the financial difficulties you are facing?

Can you sell plasma, get another job at night and weekends? You need to cut expenses to the bone.

You're moving way too fast around all of this debt. You're getting married, you want to buy a house, those shouldn't even be on the table until you lessen this debt. Getting married and buying a house will skyrocket your debt again, or your partner will have to shoulder the entire thing which will put them in immense debt. Maybe consolidating and postponing the wedding/house is your best option. If you truly love each other, the piece of paper shouldn't matter that much.

Also YouTube premium, Spotify, AND Xbox? I get the Spotify, but drop the YouTube premium and play offline games. When you're in that much debt, you can afford to watch some ads. They're not huge expenses, but every cent helps.

Talk to the people who gave you personal loans. Instead of making the minimum payment on the high interest credit cards, see if you can pay them a smaller sum each month and put the extra towards the high interest debts.

You said you work full time, but what are your hours like? It would probably be in your best interest to pick up a second job for a while. It won't be fun, but it will get your head above water sooner, especially since you want to get married and buy a house. You need to start rebuilding your credit ASAP, instead of just barely hanging on.

You said you don't buy groceries or pay for the rent, what does the extra $350 go towards? If it doesn't go towards keeping you alive, it should be going into savings or towards your high interest debts.

I think cutting down on every non-essential is the way to go to start with. Thank you. I will also start to sell anything I may not need. I need my car for work due to working from early morning, but It is not an expensive car to run thank goodness.

I will also target the biggest loan. As £150 is taken from the £215 I pay each month in interest, otherwise it would probably have been paid off by now. Thank you for some great tips

They are not taking donations in my area sadly, but thank you. Most jobs around me are full time, I would be open to a side-hustle as I do get downtime at work, but everything seems like a scam in the UK. Plus, I do owe student loans, I just don't have to pay them until I earn £25k or above, so a second job may actually reduce my cash. Thank you for the tips anyway though, I will explore everything.

The way I see it you have 10 years left on that RBS1 loan with the 26% APR. That’s the one that’s gonna hurt you the most. I’d look to spend some time switching that if at all able (although that may not be possible until Dec’23).

After that the Britney loan will be done in 4 months so that gives you £50 back. I’d check to see which of your credit cards is charging the highest rate and pay it off that one.

Your outgoings - we all need our little luxuries in life but you really need to challenge yourself on them. You are spending £45 a month on a phone. Is that entirely necessary, you can get a cheap 2nd hand phone for £100 and a pay as you go sim form£10-15 a month. That would save you £360 per year.

YouTube premium, Spotify, Xbox account - is £38 good value when you look at the debt(£456 per year)? Again we all have different interests and we need some pleasures in life, can you drop 1-2 of them?

All the above (phone, Britney, media accounts) is £133 (£1596 per year), you could choose to redeploy that to paying off the debts.

You are taking the right steps to understanding the overall problem by listing and accounting for all of your outgoings. There is no quick win but discipline now has to be your mantra.

Saying all that I not a financial expert, just an average Joe, so I’d suggest checking out your local Citizens Advice bureau as the best plan!

I wish you all the luck

I am very fortunate, in that most of the wedding and house deposit has been accumulated outside of myself from my partners family. They are not incredibly well off however they are amazing with money. So those things shouldn't influence anything too aggressively. The house purchase will wait though, after reading comments I am going to stick with my current place for now. I will also be cancelling those services tonight, something I should have done long ago.

As for groceries, I do buy those, I may have mixed myself up with my post just because I am finding it difficult to confront this. Apologies. I pay for half the groceries and fuel, thats about 350ish normally (Thanks, cost of living Uk!)

I am currently looking in to a second part time job, it is a common theme in the comments. I have settled on waiting on a mortgage, cancelling all non essential services, selling items and looking for a second job so far. The help is amazing, thank you

Maybe selling your car and buying a cheaper one and use the difference to pay debt. No idea what car you have but if it’s something decent and you buy a second hand one it could make sense. Desperate measures

The RBS1 is actually a 5 year loan. They wouldn't extend to 10 year, but maybe that is for the best. You are right, I would be best to target that and re-finance when the black mark is lifted.

I an unfortunately in a phone contract, however it is only a 2 year and I will now be keeping the phone as long as it lasts on a sim only. I think that is better than upgrading, then I can use the money I save and put it in to high interest accounts.

I will cut everything but Spotify, (as much as I hate the Youtube ads, it must be done!)

I really appreciate the help here. Opening my wyes to how bad this really is.

Just want to comment and thank everyone for not instantly shitting in me for being stupid. I am writing all this down and will work so hard for a better financial life.

My 2 cents - keep the Xbox sub if you really love it. 11/month for entertainment when you need to slash all other spending is a good price to not go crazy.

Much appreciate the advice but my car is from 2008, cant get much cheaper 😂

Its actually for my partner, she loves the sims but im sure she could play offline

I wouldn’t say we are opening your eyes to how “bad it is”. You had already accepted you’d got yourself into a sticky place by listing the debts and seeking advice.

But you’ve now taken some positive steps to begin the process of recovering the situation but unfortunately it there is no quick solutions and it is going to be a grind.

Keep your chin up, although the debts don’t leave you much pocket money each month, your income is still on parr with your debt repayments so it could be a lot worse!

Create some sort of chart, use excel if you have the skills if not an A4 chart on the wall is a positive reminder of how far your progressed across a year. When the numbers seem dauntingly big, being able to see each total drop or each debt paid off can help you keep focused.

You’ve got this, we all screw up, it’s how you deal with it that matters!

I am way younger than you but I will give some opinion because I am also an ADHD person. First, I think you should cut off on the Youtube premium and some of the subscription (xbox, spotify) as these things are supposed to be used when you have good cash flow (most of their features can be access using another website, third party or unnessary at all). Using a Financial tracking app. I recommend Spende because it is UX friendly. It should you how much cash is flowing in and flowing out (you would have to add things expenses and income manually if you want thr data to be accurate). Cannot press this enough. Expenses you think are small could actually quite big toll on yourself that you don’t notice and these app will help you with that. I am always surprised by the total cost of the neglectable things when they added up at the end of the month or quarter. Cut down those expenses. And for ADHD, if your behavior is too impulsive like me then concentrate on relax and having fun (of course using free shit on the internet, music, dancing, free movies, comedy ytb channel etc) instead of being stress out by life. It makes our behaviors, ADHD especially, become extremely more impulsive so take care. Hope this help you a bit. 🥲

What an insanely lovely comment. Thank you so much for your kind words.

It’s amazing to me how much effort it took for me to get out of 20k in debt, and doubly hard to save +20k in savings.

And now, it’s like autopilot getting to 100k in savings 😱

All I can say OP is this: if you want to get out of debt as badly as I did, you will cut down your spending to just barely scraping by standards and pay down that debt penny-by-penny. I don’t know any other way of doing it.

And, if you want to sprint away from living paycheck to paycheck, you will continue that same strategy you used to get debt free. I don’t know any other way of doing it.

Good luck

Thank you for the inspiration! Glad to see it is very possible. I want it very bad. I have even downloaded a new budgeting app that will record everything I do called HyperJar

If it's through Gamepass, she won't be able to play it after Gamepass is gone

You know you've made a mistake and you are trying to improve. Nobody should shit on you for that.

I'm working my way out of debt, after some very stupid decisions over many years, at the minute too. Alongside all of the financial and mathematical angles in this thread, also try to think of psychological ways to help.

I set myself a monthly budget for luxuries, things like coffee, Spotify, going to the cinema. I calculated it by calculating all of my vital outgoings (rent, loan, bills, car up keep and savings - important to include savings) like you have and then subtracting from my monthly incomings. Whatever is left is my 'fun fund'.

I transfer this to revolut monthly, on payday, and know that when it's gone it's gone.

Once I have this I plan it by how much I can have per day, divide the fun fund by 31 and you have a daily total. If you want to go for a meal or out to the cinema you know you have to save £5 per day for X days

Firstly, it turns it from punishing you for bad decisions to rewarding good ones (saving money)

Secondly, writing it all out and working out exactly where everything goes is a really good way to keep yourself grounded and understand where your money is going. I was very shocked at how much I wasted by nipping to Tesco for snacks a few times a week.

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Taking another job would not reduce the cash you took home if you went over 25k. You would pay a percentage of the money over the threshold but not the money earned underneath the threshold ie if you got a second job that took you from 24k to 30k you would pay some of that 6k difference but not all of it so you’d take home more. Hope that helps

Drop Spotify and YouTube premium. They both have free versions with some ads and that will save you £324 a year

I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this, but can you prioritize making more money and finding another job? Making more money would likely be more impactful than trimming small expenses(not that you shouldn’t do that also).

If you can’t find a better job, perhaps you need a second job. I know this all sounds undesirable but you made this mess, time to dig out.

All easier said than done obviously but now is the time. Goodluck! You can do it!

It will be ok..it takes little time to repair the credit but it gets better with time. There is lots of great advice here already.. and you got time. Try to tackle the negative remarks on your credit report by writing them and researching more. In the meantime pay off little by little, don't miss any payments. Myfuco credit forum has great advice on how to eliminate negative remarks from your credit report. I've been there and done that. Good luck.

You are getting great advice. I don't have much to add except you can get an AdBlocker and really enjoy YouTube. I don't know what else comes with Premium as I would never pay money for YouTube -- ad-free YouTube is more than good enough for me. I find plenty there to watch and have no streaming (except once in a while I watch an Amazon Prime movie but I am supporting several family members on Amazon Prime and it's worth it for us - unlike Netflix's new policy Amazon doesn't care as long as you are buying stuff). Good luck!!

My wife dug us a hole at one point. $20k? (Edit: Might have been more, this was like 8 years ago and I have a better recollection of the minimum monthly payments I added up) in a variety of credit cards and other finance offers. She wanted stuff and she wanted it NOW Live and learn. Not sure how it looked on our credit score at the time, but we consolidated the debt via a credit union loan. It wasn't an interest free loan tho, so I don't think it impacted our credit score negatively.

Adding up the minimum payments for all those various bills was roughly $2.2k/month in minimum payments. After the consolidation, that dropped to $500/month.

We paid $2k a month on the debt, to get rid of it. Took a year.

Pet insurance serves no purpose for preexisting conditions.. which is usually what brings a pet to the vet.

Quit playing all video games and get another job. Knock it out

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This is stuff you can get rid of today :

4th Youtube Premium (£12)

6th - Spotify (£15)

10th - Phone Airtime (£15)

20th - One-Drive (£6)

25th - Microsoft Xbox (£11)

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That's 60 pounds a month right there.

I don't know what "Phone device" is for which you pay 45 pounds a month - you can buy unlocked smartphones for 150-200 pounds, why would you pay 45 pounds each month?

You could probably stop paying the cat insurance for a few months, but you know better how healthy your cat is, if she had issues in the past or not, if it helped you so far, if you think it's gonna save you money.

I'd discuss with grandad and ask him to lower the monthly payment to 100 pounds or maybe even less, explaining to him that you have 7k at 26% APR to replay - that's around 160 pounds a month just in interest and that should be where all your extra money should be going right now (only higher priority would be friends you loaned money from that need the money back because you don't want to ruin those friendships over money).

If your car is worth some money, you should do some research to see if you could live without a car for a few months.

Other than cutting the entertainment expenses. Have you look into zero APR credit card for 12 or 18 month? Consolidated credit card debts with high APR to the zero APR that should save you some money on the interest for 12/18 months,just make sure that you don’t use zero APR cc for anything else. Look around for a part time job that paid under the table so you won’t have to worry about pushing you into higher income bracket. Try pay everything with cash or debit card, and don’t use CC until you paid off all your debts.

Dave Ramsey debt snowball highly recommend listening to that every day

You’re 10 years ahead of the realisation than I was mate so good on you!

Cut non important things like YT and Spotify, keep Xbox you need some entreteniment. Find a half time job or donsome overtime anything to get a some extra cash, dumo all that extra cash in the smaller loan and paid fast, and after is paid go for the big one with big APR, dump all extra money plus the same amound you where paying in the small loan, at Minimum doubling was you are paying now for the big loan

Hey there! I am from India but can still point certain common solutions to your debt:

1. Start doing some extra job after your regular job or in weekends. Could be anything which suits you and you are good at.

2. Attack on the loan which charges highest interest and pay it off as soon as possible.

3. Do not use any credit cards. If you still have to then keep just one and use it only during emergency like medical emergency. Do not spend money which you don't posssess. Credit card culture is designed to keep us forever in eternal debt.

4. Remove all unnecessary expenses like YouTube or Spotify premium. You can always ask your friend to share his/her subscription with you if you really need it.

5. Save may be at least 15% percent of your monthly salary and invest in safe instruments which give you return above inflation.

6. Educate yourself more in personal finances and may be talk with people who are known to be good at it.

If u r on android get rid of YouTube and Spotify for sometime and use modded APKs instead

I'm sorry but I don't agree with the majority about eliminating your 30/40 £ of subscriptions as it isn't going to make a dent in the fact that you are paying about 600 monthly in loans. I say this for the same reason that people do the snowball method versus the avalanche method; it's mental. When you see that you have 6 out of 10 of your payments being loans, it can feel overwhelming. I suggest consolidating everything into a singular affordable monthly payment and paying a little more than is required when possible.

Get rid of the TV License.

If you can get by with with streaming services and apps (like ITV Hub) you declare on their website you don't need one and that's another £14 a month saved.

You need a license if you watch iPlayer or TV as it's being broadcast, e.g. Coronation Street on ITV at 7.30pm. But it's perfectly fine to watch it on the ITV Hub app later.

Also, phone device and phone air time is £60 p/m - Is there any way to knock that down? I paid off my phone which is about 3 years old now and my SIM only deal is £7 p/m.