Posted in May 2010

Things Must Change - Starting Today

Source:
Monday 17th May 2010, 8:24pm

I awake every day in despair, extreme doom, tinged with high anxiety. Combined now as it is with a mixture of debt chasing telephone calls, mortgage arrears counsellors and various other debt chasing people, there is no respite.

Being in debt is one of the most humiliating and stressful encounters I have ever experienced. It's a situation that creates extreme harassment without boundaries and without respite.

Constantly, the vultures are circling around me, constantly dive bombing me in an attempt to take yet more of my money.

When you have no money, other people assume that it's because you're idle, a waste of space, or stupid. Maybe even, a combination of all three. Maybe more. I don't know.

Lets get one thing straight, right now. This debt problem I have now was caused by a business failure in 1996. This business was labour intensive, with most of it's income going on wages. That wasn't so much a problem.

Money was always tight, and I was always on the road chasing money to meet the pay runs - a situation I'm glad I don't have to go through anymore. There's nothing more humiliating than standing and waiting - often for hours - in a customer's reception for a cheque that is rightfully yours.

No, that wasn't the problem. The staff were. It started off with some of the staff using the customer's phones to make calls to expensive, pre-recorded phone lines. Then those customer's wouldn't pay their bills - but I still had to pay the wages.

Then a fairly major customer went bankrupt on me, taking me for a few thousand. In the end, after months and months of 20 hour days constantly running into one crisis after another, I ended up with depression.

And I wound the business up within 48 hours. I just couldn't take any more, any more. The killer problem was yet to surface though. My staff were self employed sub contractors. Who hadn't been paying their tax, so the Inland Revenue came after me.

They gave me a massive bill with 48 hours to pay it. I couldn't (obviously) so they made me bankrupt. I had to remortgage my house to buy it back from the taxman to save me & my family being kicked out.

And that brings me to today. I'm crippled by an extortinate mortgage that's responsible for my abysmal credit record.And, even last Friday, I had to endure another meeting with one of these mortgage arrears counsellors. Again.

I've offered to pay the mortgage at £312 per week, forever. Now, I've just got to wait to see if the mortgage company accepts my proposal. Again.

And that's where I am, and why I am, here today. My credit record is blown to pieces, and my marriage is going the same way, rapidly. I am an outcast in my own house, I am ignored, or at best, politely answered.

That's why things must change. Quickly and urgently. My plan starts here.

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