Thank you. This was a lovely warm reply to wake up to. I'm just so scared about being chased for debt and people knocking on doors and taking stuff away. I think the emotional side has been eating away at us underneath for so long now we're used to feeling strung out. It's hard to work when you feel stressed about money-that's the irony. You want to hide under the bed covers all day. As you say worrying won't solve the problem..

Hi I'm new to the Forum. It looks great. My husband and I are both self employed-I am a private music teacher (also drawing a monthly NHS Ill health retirement pension) while he is a Driving Instructor. We are both in our early fifties and have a thirteen year old child. I was ill health retired in 2008 just as we moved house, and this is where the problems began as my husband was also trying to build up his Driving Instruction business again. This took a good year or so, while it took me about the same to build up piano pupils, by which time our joint debts had grown. Our problem-we have £43,000 in personal loans and credit cards between us. Our house dropped in value by £35000 within a year of us moving in. We have about £43000 equity which as you will see is equal to our debt... the mortgage is on an Interest Only basis however, and we have nine and a half years left with no means of paying it all off, so we will have to move out at the end of our time here. My husband works a six day week and is constantly juggling our money so we can survive on our cash flow. He brings in a salary in real terms of about £24000 a year, mine is about £3500 and I have a pension of £450 per month. £1200 a month of debt is killing us. We're using more debt to survive now (my husband has paid some of his tax bills recently on the credit card.) We have no arrears as yet. We have spoken to the CCCS and can scrape together a couple of hundred to pay off some debt-but being self employed, 52 years old the idea of a Debt Management Plan seems as depressing as being in debt-we'll never pay it off. Selling the house will leave us with zero literally, and I have to teach from home so need enough privacy to do this in any accommodation we take. We have three cats and a daughter who needs things for school and daily life. We don't know what to do-we feel completely submerged and holidays are out of the question. Options:-Sell? Wait until housing market picks up and sell when Equity improves (if it does): go on to Debt Management? Please help. We are making ourselves ill and feel very alone with it. Nb. My illness has affected my employment history and it is no longer good. So I am continuing to build my pupils up. It is a slow process however and meanwhile the wall of debt is mounting. Many thanks