Good afternoon all,

Four years ago, I found myself stressed out to the max as my mum had passed away in my arms from sepsis - unexpectedly, and I had to step a lot more for my older sister (27F) who is autistic and my older sister (29F) who was nine months pregnant at the time with our mum's first grandchild, moving into her forever home and had just started mat leave. Thus, it was a chaotic and emotional time - I'm not sure how we survived.

Subsequently, I posted on here in a state as my sister and I faced becoming homeless as my mum was a social housing tenant and originally, the housing association was refusing to let us stay and we were only entitled to £300.00 a month between us. Plus, I found myself heavily in debt after discovering my mum had taken credit cards/loans out (unknown to me) in my name, worth £15k.

Well, I can finally confirm some good news.

First, my nephew arrived 11 days later and he is now a healthy and cheeky four-year-old who started school. Secondly, I finally put my foot down with my oldest sister and have stopped supporting her financially (too much unnecessary information to pass on). Thirdly, I managed to sort out benefits during the first 12 months of mum's death and we were surviving, which we're extremely thankful for.

Furthermore, I started university the following September and reached out to Money Advice team and they're helped me to budget and get out of debt (they agreed most of the advice I was given from my old account was useful). But, the best news of all....

Tomorrow marks my final EVER debt payment and I am so thankful for this community. I didn't know places like Citizen's advice existed, and I didn't know how to set up direct debits or anything about finances. I have also been putting money away slowly and have built up savings of £1,112.03. I know it's not a lot, but I am really proud of myself for doing so.

I go to university with a lot of wealthy/posh kids and you guys taught me I don't need to compete with them for the latest stuff and so forth, so I'm being extra careful on purchasing my wants. Not only did you save my life, but you also changed it for the better.

I've finally got a full-time job offer that I will be balancing along side university. THANK YOU all.

I’m a 25 year old female from a pretty working class background. My dad has been on and off UC and my mum works as a support worker at a school. I’ve worked very hard through school and university, landed a good job with an annual income of about £55K and I live at home with my parents and brother. Amongst my relatives and family friends we are by far the poorest and it’s only recently, once I’ve started working that my parents have started to have nice things in life (because I buy it for them).

But slowly I’ve realised that my parents and my brother have become quite financial dependent on me. Whether it’s my dad asking me for £200 here or my brother asking me to pay his road tax or my mum asking me to buy furniture, I will always pay them but I cannot save anything. Every one at work just assumes I’m loaded because I live at home and probably have lots in savings by now but it’s actually the opposite, I have £0 in savings and am still living month to month. But at the same time i have to provide for my family, that’s not an option for me.

I recently was involved with a guy (from a wealthy family), we were introduced through friends, by the time it got to getting parents involved, I was starting to get worried about having to compete with his dad when it came to funding the wedding because there’s no way my parents could keep up with what his family had in mind in terms of the wedding. I think his parents got worried about my financial background and they all backed off (I’m glad though because I don’t want to go anywhere near superficial people and I have a huge financial stress lifted off of me)

Any tips on how to save while living at home?

This feels like a weird question to be asking, but there's no one in my life with whom I can speak about this without feeling like I'm showing off or being weird. I just need some perspective on whether I'm being too stringent on myself.

I track my finances fairly tightly so I've got a reasonably good idea of where the money goes. I'm saving hard for things like holidays, a new car, a new kitchen... but the last few years when I've been pushing myself really hard for this, it feels like I'm saying goodbye to aspects of my life in attempt to reach goals and I wonder if I'm trying too much and need to slow down before I burn out on it? Like I just feel like I want to "live" a bit more, take a holiday, treat myself... but then I feel guilty, because it sets me back from my goals.

Income is in the mid-£80ks. After pension/tax deductions I take home around £4,500/month. This includes a car allowance (I do a lot of driving for work, hence the high fuel cost below).

Monthly Expenses (rounded off to whole numbers for simplicity)

Direct-Debits Monthly - £1,878

Mortgage (£1,500); Gas/Electricity (£100), Council tax (£150), Water (£35), Phone Bill (£19), TV Licence (£16), Internet (£26), Gym (£32)

Other "Regular" Costs - £925

Supermarket (£300), Diesel (£275), Eating Out/Takeaway food (£200), Subscriptions and entertainment including AppleTV, going to the pub, event tickets, birthday gifts etc (£150)- Various other stuff happens month to month, but those are the main ones.

Other Annual costs include car insurance (£650), servicing (£500 budgeted, but this year I've spent £3,000 so far keeping her on the road this year), home insurance (£125), travel insurance (£50), and dentist visits (£200). I now budget £250/month into a savings pot for all of these so they can be paid for as they come around.

Savings in an average month I'm putting £1,200 into my ISA. I've currently got just under £60,000 here. There's no real goal number but the works to my house will be about £80k (extension and new kitchen), I'd like to replace my car soon (£20k? Current car is 12 years old and nearly 200k miles... whatever I buy will be expected to last the same distance/time), and then I still want to have some 'slush' there for emergencies or other things, I don't want to see £0.

I guess what I'm asking is, in my shoes, would you carry on as I am for another 3 years to save up for these goals... or let it slip and accept that I might need to take a loan for the car? Or is it just that my lifestyle is more extravagant than I think? I don't really have any context beyond myself.

I currently owe around £15,000 of business credit card debt to a credit card company for an online business that failed, but is still trading, with only a couple of hundred coming in a month. I was repaying a couple of hundred a month, but seems that this wasn't enough.

The credit card company have passed the debt onto Shire Recoveries, who have been relentless in calling me multiple times a day.

The thing is, I have a house with my wife which is mortgaged, and the credit card company had it in their terms that I couldn't just declare bankruptcy as they'd take the house.

They've now sold the debt to a third party, is bankruptcy now an option? Or can a debt collection agency put a lien on the house, or force a sale or something?

The business is dead, I accept that, and there's no chance of recovery.

Hello 👋

I’m considering going bankrupt.

I voluntarily disclosed additional income and it looks like my tax bill is going to be nearly £40,000 on top of this i’m in an DMP with a total of around £35,000. Meaning overall debt approx £75,000.

Although i’m English born and bred, I also have an EU passport and so have just moved my young family and I to Spain. (We are not well off in the slightest we just both work remotely and therefore essentially just rented an equivalent house of the same monthly rent)

I’m so scared and can’t sleep. My mental health has plummeted over night and I feel so sick constantly. I feel like I need some help mentally or to check in somewhere. I can’t stop crying and worried what life is going to look like am I going to make my family homeless (we rent).

I’ve always lived in the UK prior to recently moving abroad. I have no assets or savings and there’s just no way I’m going to be able to afford whatever HMRC will propose monthly.

Can I apply for bankruptcy abroad?

Will it have any effect on my “credit file” here in Spain?

I’m so scared, i’m shaking furiously as I write this .

I’m in my late 30s, married and have 3 young children. This is all a result of an irresponsible past me prior to children and I am devastated that it will have an effect on my children now. I will ad i’ve been living with undiagnosed (now diagnosed) ADHD all my life and if I knew then what I know now in how to help myself, this could have all been so much different.

Please be gentle 🙏

Hello so long and short of it 5 years ago I was in an Iva which I successfully completed and vowed never to get into serious debt again this was around 25k. This was going great until I fell into serious health issues around 3 years ago. I had a stroke at 38 years of age, I seemingly recovered from this had brief period off work and retuned. However over the course of the last 3 years my
Health slowly got worse.

About 18 months ago I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease this was a massive shock but also a relief in a way as I knew what was wrong with me and could try to tackle it. I was put on Parkinson’s medication which massively helped me and allowed me to continue working. At this point I’m still more or less debt free or on debt i can realistically control at least. The medication they give you with Parkinson’s has some, let’s say serious side effects. Main one being impulsivity this can manifest with food ,drinking ,gambling , sex mine was spending money. I was warned by neurologists this could happen I thought nothing of it. I just started spending money like it was going out of fashion like and addiction I literally could not stop it’s very hard to explain how this effects you until you go through it. Im not lookikg for sympathy i own the debt I should have seeked help but i never I was literally out of. Control to the point I couldn’t sleep at night thinking about buying stuff. I have also bought loads of stuff and returned it afterwards.

I’m around 40k in debt I have never missed a payment ever. Most of what I spent was on tech and refinancing debt. Loans credit cards etc I always used Balance transfers etc to keep everything as little interest as possible.
I have was just told my work was letting me go on health reasons after occupational health meeting. I will be paid notice pay of Which I will put towards my debt.

Most of the things I bought where on buy now pay later for curry’s/very most of it iv already paid for but still owe curry’s around 12k on buy now pay later no interest on any of this atm. I have 20k debt with Nationwide around 1k with Argos. And bits and pieces with credit cards Klarna etc

Most of the stuff I bought I have sold to pay my debts. Everywhere was sold for market value on eBay cex mazuma phones have been my biggest issue with all of this. I have very little assets bar a ps5 and a tv.

My 14 year old son lives with me I get uc lwrca and pip.
I’m going to continue paying my debts as long as I can.
Next year it will get to the point of where I can’t.
I was advised of dro this sounded like it would help me allot.

I keep reading about assets I literally have none anymore it worry’s me it will get questioned by my creditor and dro refused.
I can prove 95% of the stuff I have sold and show it was used to pay debts. Iv always paid my debts evenly across creditors obviously tried to avoid interest where i could.

Sorry for rambling on I can’t sleep for worry and the stress is making my symptoms worse and would just like some advice and opinions of people who have been through a dro or something similar.

Hi! I am looking for insights on my way of handling my salary and personal finance.

I currently operate this way when I get paid each month :

- Pay rent (bills inc)

- Set aside 200 for monthly groceries

- Set aside for investement and savings (more and more investing since as the emergency mattress grows I add less and less to it). The total amount is fixed and is between 39% and 43% of the net income i received each month.

- Set aside for recurring bills (transportation, mobile phone plan, etc ...). At this point, if nothing happens, I can live the whole month without spending anything more since everything that is recurring, and groceries, are already set aside.

- Add a bit into different pockets (family christmas gifts, holidays, something I want to buy in a few months, incoming train tickets, etc)

Then, I am left with a given amount, say 400 for example. This is purely then for anything that isn't strict necessity. I could book a flight using this rather than one of the dedicated holiday pocket. I mostly use this to eat out, to buy some stuff that I want, go to the movie theater, buy books, random expenses that happen through the month basically.

Then, I end each month with a given amount, that could be close to 0. Because I have already saved and invested the proportion that I think is good, I don't really mind that. If I finish a month with something, I will usually put it into a pocket and then start the new month based only on the newly received salary.

This does mean that in case of big emergency I would need to withdraw from my cash ISA.

I have one general account (salary + pockets, every day finances), one cash ISA and one stock ISA.

I just trying to understand if this seem like a correct way to manage my finance, to have insights on how people usually do it, and if it is ok to treat the cash ISA as the emergency mattress (even though withdrawing would be "bad" because it wouldn't decrease the allowance, that would only happen in case of a big emergency).

Thanks.

My current credit card has a limit of £1000 and I have a credit score of 630. Would it be worth requesting an increase to higher my score in the future?

I rarely use my credit card for big purchases and when I do I pay them off almost immediately, I use it mostly for fuel and day to day spending within my means. Im also currently owed money on my credit card which shows how often I use it.

I do plan to pay for a vet bill next month with my card which will be around 250-300 but I have that money saved already for it.

I opened a JISA for my child while both they and I were resident in the UK. We are now both resident abroad and I would like to transfer the JISA to a different provider. This is allowed per HMRC’s rules but I cannot find a provider willing to accept the transfer.

Does anybody know of providers who will accept the transfer in these circumstances? I want to keep contributing to the JISA whilst abroad too which is also allowed for JISAs.

TY!

Hello all, I am 24 and I have 3 credit cards:
- Barclays Card for Avios rewards (£3,500 limit)
- Capitol One credit card (£2,800 limit)
- MONZO flex (£3,000 limit)

My credit score is great, I have never missed a payment and always pay my statements in full on DD.

I use the Barclays card religiously (I usually use £1500 of the limit) for the avios points as I am an avid traveller, and the flex is good for big purchases being interest free for 3 months so I use it a couple times a year.

However, I never touch my Capitol one card and I recently wanted to get a Santander reward credit card and got rejected. I’m wondering if the rejection is related to the amount I already have in credit. I also have a mortgage for added info.

Looking for advice as to whether I should just close my card with Capitol one to allow for other cards/since I don’t use it, or if that is likely to have no benefit or worse, negatively impact my credit score?

Thanks!

Can I/should I transfer my shares to my wife? At one point in the future, my company might start paying for dividends and/or get sold. My wife isn't currently working and is therefore in the lowest tax bracket. Should I gift the shares to her? What considerations do I need to take into account? Are there risks to this approach?

(We are happily married, I trust her fully)

Hi All,

My wife and her parents are currently thinking about selling both our houses and buying a single larger property together. This would help with eventual childcare as well as reducing bills but im not sure where this would sit from inheritance. We are married, but I put in most of the equity in our current house. Her parents are mortgage free and are looking at retirement within the next six months.

What are people's thoughts on this?

Hi,

I have recently made a sizeable gain on some shares in a GIA. I cannot move them to an ISA and frankly am not looking to at this time. I have not sold/made any other CGT-applicable transactions this year.

I paid £10,000 for approx. 9,000 shares a few years ago. Today my TOTAL shareholding is worth £35k.

I am looking to liquidate 3,000 of my 9,000 shares. The total cash proceeds would be approx £11,600.

Therefore, it is only a £1.6k gain vs the total purchase, however I am selling a third of the shares for that gain as opposed to 9k shares. Is the CGT worked out on net gain, or gain-per-share?

I.e., I paid approx £1.11 per share. I am now selling for approx £3.88 per share. Would I work out my CGT on this gain (£2.77 difference * 3000 shares = £8,310)?

Or

Is it as simple as, paid £10k, now selling £11.6k worth, therefore under £3k CGT allowance = no CGT applicable?

Apologies if that terminology is wrong, I hope you understand what I mean.

Thanks

Hi Everyone,

Little bit of background.

I'm currently an Aircraft Engineer in the RAF and have just put in my PVR (18 months notice) to leave. When I leave, I will have completed just over 24 years.

I'm in a very fortunate position that I remain Don the older AFPS75 pension scheme, which is a bit better than the current one, but will have to make the choice of when to move to AFPS15 as part of the McCleod judgement (that might mean nothing to you but don't worry).

I'm also in a position, financially, where we are getting to grips a bit but have some stuff to sort over the next 18 months. Some old debt from a closed down business spread across some 0% credit cards. About £20k but it's manageable and we expect to have it cleared around the time I leave.

As it stands though, we do not own a home. Between the married quarters being cheaper, the constant threat of being posted elsewhere, and of course the debt, we never got round to it.

So at the age of 42, we will be buying a home a few months after I get out.

As it stands, I will get the following;

£13.5k per year in immediate payments until state pension age, after which it goes up to about £18k per year. I will also get a tax free lump sum of approx £50k.

The £50k will basically be used for a deposit. The immediate payments will probably be just short of the mortgage payments but my wage when I get out, plus my wife's wage, will more than cover it.

My question is, should I commute some of my pension into my Tax free lump sum to reduce the amount of mortgage I have to take, or do I keep it as part of my annual payment.

If I keep it as my payment, I will most likely throw it into a SIPP or some other investment to grow until I retire full time.

We are planning to use some of our wages to over pay the mortgage as much as possible anyway.

Expected figures if I commute are;

Immediate payments - reduced to about £10k

Lump sum - increases to £69k

Then at age 55, the immediate payments return to £13.5k (and according to my sheet I'll get a £29k lump sum here too, but I want to double check that)

Then from SPA it all reverts back to normal.

Psychologically, I feel commuting to reduce the initial mortgage principal makes more sense?

Expected household income will be around £105k before taking into account the pension payments.

Thanks for any insights you may have.

Hi, I am seeking to understand how the UK State Pension would work for me. I am a full British citizen born in South America, but who spent 8 years working in the UK in the 1990s. After that, I left the country and went on to live abroad, having paid no further contributions to my pension. I am 60.

I understand I can 'buy' 2 years in voluntary contributions in order to get the minimum pension after 2030.

My question would be how do I define my status: non-resident, expat or other? How does it play out in the forms to fill?

I'd be very grateful if someone can shed light on this.

Hello, I am looking for some general advice here on the sustainability of the expenses below. I’m 30M and have always been a little “relaxed” about finances and I’m quite embarrassed to say that i’ve never invested too much time into financial planning and budgeting. This mostly went okay until a year or so ago and since then I have worked hard to streamline my finances.

The budget below is a summarised version of a much more granular breakdown, but this should cover it:

Rent/Bills - 1675
Pet Insurance/food - 142
Subscriptions & Memberships-100
Car, Insurance & fuel- 350
Savings - 500
Food 200

My after tax income is 3220 and this leaves me with 245. This mostly gets spent socialising.

I have maxed out my LISA this year and another 6-7k in a cash ISA that I’ve been able to save over the years too. I do a 3% pension contribution.

The obvious one is rent, but my job requires me to be in a high cost of living area and I have a dog, so I pay a premium for that somewhat.

My car is 4 year PCP approaching 2 years in February, I wish I never got a PCP but I do need the car and it is reliable.

Ultimately I feel incredibly lucky to be in the position I am in, but I was wondering if I am missing any tricks here to set me on the right path? And do you think this is sustainable?

I am planning on looking at investing some of my savings in stocks but I i believe this would be better further down the line.

Premiums just gone up from £85 to £190 after five year review. Age 53 . Guarantee pay out £130000. Is it still worth it?

Our mortgage expires in juat under 3 years. We owe about £250K still, our Help to buy loan is expected to be worth about £140K.

Currrent mortgage is 3.8% and HTB is about 1.9% effectively.

My wife and I both max our S&S ISA every year at the start of the year. We also both contribute heavily to pension (everything above £100K as we both earn about £140K).

So we have extra money building up, we think we will be able to get to the £140K value of the HTB loan by the time we renew mortgage. We have about £60K now kind of sat around.

I dont know whether its best to put the money into a GIA, and invest in VALL, or to put it in Premium Bonds as we both currently have almost 0 premium bonds.

I know for a sub 3-year horizon people will say dont risk the market in case we're in a dip/crash when you want to access the money. However Im not too worried about that because if the market is down, we just wont take the money out. We dont HAVE to pay off the HTB or part of the mortgage, so would only do it if market was good etc.

So considering that, is the answer still Premium Bonds, or is it GIA? Quite happy to dump into Premium Bonds, and then if we see a market crash from AI or whatever and prices drop significantly, then buy into the market at that point.

Appreciate any input, thanks!

Hi All,

Just wondering what the general consensus is for Gold ETF's going forward.... AI seems to suggest that investors are liquidating positions to release cash and that high bond yields, interest rates are
more tempting for investors than a non-yielding asset like Gold.

However, I'm wondering, with all the uncertainty, and a forecasted market "correction" is it not wise
to keep some money in gold ... typically the recommendation is circa 5% of your total investment pot.

Given this ... I can't see why the price of SGLN for instance is trending down ...

Anyone have any opinions.. would you keep a bit of Gold for diversification ?

Partner and I are both directors of our limited company. Partner does the admin. I also have a paye zero hours contract for ad adhoc work.
This year we applied for 30 hrs free childcare for our 3yr old and it was approved in the summer.
When we reapplied in autumn now hmrc have sent a message on the account asking for evidence of my partners salary slips for the last three months and bank statements showing the salary being deposited. We have usually deposited the salary and dividends annually from the company accounts and were never told differently by the accountant.
Would it be an issue with HMRC if we told them that salary is not paid monthly or is it best to just loose the childcare hours if we dont submit the evidence?
There is regular income and dividends tax payments every year by my partner so not sure why hmrc are probing?

I was employed temporarily abroad for 3 months and I physically left the UK to do the work. I earned around £2500 only and I’m not sure if I need to file out the SA102 form or not.

The employer has no UK presence at all, so there is no PAYE detail, p45, and p60.

In this situation, what should I do? Any advice is welcome and thanks in advance.

Hi all, I'm seeking advice on the financial side of things following a recent break up. I'll only add for context that we were together for 8.5 years to explain some of the close financial ties.

I'll be following some guide I found regarding financial decoupling for most things but the big one is the house and mortgage that I'm hoping someone here can give some insight on.

We bought together as tenants in common in March 2025. Our share each is 50%.

We paid £235,000 with a roughly £25,000 deposit. Being cautious souls we made what now turns out to have been a horrific mistake of fixing for 5 years at 4.69%.

Our mortgage payment is just under £1020 per month.

We each earn £37,700 a year, take home £2300-£2500 month (one has a student loan).

We currently still owe £205,500ish and will be faced with a 5% Early Repayment Charge if we sell now, going down to 4% in April 2027.

We should regain at least the value we paid for the house, ideally in good conditions we could push up to £250,000 but I don't want to be too optimistic.

What I'm asking from the wonderful folk here is if there's any possible better way that I'm not seeing, or any glaringly obvious omission I'm making, or perspective I'm not considering on the finances of it?

Neither of us have the funds available to buy again without anything we may pull from the sale of the current house.

Hi all. Currently got a workplace pension with Scottish widdows. Total fees are 0.46%. Invested in a worldwide fund that's been outperformed by VWRP over the past 10 years a little. I have about 90k in there though, so losing around £400 a year fees compared to having VALL (or less difference VWRP) on a platform like T212.

I know I need to keep a bit in there for employer contributions, but has anyone done a transfer from SW (or other) to a private SIPP for more choice and lower fees? Can't do inspecie so will be out of the market for a while (for better or worse right now). What's the general wisdom? Fees aren't huge but they'll add up over another 20 years.

Thanks in advance

I've recently transferred my S&S ISA to interactive investor.

I thought I had maxed out my allowance for this year but my account is showing a message suggesting I still have £20,000 of unused allowance.

It got me thinking...

Is there any way of checking this?

Is there such a thing as overpaying on your ISA by mistake?

How are individuals stopped from putting in more than their allowance?

My husband died in July of this year. He moved to the US to marry me in 2008. (I am a US citizen, he had a green card.) Before we got married, he worked at several different firms — sometimes as an employee, sometimes as a contractor. He also had his own consulting firm that he wound down shortly after moving to the US.

Most of the firms he worked with either no longer exist or were gobbled up by larger companies. What are my next steps? Is there a way for me to find out he had a pension anywhere in the UK? I checked the Companies House website and didn’t have much luck (an old address for a company he worked for right out of school). He didn’t leave a will and there’s not any paperwork from when he was in the UK. I don’t have the contact info for his old UK accountant.

Thank you!