Wallowing......

I am really struggling today. The car insurance came up for renewal last week and, while I was sitting typing away at the computer, my long-suffering wife asked me whether it needed to go on direct debit to be paid monthly, or whether it could be paid for in a lump sum. Without thinking about it – or rather, not wanting to have the conversation at that moment in time, I said “whatever is easiest, just pay it” or words to that effect.

My wife duly paid the car insurance, and thought no more of it.

She then went to buy food and discovered there is no money in the account. Don’t fear, dear reader, I still have a credit card which has a little space on it so we won't starve but the situation is fairly black.

As regular readers will know, we are trying to sell our flat – let me clarify this situation somewhat. Six or seven weeks ago the estate agent came around and we were all ready to put the flat on the market, but my lovely mother said that really the flat would look better if it had some carpets in it (we do have *some* carpets, but some areas (eg the stairs) the carpets were in such a bad state that we had to pull them up, after falling down the stairs. Twice.

So, anyway, my mum kindly offered to pay for the carpet and the fitting, and told us to put off selling till the new carpet had been fitted. Six weeks later and the person fitting it is still messing us about as to when it's going to happen. Six weeks with a falling housing market means that this may well have knocked another £2000 of the value of our flat, which had already gone into negative equity anyway. I know it's not a good time to sell, but we realised that our fixed rate mortgage runs out soon, and we can't afford for our rate to rise. We also had a letter today from the mortgage company telling us that from October, we would have to pay £125 more each month on our mortgage. That gives us less than two months to sell our flat before we get into *serious* trouble.

I really am feeling rather panicked. I know we won't starve; I know it won't come to that, but I can't see an end to the debt and I really just want to cry. I am trying desperately to “look on the bright side” but today...its just not working. Sorry to moan; I know its most unbecoming and that I should just be trusting that it will all work out but, in honesty, right now, it doesn’t feel like it will.

Yours as ever,

The Broken Man.