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'I'm on the brink of bankruptcy but too ashamed to give up my lifestyle'
Filing for bankruptcy is increasingly common, with government statistics showing that total individual insolvencies remained at their highest quarterly levels last year since 2010. Here, one writer shares the shame and deep pain of being on the brink of bankruptcy – and the impact it has had on her friendships, confidence and marriage...
'Last night we had some really old friends round for dinner who we hadn’t seen properly for years. The wine was flowing, the conversation was animated, but what should have been a happy and relaxed evening felt anything but.
They asked so many questions: when had we bought the house? Were we considering sending the kids to private school? Where were we going on holiday? Even the most anodyne questions about where we had bought that table and that bookcase felt like emotional landmines.
I couldn’t bring myself to admit that we were far from the financially sorted couple they used to know, that the house was rented and came with the furniture.
My husband, Paul*, looked so unhappy, I wanted to just cross the room and hug him and tell him everything was going to be okay. But I also knew he was furious that I’d spent so much on the food.
I had meant to buy something basic from Asda, and then do our usual trick of decanting cheap wine. But walking past Waitrose I got sucked in. Then I walked into Jo Malone and spent £40 on a candle so I could leave it burning for the guests in the loo. It was stupid. But sometimes it's easier to pretend things are okay than try making a dent in debts that increase, even if you spend nothing at all.
The fact is, Paul and I are close to bankruptcy. We have thousands of pounds of debt and no one knows apart from us. It’s a big, dirty secret that we live with every day. Why don’t we tell anyone? It’s complicated. I don’t want people to feel sorry for us, and Paul is ashamed.
It feels so wrong that we are in this position. We’re both in our early forties and have worked hard to provide for our kids. No one could accuse us of anything worse than being foolish – we’re not gamblers or compulsive shoppers, just two people who misjudged the housing market and got unlucky with a job. Now we are teetering on a financial tightrope.
The other day, when I picked up the kids from school, they wanted to feed the ducks, which meant walking to the part of town I avoid like the plague. Before I knew it, we were standing right in front of our old house, a lovely Victorian three-storey family home.
My stomach reeled as I inhaled the familiar scent of the cherry blossom that always bloomed outside our bedroom window, and all those incredibly painful memories of what we once had came flooding back.
It’s now 11 years since Paul and I drove down from London to see the house. I had a great job as a features editor on a successful women’s magazine; Paul, who worked in marketing for a bank, had just been promoted at work. We were madly in love. I was pregnant with Rose, and moving to our ‘forever home’ in a pretty country town 40 minutes south of London seemed like the obvious next step.
Perhaps if we had owned a property before, we would have seen that the house, although lovely, needed a lot of renovation.It had been empty for a long time, required rewiring and replumbing. But we were young and full of energy and optimism, and had savings of £60,000. Mortgage companies were falling over themselves to lend us the £400,000 asking price.
We moved in and, at first, everything was great. After having Rose, I decided to give up my job and go freelance. Paul was earning over £100,000 and we agreed my time would be better spent working from home and looking after our daughter than commuting back and forth to London.
We were both so thrilled to have found somewhere wonderful for our family to grow up in. Paul was really happy in his job and I loved being at home more to look after Rose. Plus, the economy was booming. What could possibly go wrong?
Then we started to overstretch ourselves. As gorgeous as the house was, we underestimated how much work was needed but we were desperate to get the renovations done. Everything cost more than we budgeted for – so we spent money we didn’t have, planning to pay
it off later.
During this time we also took the kids to see Paul’s brother in Australia and we both turned 40, celebrating with big parties. We managed to justify every penny we spent, and when we overspent, we remortgaged, and then remortgaged again, without considering the fallout.
Then, out of nowhere, came the banking crisis of 2007: Paul was made redundant. At first I was quietly confident he would sail into another job. But he didn’t, and the job market seemed to freeze up overnight. I tried to stay strong but I was consumed with the kind of panic that leaves you breathless. We were so terrified that we would be stuck with a house that was plummeting in value while mortgage rates shot up, that we put it on the market for less than it was worth, knowing we had to get out. I can’t tell you how heartbreaking it was to show other happy couples around the house I thought we’d grow old in. I cried myself to sleep most nights.
Then I found out I was pregnant with Daniel and even though I secretly hoped no one would buy the house, it sold within a few months. Because we’d remortgaged twice, once we’d paid what was owed to the bank, there was almost nothing left.
I found us a place to rent and put a brave face on it, reassuring Paul that this was just a blip. What we didn’t anticipate was that interest rates would be slashed while rents would rise, meaning that if we had stayed in our house the mortgage would ultimately have been less than our rent. Paul struggled to get another job in banking, and a few months after I gave birth to Daniel, he cracked and took a job paying half what he’d earned before. By then we had eye-watering debts on credit cards from paying bills and our rent – buying another property had stopped being an option.
And now? Well, nothing has changed.Each step of the way we tell each other that this is the last time we’ll start on another credit card or get another loan, but what alternative do we have? Of course, all this has put unbelievable amounts of pressure on our marriage. Sometimes I do feel irrational anger and blame Paul, but none of this is his fault, and seeing the anguish etched on his face adds to my own guilt.
Romantically, we’ve suffered, too – it’s hard to feel enthusiastic about sex when you’ve got so much on your mind. Although I hate to admit it, what I found so attractive about Paul was his confidence, yet now he is meek, anxious and constantly apologetic. I feel like our roles as a couple have completely changed.
We have a pact not to discuss our financial problems in front of the kids, but they know this isn’t our house. The other day, Paul caught me marking their heights on the wall and suggested it wasn’t a good idea as it would be counted as wear and tear.
We’re on a rolling six-month contract, but should the landlord’s circumstances change at any time, we would have just two month’s notice to get out. Last month, the electricity people threatened that if we didn’t pay they would be forced to put us on a meter.
A week ago, I ran out of petrol on the motorway with the kids in the back of the car. I knew I was at my credit-card limit, so I pulled onto the hard shoulder and called the AA, pretending I’d broken down. The man they sent out to me knew that I had just run out of petrol but was a nice guy and filled the car up anyway. It was humiliating beyond belief.
Still, I can’t bear the thought of the kids knowing how bad things are so I do all I can to keep up appearances – I might food shop at Asda now, but I still buy all their clothes from Boden.
We know our parents can’t help us –they are all retired and don’t have much themselves anyway. I often debate giving up my freelance career for an office job again, but the money we’d end up spending on childcare probably wouldn’t make it worthwhile.
Sometimes I’ll have a really good month – but while I probably look successful to the outside world, as anyone who works for themselves will tell you, it’s a roller-coaster ride. When there’s a bad month, the same costs still need to be met. The things I miss the most are the ones I took for granted: getting my highlights done or my legs waxed. Now anything spare goes towards school trips for the kids or an occasional family day out in London.
In the future, I have no idea how we’ll help through university or pay their weddings. How will we provide them with what they need to sail off into the world when we just don’t have it to give? One of the hardest things is that while we’ve been struggling to make ends meet, all of our friends have managed to weather the financial storms and seem to be even more comfortable than before.
I constantly have to remind Paul that just because we’re now far poorer than them, it doesn’t mean we have to give up our friendships. Yet we’re always the ones suggesting we go to a cheaper restaurant or making up excuses about why we can’t rent a villa in Greece together.
Paul isn’t the man I married 15 years ago and I feel sad just thinking about the charming, cocky person I fell in love with. But I still love him, and although things have been tough, we’ve never been close to breaking up. Now, forced into an uncomfortable complicity about this awful secret we hide, we face the daily battle of trying to get our finances back on track and hoping for brighter days – but at least we do it together.'
This article originally appeared in the October 2014 issue of Red. Subscribe to the magazine here.
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