I always knew that it would take about a year to get back on my feet financially after the move (it's been 8 months now). I was doing some number crunching this morning - after tracking my expenditure for the last month - and feel a little enlightened by the fact that I actually know how much I owe! That might sound odd, but I've been so 'head in the sand' about my situation until now that it took a serious talking-to by my brother to give me the wake up call required to get me into action. I realised that living on my credit cards would plunge me deeper and deeper into debt and that I needed to reassess.
It looks like I could possibly have my debt all paid within 7 years - if the bank will only lend me the required amount of money.

That is all of course assuming that I can reign my expenditure to within my earnings; a place it isn't at the moment! I don't spend frivolously and very little that isn't neccessity, but it is still outside my earnings! Increase the earnings? potentially!

......then after 4 years of ups and downs, I fell pregnant, and I can honestly say that was the happiest time of our marriage. The only time I was really made to feel special. Soon after J was born the wheels really fell off. S fell into a deep depression and things went from bad to worse. To put it in nutshell, I finally had to leave (by which stage J was 3 years old).

You'd think that leaving would have been the beginning of the end but that was when the real trouble started. S became verbally abusive and physically threatening. Eventually after nearly a year of blame and recriminations, emotional blackmail and threats, I moved back to London from where we had been living for the previous 2 years. and this is where this blog begins.