Since September 2007, our lives have changed forever.  An IVA was the best option open to us and yes we found it extremely hard most of the time, it taught us how to deal with money again.  We now respect money.

The feeling I get when I hand over my cash card at a till is one I cannot describe.  I just know that its OUR money.  Yes we are still paying back my husbands mum but we have control.  We have actually overpaid her some months and hopefully we will finish paying it off by the end of the year (a whole 12 months sooner than if we still had the IVA). 

None of this would have been possible however if we had not stumbled across the IVA.co.uk forum.  The site was an inspiration to us.  We never knew that we had a choice over our IPs in the beginning, that things like medical and optical expenses could be part of the budget, the fact that other people were in the same boat as us or even that we could end our IVA early. 

We thought we were alone with our problems but I know now there are many thousands of people out there going through the same journey we did.   I found a very valuable friend through this forum when we were proposing our F&F and she was in the preliminary stages of proposing an IVA.  We just clicked and I can never thank her enough for helping me emotionally and for keeping me sane.  We have since met and we probably contact each other most days. 

I know that we were very fortunate to be in the position to offer a full and final settlement where most people are not and some people take the harder decision to go bankrupt.  These people have my full admiration and respect as it is not an easy decision to reach and it is not something that I think we could have done, even if an option. 

Everyones story is different, some find an IVA a struggle, others seem to breeze through but I truly hope that people reading this will realise that it is possible to have an IVA and come out of the other side smiling.  This will hopefully give people the strength to carry on knowing that being debt free is an extremely tremendous reward for 5 or even 6 years of not feeling that your life is your own, that your spending is scrutinised at every turn.  But it is worth it whatever path people decide, as long as you can say you have tried your best then there is absolutely nothing to be ashamed about.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 9:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.