Case Study; mid thirties family guy

44brendan said:

I'm assuming that your partner/wife is not jointly liable on the BTL loans. Despite the contention by Pat2 that you are not a suitable candidate for bankruptvy, I really don't see any capacity here to service the high level of borrowings you are carrying. Most of the advice here is to cut back on your spending, but while there may be some scope here, you would need to cut back to a seriously frugal level over an extended term to service the debt level you are currently carrying. Due to current forebearance by the BTL lenders the position has not yet moved into the unsustainable level. This gives you time to get some good professional advice on your options.
Seek out a good professional advisor who has the capacity to fully assess your current position and make recommendations on what your options are when the banks come looking for higher levels of repayments.

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A PIP would surely recommend something like voluntary sale of the investments and use excess income to service the shortfall over the term of the DSA/PIA. I can't see them saying go straight to bankruptcy when he clearly has a capacity to pay something. It is a requiremnt of bankruptcy now that a PIP must give you a letter stating that your circumstances would not allow any other solution.

BrokeGuy said:

Sorry if this sounded defensive "Thanks again guys, all comments welcome, even if criticism", it didn't mean to, I meant to say I don't mind if the comments are tough, otherwise there is no point.

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It's not easy to post all your information and have people commenting on it, fair play to you for giving it a go.

Ultimately 35 is still young enough, you'll more than likely have 35 years of work left in you. With that in mind and based on your relatively good income, your family home mortgage should be easy enough to manage. Ditch the BTL's if needs be, bring your spending down and you'll be able to manage. Without adjusting your spending the whole situation will eventually be out of your control.
The reasonable living expenses I posted could be a good guide to see where your spending is high. It's very doable to live within them, I'm leaving on a little less than what a couple in our situation should have myself at the moment.

BrokeGuy said:

Sorry if this sounded defensive "Thanks again guys, all comments welcome, even if criticism", it didn't mean to, I meant to say I don't mind if the comments are tough, otherwise there is no point.
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It may feel like the comments are tough and they are hard to read when you feel like you have been hammered down.

Basically they are separating your personal business from your investment business and while the difficulties or incipient difficulties in the investment business are there, they are both hiding and magnifying an underlying personal expenditure issue.
They are hiding it because the size of the problem you may face with the investment dwarfs your personal expenditure so you don't really see it clearly.
They are magnifying it because any small personal overspend has much greater knock-on consequences on your ability to sustain your investment business so greatly increasing the stress on you.

It might be worthwhile looking at it as two separate problems yourself. Tackling the personal budget wouldn't be easy - though I agree with the comments relating to ditching Sky Sports, not because I am being harsh or judgemental about small pleasures but because if your monthly personal overspend is €514 that represents 17.5% of that overspend so it is an easy one to tackle.

Separating the two will then give you the room in your head to address the investment business and decide the most prudent approach to it.