My husband’s stroke left us £60,000 in debt

The evening of September 9 had started like any other.

My husband, Paul, had just come home from his volunteer work at the local prison; he’d said hi to our two kids before joining me in the kitchen, where I was making a cup of tea with my back to him.

His voice sounded just the same as always after a long day, but when I turned around and saw his face, I realised something was seriously wrong. His right side had drooped, and although he was only 45, I knew instantly he was having a stroke.

Since that night, our lives have never been the same.

Not only was Paul’s health affected, but we also found ourselves in nearly £60,000 worth of debt with seemingly no way out.

In hindsight, our problems began when our joinery business began to struggle after the war in Ukraine sent timber prices soaring. 

Knowing we couldn’t pass those costs on to our customers, our profit margins soon vanished, along with our once-reliable contracts and the local contractors we had hired. As things continued to tighten, Paul began taking on all the work himself. 

Before long, he was working six, sometimes seven days a week, often up to 18 hours a day. We knew this wasn’t sustainable, but it was all we could do to keep afloat. 

In April, we stopped being able to take a proper wage. By the end of August, Paul couldn’t cope any more. He went to the doctor and was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. 

And just one week later, in early September, he had his stroke. 

At that point, we cut back on everything we possibly could: subscriptions, mobile contracts, and handed back our financed cars. When we cancelled Netflix, that’s when the kids knew things were really serious.

After the stroke, Paul had to stop work and, when we submitted the final accounts for the business, we realised just how bad things had got – we were £60,000 in debt.

Naturally, our instinct was to fix it, to figure it out, so, once again, we began cutting costs. 

We sold everything we could, including our TVs and electrical items, and reduced our lives down to the basics. Instead of putting the heating on, we wore oversized hoodies around the house. 

We swapped our weekly shop for food banks, waste-saving apps, and a local community supermarket. At one point, we even borrowed from our older kids to buy food, which made us feel so sad and ashamed.

During this time, Paul still couldn’t drink without a straw or blink without eye drops. We’d hoped that he’d recover and return to work so we could catch up – of course, what we hadn’t realised is that we could have got Universal Credit.

As we were so busy just trying to survive, though, we never thought to take five minutes to check our entitlements with an online benefits calculator. Instead, we just kept cutting back.

But as we learned, there’s only so far that you can reduce costs until you can’t reduce them anymore. And no matter how much we cut back, the bills didn’t stop.

Within six weeks, despite all our efforts, it was clear there was no way of catching back up. Everything was a month overdue, and, by November, the red letters and bailiffs had started turning up.

They were relentless: parking outside the house in a van for hours or showing up just as we were taking the kids to school or settling them for the night.

Our home, the place where you should be safe and comfortable, started to feel like a prison.

We were terrified all the time because the bailiffs told us they could come in through open windows and that they ‘wouldn’t take no for an answer’. As a result, we kept the doors locked and the blinds down, hiding away from them and the rest of the world out of fear and shame.

I don’t know what we would have done had someone at the food bank not mentioned Christians Against Poverty (CAP) to us just before Christmas. They explained that CAP is a debt charity which offers free face-to-face support and debt coaching for people in our situation. 

I rang them right away to ask for help with our debts, and on January 15, a man called Jonathan came to see us.

At that point, we had just £2 left on the meter and were about to have our electricity and gas cut off.

Thankfully, Jonathan sent us a text with an emergency voucher for gas and electricity, which allowed us to put £20 on the meter, which got us through the rest of January. He also helped us out with a food voucher and a phone top-up – emergency support that gave us space to breathe.

From there, he worked through our finances and advised us on the next steps towards getting back on track.

He helped Paul file for bankruptcy and helped me apply for a Debt Relief Order (DRO). The DRO paused my debt repayments and interest for a year. If my situation hadn’t improved within that year, the debts would have been wiped clean. It also meant that bailiffs stopped hounding us.

The personal way that CAP dealt with us as people, as a family, was so unique. The help they gave us, not just practically helping us get out of debt but also in terms of friendship and support, made such a huge difference in a dark time.

We’ve still got a long way to go, but there is finally light at the end of the tunnel. Although Paul is still on medication, he’s recovering well and has applied to attend college to retrain as a health and safety inspector, as he can no longer manage being on the tools. 

We are on Universal Credit, but the money is still very tight. To manage, we have to stick to a very strict budget, including using apps that help cut costs and reduce food waste, and we don’t put the heating on if we can help it.

If nothing else, this experience taught us just how vulnerable anyone can become. One minute, we were running a business; the next, we were hiding from bailiffs.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing James.Besanvalle@metro.co.uk. 

Share your views in the comments below.