u/Fabulous-Car-9777

I’m looking for realistic advice from people who may have been through something similar, rather than judgement.

During lockdown my finances spiralled badly due to a combination of depression, gambling and relying on high APR borrowing to stay afloat. At one point I had a remortgage lined up which would likely have consolidated everything and stabilised the situation, but it was declined, and things deteriorated from there. The worsening debt situation is what ultimately destroyed my credit file.

Ironically, I’m now earning the best money I’ve ever earned. Household income is around £90k. My mortgage balance is only around £40k and the property value is likely around £130k–£150k, although repairs and maintenance have been neglected due to the financial pressure.

Affordability itself is not the issue. If this debt was structured sensibly against the house, I could manage repayments comfortably. The problem is that I’m trapped in expensive short-term debt and constant pressure, which keeps dragging me back into bad habits whenever things become overwhelming.

I also urgently owe money to people who genuinely need it back, and that’s my biggest concern right now.

What I’m trying to achieve is breathing space:
- clear or consolidate high-pressure debts,
- repair the house,
- buy a modest second-hand car,
- and stabilise life enough to properly address the underlying problems instead of constantly firefighting.

I understand people will say “don’t borrow more to solve debt,” but I genuinely believe a structured long-term solution would completely change my situation compared to the chaos I’m currently stuck in.

Has anyone here recovered from a situation where:
- income and equity were good,
- but credit history became badly damaged during a short difficult period?

Were you eventually able to remortgage, use specialist lenders, secured lending, or another route to rebuild?

Since latest update I can no longer play spin and gos on the Mac. It does not allow me to select anything. Is this just me or is it broken for all? I need to log in in my phone to register then log back in in client , sometimes the transfer of session takes 5 minutes and you can blind off in that time. What’s going on!!

GG seem to be set on killing the uk market. I know I am not alone in being asked for an excess of documents to prove I can afford a £100 limit a month…. I showed wage slips of 3 months showing good money and bank statements where there is usually 2k surplus money a month … Then they question why I have this money … clearly the wage slips meant nothing to them, so I show them data from my work portal that I’m probably not supposed to share, now more questions and more requests .. once I mentioned I put money in a joint account they want to see that statement … out of the question and an invasion of privacy. No other site has treated me this bad, I know the regulations have changed and believe me 15 years ago when I earned peanuts and was maxing out credit cards in online casinos I would have welcomed such checks, but peoples circumstances can change, and evey other site seems to have no issue except gg. One or two sites have been unreasonable but I’m not interested in playing with them in that case, however as gg have cornered the market and virtually killed off all other sites, and become the main sponsor of most uk live evens, I am being denied poker opportunities due to this stupid over protective system which is now looking more like data harvesting. I have already shared more data with them that I feel comfortable and refuse to give in…. If someone with a four figure bank balance can’t afford £100 then who is it exactly they want? Is the problem that they don’t want small stakes players and only want people who can lose thousands a month?! Absolutely ruining poker for me ….