Shock of my children's ?20,000 bills

The first Dan Salter knew about the debts of his two teenage children was when his 18-year-old son admitted he had been refused credit.

'Rick said that he'd been refused a loan, and when we checked with a credit reference agency our address was listed as a risk. It turned out that both he and my 19-year-old stepdaughter were heavily in debt.'

Dan applied for a notice of disassociation, but that didn't stop his kids spending. 'My stepdaughter started borrowing from us to pay other debts such as her mobile phone bills. It was £500 here, £1,000 there, and it soon mounted up. She was borrowing elsewhere and then she needed a car for work but couldn't afford it. We bought her one and paid her insurance to stop her going into debt with other people.'

Dan's real worry, though, is his son, who ran up debts of almost £20,000, including the purchase of two cars, which his mother eventually covered by remortgaging her house.

'Rick's only earning £14,000 a year but a finance company gave him a self-certification mortgage for £225,000,' says Dan. 'No one checked whether he could afford to keep up the repayments. How can that be legal and where will he turn if it all goes wrong?'

Not to Dan, it would seem, as he's now told his family that he won't be helping them out any more. 'I haven't worked hard all my life just to end up bailing out my kids.'