My fight to get my life back!

pebbles88 · 9 January 2009 at 9:17PM

fatbelly wrote: »

Bear in mind that if the catalogue debts pre-date April 2007 and don't have a signed consumer credit act agreement (cca), and many didn't, then they are unenforceable and may be persuaded not to pursue.

Hi, when you say pre-date april 2007, do you mean when i first started my account with the catalogues, or just if i ordered the goods forming the debt since then?? I am sorry if this is a silly question

pebbles88 · 9 January 2009 at 9:37PM

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet
Household Information
Number of adults in household........... 3
Number of children in household......... 0
Number of cars owned.................... 1
Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 0
Partners monthly income after tax....... 920
Benefits................................ 242
Other income............................ 0
Total monthly income.................... 1162
Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 506
Secured loan repayments................. 0
Rent.................................... 0
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 110
Electricity............................. 0 mum pays in lieu of rent
Gas..................................... 0 mum pays in lieu of rent
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 0 mum pays in lieu of rent
Telephone (land line)................... 11 split cost with mum
Mobile phone............................ 90
TV Licence.............................. 0 paid for by relative
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 14.5 split cost with mum
Internet Services....................... 15 split cost with mum
Groceries etc. ......................... 100 just for me & dh
Clothing................................ 0
Petrol/diesel........................... 150
Road tax................................ 3.50 (£35 a year)
Car Insurance........................... 38
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 30
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 0
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 0
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 20(£10 my ppc& £10 dh glasses)
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 0
Buildings insurance..................... 29 (inc contents insur)
Contents insurance...................... 0
Life assurance ......................... 20
Other insurance......................... 0
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 0
Haircuts................................ 5
Entertainment........................... 0
Holiday................................. 0
Emergency fund.......................... 0
Total monthly expenses.................. 1142

Assets
Cash.................................... 0
House value (Gross)..................... 90000
Shares and bonds........................ 0
Car(s).................................. 0
Other assets............................ 0
Total Assets............................ 90000

Secured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Mortgage...................... 93600....(506)......0
Total secured debts........... 93600.....-.........-
Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
tesco cc.......................613.78....10........15.6
natwest cc.....................8750......185.......18.84
halifax cc.....................2450......55........13.9
tesco loan.....................14875.....213.......0
asda cc........................2850......86........16.5
capital one cc.................120.......15........30.34
Kays catalogue.................1214.01...52.36
Littlewoods catalogue..........270.94....on buy now pay later til later in yr

Total unsecured debts..........31143.73..616.36.......-

Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 1,162
Expenses (including secured debts)...... 1,142
Available for debt repayments........... 20
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 616.36
Amount short for making debt repayments. -596.36
Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 90,000
Total Secured debt...................... -93,600
Total Unsecured debt.................... -31143.73
Net Assets.............................. -33,258.78
Created using the SOA calculator at www.makesenseofcards.com.
Reproduced on Moneysavingexpert with permission.

well i hope i have done this right

mum lives with us and pays for the utilities (gas/water/elec) and splits tv/phone/internet costs with us in lieu of rent.

fatbelly · 10 January 2009 at 1:17AM

Thanks for the SoA. That does make things clearer.

1. To clarify the catalogue debts thing, agreements started before April 2007 come under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 and require a signed agreement before they can be enforced in court. Many catalogue companies (including Kays and Littlewoods) were very lax about this. The relevant date is when the account was opened.

2. I am now confused about the car. You need to check the agreement. Is it Hire Purchase or a loan? Is it the Tesco loan? If it is just a loan, you can default on it witout losing the car.

3. Your SoA. I'm not going to quibble about the fine detail (leave that for others). It shows that you can (just) afford to live and pay your mortgage on your present income. But there is precious little available to the non-priority creditors, perhaps not even £5 per creditor (CCCS minimum I believe)

So your proposed stategy of using a 10k lump sum to pay the contractual payments and protect your credit rating is not a good one.

The 10k will be all used up in 16 months and you will have reduced your debt by about 3k, the rest being lost in interest. What happens then?

I think you need a dmp at token offer level and then take a few months to consider your options. Using mum's money to do full and final settlements at 30% might work (Maybe release some more money from the car). Another option would be bankruptcy. Chat it through with CCCS.

pebbles88 · 10 January 2009 at 1:42AM

fatbelly wrote: »

Thanks for the SoA. That does make things clearer.

1. To clarify the catalogue debts thing, agreements started before April 2007 come under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 and require a signed agreement before they can be enforced in court. Many catalogue companies (including Kays and Littlewoods) were very lax about this. The relevant date is when the account was opened.

ok thanks, i will request a CCA from them, how would I go about doing this??

2. I am now confused about the car. You need to check the agreement. Is it Hire Purchase or a loan? Is it the Tesco loan? If it is just a loan, you can default on it witout losing the car.

after briefly speaking to CCCS about this tonight, they say that following the wording on the agreement that it is in fact a loan, and not a HP agreement.

3. Your SoA. I'm not going to quibble about the fine detail (leave that for others). It shows that you can (just) afford to live and pay your mortgage on your present income. But there is precious little available to the non-priority creditors, perhaps not even £5 per creditor (CCCS minimum I believe)

So your proposed stategy of using a 10k lump sum to pay the contractual payments and protect your credit rating is not a good one.

The 10k will be all used up in 16 months and you will have reduced your debt by about 3k, the rest being lost in interest. What happens then?

I think you need a dmp at token offer level and then take a few months to consider your options. Using mum's money to do full and final settlements at 30% might work (Maybe release some more money from the car). Another option would be bankruptcy. Chat it through with CCCS.

After speaking to CCCS tonight, and using their online service, they in fact said that they cannot help us until we have more money coming in. obviously we are working towards this, I am applying for work regardless of my disability.

We are at a loss of what else to do at present, i even spoke to my mortgage company today to enquire about a mortgage payment holiday, as far as they concerned following the valuation of the house in oct 2005 at £100,000, that at today the house is only worth £86,000. so we cannot use that option.

I did say that since then we have had a new central heating system, a new re-wire of the house, and a new kitchen. but understandably they said they could only change their decision if we had the house revalued by an appointed company (at a cost to us),and that even then they could not guarantee we would get the mortgage holiday.

as cccs wont help us at present. i am thinking that the 1st £5000 mil gives us should go directly into our bank to cover overdraft, it would also give us a slight buffer to cover bills in the interim.

i am goign to ask the catalogue companies for full and final settlements following my request on this thread for further info on this.

i am also wanting to contact my cc companies to ask for the interest and any charges to be frozen whilst we sort oursleves out, admittedly i don't know best to do this so would appreciate any advice any one has.

fatbelly · 10 January 2009 at 2:02AM

Hi Pebbles

It's late. We're probably both tired. Don't rush into anything here.

There are template letters here regarding cca requests and token payments and others.

CCCS won't help you because of the £5 minimum (see my previous post). The CAB have no minimum. Do you want to try them?

Why are you going to offer the catalogue companies anything? You don't even know if they are enforceable debts yet. CCA them (I hate that phrase) and until they can prove a valid agreement pay nothing.

You are in danger of !!!!ing away (scuse language) 5k of mother-in-law's money with your latest strategy. If you have an overdraft, start a new bank account (unconnected to any of your other debts) and put all income into the new clean account. Treat the overdraft as just another unsecured non-priority debt to add to the other 31k.

Pebbles - there's a way forward through this. I'm a CAB adviser and your sort of case is not uncommon. However, there is not a way forward that keeps your credit rating intact on the figures you've given. It'll get worse, then it'll get better.

Apologies if I've been too blunt!

Jesthar · 10 January 2009 at 2:14AM

Hi Pebbles

I agree with fatbelly - it would be a good idea to check if the CCAs on your catalogue accounts are valid. If they aren't, that's £1500 less to pay

I also agree on getting another bank account with a different if you have overdraft issues - best to protect your money!

In the meantime, thinking about the very generous 10k, I'd say definitely pay off the Capital One card, as it is a very small amount and the interest rate is horrible! :eek: After that, if the catalogue companies manage to produce valid CCA agreements (meaning you have to pay them), paying them off may be a good idea, as again they tend to have nasty interest rates.

After that, you could put what money remains towards your debts straight away and save yourself a lot of interest, or maybe negotiate some F&F settlements (not my area of expertise, sorry!). Or you could hold off a little and see if your incapacity benefit came through and helps matters. Don't make any big decisions quickly, though, always take the time to weigh up the options.

In the meantime, you mentioned charges on your credit cards - have you incurred any already? If so, time to set about reclaiming those, I believe, as they have been ruled unfair by the courts!

Now, go get yourself some sleep; things will seem a lot clearer in the morning.

*hugs*

~Jes

Edit - forgot something important - have a look at the 'boost your income' section of the board for ideas for earining a little extra cash, and check out Eagerlearners gude to making free money from cashback sites. I only started cashback sites last October/November, and I've made about £70 so far from doing daily clicks, various no purchase offers and purchase cashback from just a couple of sites. I've also been doing paid survey sites (OnePoll is pretty good, and I also do LightSpeed), and I've heard good things about rewarded review sites like DooYoo, though I haven't tried them myself. All these things take a few months to actually get to the stage of paying out money, but if you are OK to use a computer for an hour or two a day, you could have a some extra cash coming in in the not-too-distant future.

Eagerleraners Daily Click/no purchase offers guide thread is here: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=609037

TurnaroundSue · 10 January 2009 at 8:58AM

If the car is NOT on hp and is on a loan, then why don't you seriously consider selling it and repaying the loan - using any surplus to buy a small cheap run around. Like someone has already said, you can get a reliable car these days for around £1k. That will bring down your debt and also maybe snowball to another debt or in your current situation reduce your monthly outgoings.

Good luck, and keep posting - the advice and experience from the good people on this board is invaluable.

UncleBuck · 10 January 2009 at 9:17AM

Hi Peebles

I think we have have both learned a few things about the CCA etc from our learned friends!

Just a couple of things are your SKY package, mobile contract and Internet access the fixed contract which you were eferrring to earlier which are dur to expire later this year? I only ask as each seems to be very hefty.

Cheers UB

sammy115 · 10 January 2009 at 9:29AM

Pebbles, just had to post to offer you a hug really. A couple of years ago both Oh and I lost our jobs and due to the manner in which I lost my job we got no benefits at all. We got through by the skin of our teeth. We spoke to national debtline who were very helpful.

We offered our creditors £1 each, thats all we could afford at the time. You must keep up your mortgage and your council tax and any debts secured on your home, very important.

You may have to stop worrying about your credit rating, you are not going to come out of this unscathed but it will get better as you get your debts down.

We managed to cancel our mobiles even though we were in a contract. We literally had no money at all and would never have been able to pay, when we explained they put our phones on incoming calls only. This was Orange by the way. We were members of a gym and they put our membership on freeze for 3 months...We were desperate and desperate people do desperate things but it made us harder and also made us think of what was important (I am not saying you don't know this but it made us less caring of what the phone/sky/gym people said to us IYSWIM).

Hope some of this makes sense...go over to the old style board and look at the boost your income board - there may be something you can do....

Jules · 10 January 2009 at 9:37AM

Do you and your OH get any Working Tax Credits? If you and your OH are over 25 and he works 30+ hours there may be a small entitlement on the figures you have used in your SOA. It may be small but every little helps.

Tax Credits helpdesk - 0845 300 3900. The Tax Credits helpdesk is open from 8am - 8pm seven days a week.

Jules

My fight to get my life back!

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