DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 9

Hiya all,
Just updated the balances on stepchange, has pushed my dfd back to october 2015... Need to work on this, not sure where else I can cut back, and doing as much overtime I can manage at the moment, but want this money to go in an emergency fund..

Where do you all keep your emergency fund?

Hope everyone is having a nice weekend? I am feeling positive, but really want this to be over already so I can start living my life again!

x

We keep ours in our online coop savings account. I find it easier to move money across, although its easier to move it back as well.
Just updated my signature. Slightly better than we thought now I have actual figures through:)

Hi all, only 6 more days til my first payment to SC, very exciting, plus a new month of budgeting to look forward to! Weirdly excited!
Currently looking for ways to stretch my food shopping budget, been lookinh on the old style boards they have some good tips and ideas, food shopping is probably the only thing we can possibly cut down on, do u think for a family of 4 that £60 a week is a bit optimistic, allocated £80 with SC but want to try to cut down to add extra into emergency fund if i can.

inbetweener wrote: »

Hi all,

Just a quick question, today i set the wheels in motion by entering my details on step change website, i only put down £200 a month for fodd (2 adults and 2 children under 2), now i generally manage to keep spending to around £50 a week but wondering if i shouls have increased it slightly. Am i too late or can i adjust? Thanks in advance

Hi inbetweener, I think it very much depends on your overall budget, and how much room you have to play around with it. IMO, £200 per month is a little tight - we are also a family of four, and our strategy was to put down £400 per month (less than stepchange's suggested amount), although our shopping budget is also £50 per week. This way, the money is there if we have an expensive week, otherwise it goes straight in the emergency fund. The temptation is to throw every spare penny at our debt, but in reality, we were doing that up to now by trying to meet all the minimum payments - and the fact that we are now in this position shows how well we were managing with that! I would suggest increasing that figure by as much as you feel comfortable with, by saving the excess, you will still have the money to throw at the debt down the line, but you have access to it should you need it in the meantime. I believe you can contact Stepchange at any time to revise your budget. HTH!

Well, it's been a week since we informed our creditors, and we have received the grand total of..... ONE reply! A really quite nice letter from MBNA, thanking us for letting them know about our situation, they accept our payment plan, and have scrapped all interest and charges :T One thing concerns me a little, we aren't starting our DMP until 1st of April, and informed them that we'd make token payments until then. I assume SC would've told them the same, yet the letter says that the first payment is due on 24th feb. Should I respond to this?

In complete contrast, I checked my online account for our biggest Barclaycard (£12000) to find that we've been charged a late fee, which has taken us over the limit, so incurred another fee, full interest charged, and the minimum payment is now £550! :eek: Yeah, good luck with that, lol. I hope the message gets through to them soon, coz that is scary to see!

It really is encouraging to read the positive experiences of so many on here.
My cc, loan and overdraft are all with lloyds so i assume i will have to open a new account elsewhere and contact every direct debit ie energy, council tax, insurance etc to make sure it comes out of the new account?