Advice on Dmp

Deep_In_Debt

getmore4less wrote: »

With a DMP of 9 years you may be better off looking at other options, IVA or even bankruptsy,

Will depend on what assets you have like equity in a house and what the SOA looks like but 9 years is too long

Not necessarily. I have equity in my house but not enough to clear off my debts. I live on my own and paying my mortgage is cheaper than paying rent round here - I've looked into it. I pay £200 per month mortgage and the cheapest, nasty rented studio place costs nearly £700 per month so I guess I'm better staying where I am!

So, IVA, bankruptcy is not an option for me.

However, it may be for the OP as we don't know the full circumstances.

9 years is not that long really with a debt that large. I was told 9 years and my debt is much smaller than that.

churchrat

getmore4less wrote: »

With a DMP of 9 years you may be better off looking at other options, IVA or even bankruptsy,

Will depend on what assets you have like equity in a house and what the SOA looks like but 9 years is too long

We had £61k debt nearly 7yrs ago and nearly all gone now. When we first started our dmp I thought it would take about 15yrs, but as the others have said, many things will change.

with an iva we would have been expected to release equity in our house in yr4, and we did not want to do that as we would then be payng the debt off over a longer period, just calling it a "mortgage" instead.

a dmp is a good idea if you have enough money left at the end of each month to make a bit of a hole in the debt mountain--otherwise it will not work.

please remeber that even if it feels like you are digging away at the debt mountain with a spoon you will get there in the end!!!!!!!!!!!!!:D

SCANIA2000

I dont want to do an IVA or Bankruptcy as I would like to pay off all my debts !!! Alot of people have secured loans longer than what we will be paying !!!And if i have another unsecured loan to manage would have to have it over at least 7 years.
We will probably reduce that as i get bonuses and could pay some of that as well . (We usually use this for holidays but guess these have got to go for a couple of years ).
Does anyone else think Iva would be better.
CCCS reccomended The DMP

Deep_In_Debt

SCANIA2000 wrote: »

I dont want to do an IVA or Bankruptcy as I would like to pay off all my debts !!! Alot of people have secured loans longer than what we will be paying !!!And if i have another unsecured loan to manage would have to have it over at least 7 years.
We will probably reduce that as i get bonuses and could pay some of that as well . (We usually use this for holidays but guess these have got to go for a couple of years ).
Does anyone else think Iva would be better.
CCCS reccomended The DMP

An IVA would only be better if you have assets to protect such as house. In my circumstances (sorry to go on about me but am just trying to give you an idea) I am 5 years away from paying off my mortgage. If I was to go for an IVA I would have to re-mortage in year 4 thus taking me well into retirement (yes! I am that old! ) yikes ! with the risk of it ending in bankruptcy. No-one knows what will happen in 5 years. Circumstances change and IVA's are inflexible but DMP's are flexible - if you cannot afford the payments for a month then it's more flexible. An IVA will strip you back to the bare minimum to live on for 5 years whereas on a dmp you are not stripped back. Please do think about it carefully.

Seriously, a dmp is not that bad. Yes, it trashes your credit rating but is that such a bad thing? You learn to live without it as I have an since my dmp I've managed to pay for washing machine repairs! I'm still enjoying life and eating healthily so that's gotta be a plus.

SCANIA2000

Deep_In_Debt wrote: »

An IVA would only be better if you have assets to protect such as house. In my circumstances (sorry to go on about me but am just trying to give you an idea) I am 5 years away from paying off my mortgage. If I was to go for an IVA I would have to re-mortage in year 4 thus taking me well into retirement (yes! I am that old! ) yikes ! with the risk of it ending in bankruptcy. No-one knows what will happen in 5 years. Circumstances change and IVA's are inflexible but DMP's are flexible - if you cannot afford the payments for a month then it's more flexible. An IVA will strip you back to the bare minimum to live on for 5 years whereas on a dmp you are not stripped back. Please do think about it carefully.

Seriously, a dmp is not that bad. Yes, it trashes your credit rating but is that such a bad thing? You learn to live without it as I have an since my dmp I've managed to pay for washing machine repairs! I'm still enjoying life and eating healthily so that's gotta be a plus.

I appreciate your advise Thank you , I feel better after having a few of your replies.
At the moment my house only as about £25,000 equity, but manage my mortagage payments.
I do not want to risk my house or car that is on HP!! Can I still keep both of these if I have a DMP.

My salary should go up next year and my husband does get overtime so can I just pay more on the DMP when I can !!!!

Deep_In_Debt

Yep, un likely to risk your house or car whilst on dmp as long as you keep up the repayments on both as they won't be covered under the dmp as it's only unsecured debt that is covered. You must also make sure you keep up with your utilities and council tax.

My advice with paying extra money (I get bonuses every so often)...creditors can get quite nasty if you give them more one month and not another (if you see what I mean)...been there, done that, got the t shirt! They think you have more than you have an expect it every month so my advice is to save the extra money (here I go again!) and then you may be in a position to offer them a full & final settlement a few months down the line. So you need to be in a position where you can pay them more every month and not just one offs.

mummytofour

SCANIA2000 wrote: »

Thanks for your advise ,
Its just because eveything you buy is on credit, you worry how you will buy new things, buts that is why i am in this mess.
Did all your creditors stop the interset

This is what I did. The first 2 months after I contacted cccs I only sent token £1 payments to my creditors. This meant I could save what I had been using to pay creditors as an emergency fund. I think i managed £500 in the 2 months and paid car insurance and xmas without credit!

Once you have some saving and with card budgeting you will be living within your means so you wont need credit. The cccs are fab and for me i managed to save a good sized amount over the last 8 months as an emergency fund. I never would of been able to do this without the cccs and the DMP. My life is so much better and I have be bale to make some huge life changes. I will pay all I owe off and its nice to see the amout I owe going down not just servicing the debt.

Good luck and please dont worry once your DMP is sorted you will be able to sleep at night, altho you will have about 2 months of agro from creditors just give them you DMP account number, if you dont have it, they cant have it!

JES_F1

Hi there

I've had a DMP with the CCCS for seven months now - and it's the best thing I could have done.

Though I'd still been able to just about keep up with my minimum payments, I'd started to miss the odd one or two, which then led to charges being added, and then missing othe payments and putting more on the cards to last out the month ... and just knew I had to do something. I tried to do it myself at first but realised I wasn't strong enough at that point to deal with creditors on my own.

The first two or three months were a bit grim with what seemed like endless letters and phone calls. Being able to refer creditors to my CCCS DMP gave me huge confidence - I had my own standard letter that I'd fire off in response to every letter and the CCCS' details were always to hand to quote on the phone. Phone calls and letters have now stopped completely.

Having said that, the Nationwide only accepted my DMP for three months, freezing interest and charges, and have now started charging again - hoping to claim these back - and went through a period of calling me. As I refuse to answer their security questions, their calls got them nowhere. Thanks to a polite-but-firm letter reminding them of my DMP and requesting that calls stop, the Nationwide removed my numbers from their database.

It's great having a bank account that's in credit at the end of each month (even if it's only got 50p in it). I'm even managing to save something for stuff I buy less frequently.

I don't miss credit cards any more - can't believe I'm thinking that let alone admitting it! I have a debit card so can still shop online and also have a prepaid Mastercard that I use occasionally.

The CCCS has been fantastic. I set up my DMP online using the Debt Remedy so didn't actually speak to anyone until my first review a couple of months ago. He was brilliant. We rejigged a few things and that was that ... And he was lovely and so calm when I burst into tears half way through simply for no other reason than "because"!

Good luck and very best wishes.

louietudor

mummytofour wrote: »

Good luck and please dont worry once your DMP is sorted you will be able to sleep at night, altho you will have about 2 months of agro from creditors just give them you DMP account number, if you dont have it, they cant have it!

i agree you do get aggro for a couple of months but that is far far better than the worry of debt before you start a debt managment plan - i could not sleep eat or think anything other that how are we going to sort this huge mess out - then started a debt manangement plan with cccs and i found i could easily cope with letters and calls and could sleep eat and think again!!! - it was like being free again!!!

all i can say is as others have said go for it you will not regret it!!!

Jules

Deep_In_Debt wrote: »

My advice with paying extra money (I get bonuses every so often)...creditors can get quite nasty if you give them more one month and not another (if you see what I mean)...been there, done that, got the t shirt! They think you have more than you have an expect it every month so my advice is to save the extra money (here I go again!) and then you may be in a position to offer them a full & final settlement a few months down the line. So you need to be in a position where you can pay them more every month and not just one offs.

I agree with this. I made the mistake of paying extra one month and then going back to the original pament after that and all it did was open a can of worms. The next time I had extra I stuck it in an account until I had enough to pay off my smallest debt and now I'm one debt less.
When I rang CCCS to tell them what I'd done I did get told off but would rather have that than the hassle I got the last time it was distributed out between the creditors.