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LolaCola_2

Hello everyone,
I am so glad I have found this forum
Me and my OH have managed to get ourselves into debt on credit cards. I am so ashamed that we let this happen but we got into the pattern of paying off the credit card with money withdrawn on the credit card.Now the min monthly payments have gotten so high and the credit card is maxed (so no longer possible to borrow to pay)we are struggling. We've been really scrimping in order to pay our 400/mth min payments and its been so hard. Then I found the link to CCCS debt remedy, filled it all out and have my stuff through the mail for DMP and letters to start sending to my creditors. I didn't even know such a thing existed so am grateful to the site for that. However,I'm now cra**ing myself!!!:eek: As once I do this and send the notional payment to them for this month that will be us officially defaulting (we've defaulted before but have always managed to scrape enough together borrowing Peter to pay Paul, and catch up)on our payments and I'm soooooooo worried about the consequences of this should my creditors not accept my lower payments. I feel sick about it.
Should I just bite the bullet and proceed with my courtesy payment??? And what if they turn around and say I should be able to pay more as I have in the past??? sorry to go on but its worrying me sick. Its only now that I have stopped spending on the cards (maxed out)I have actually realised the extent of my debt problem.
MAny thanks in advance :-)

CCCS_Alan

freedom777 wrote: »

We were advised by a dept company that to go on a DMP we will have to default on any debts.At the moment we havent defaulted but we wont be able to manage them if we continue without doing anything.

We dont wish to default on our payments. So is this true? Is there another way of doing this?

Thank-you!

Hi Freedom777

If you are in financial difficulties and cannot meet your full payments you are likely to default, so the only real way would be to continue struggling and keep making your full payments.

Regards

CCCS_Alan

Cokey28

Hi I am looking for some advice on how to tackle our debt .We have around £28k of debt but the thing is we were managing fine up untill a few months ago and our circumstances changed .What has happend is that our child minder became pregnant and had to give it up so due to this we had to go to a private nursery where our fees nearly doubled over night per month.My main concern is now that we have some credit cards that we have had for some time and that they were supposed to be removed when we remortgaged 20 months ago this did not happen as we were around £8k short of this .Our cards are as follows Egg,Amex,Bank of scotland preference account ,Barclay card and Capital 1.The ballances are
Bos pref £3900
Egg £3500
Amex £200
Barclay 850
Cap 1 £560
The barclay card is with the finanacial Ombudsman

CCCS_Matthew

Georgieporgie wrote: »

hi all

i am new to the site so hello to one and all!

my problem is as follows -

i was offered a job in Nov 2006 which included a company car, however a condition of the job offer was due to the fact i had seven points on my driving license, i could have the job but would not be allowed into the company car scheme, and i would have to supply my own car.

so i took the job, and got a hire car temporarily until i managed to get a proper car long term. i approached my bank for a car loan, but they declined me on the grounds of my borrowing patterns with them and i also already had a 6k bank loan outstanding with them. i then turned to my financial advisor who had arranged my mortgage a few years earlier, he attempted to get unsecured loans on my behalf, but said my poor credit rating meant that he could not get one accepted.

eventually he advised the final solution was to go for a secured loan on my house. this he told me would depend on wether there was enough equity in the property to cover the required loan amount. so we got it valued by a few different surveyors and a few different figures came out. the best one was 35k so we sent that to the secured loan firm [Endeavor] who approved a loan of 35k.

i then used that money to pay off my bank loan [6k], buy a car [27k] and do a few improvements in the property with the change.

now the problem is that i am now eligible to join the company car scheme as the points on my license have dropped off, but i need to sell the car to do this otherwise i shall be paying for the Endeavor loan and also the company car costs. also the car has depreciated and is only worth about 17k now which means even if it does sell in the current climate, there is still a balance on the Endeavor loan of 30k, meaning i shall be stuck with a 13k deficit!

also the equity in the house is dropping further and further, so i dont know if a re-mortgage is possible or not or advisable due to the loan secured on it etc

if i keep the car the running costs will rocket as the warrantry ends soon and it is also time intensive & costly running after the car upkeep when the company car scheme is all taken care of by a management firm who i just call and everything is taken care of. also the car will keep depreciating as it gets older


please help as i cant think of a way to minimise my losses

Geo

Hi Geo,

Based on what you’ve said so far, it’s probably fair to say you need to sell the car not only to get money back for it, but to reduce your monthly outgoings. You mention you think you will get £17k for the car, which if you paid it off the secured loan you would still be left of a deficit of £13k – but this doesn’t account for the fact you mention you used £6k of the money to pay off another debt and also made improvements to your home.

Your ideal solution would be to pay a chunk off your secured loan with the proceeds with the car. This will lower your expenditure by meaning you don’t have to pay to keep the car on the road, and your monthly repayments on the Secured Loan should also reduce.

However you MUST check with the Secured Loan company whether there are any penalties for overpaying via a lump sum. If so, you may find that your £17k doesn’t actually pay off £17k of the balance.

Regards,
Matthew.

CCCS_Matthew

*informer* wrote: »

Hi,

I have some personal loans and loans from friends and family as well as OD. I also have HP for my car. I have 2 credit cards.

I am paying of my payments each month and clearing my credit card but I find by the end of the month they are both maxed out again. So really, I am living on credit.

I have worked it all out on paper and I need £6200 to clear the lot. I did also price around and discovered if I took loan for this amount and pay over 2 years, I would have everything paid off sooner than I would on my current agreements.

The problem is I have been refused a loan. I know I can make the payments and I have been given veral assurances that my job is safe for at least the next 2 years as it is doing well. Can you please advise trustworthy companies that help with debt consoladition of loans.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Informer,

Debt consolidation isn't really something CCCS would advise on. By consolidating you generally commit to paying more back over a longer period of time, as you will be paying interest ontop of interest. The fact that you've been refused so far also suggests that it's going to be very difficult to get a loan at a favourable rate.

I would suggest perhaps looking at our Debt Remedy facility to see what other options you have in dealing with your debts.
Debt Remedy will assist you in completing a financial statement which includes information on your household, employment, income, expenditure and debts. All this information is used as a basis to determine the options available to you to deal with your situation.

Once you’ve followed the process through and completed all the required information you will immediately be presented with an advice booklet, which will provide tailored advice for you based on your current circumstances. It will also provide advice on ways you may be able to improve your situation. If you would like to get immediate advice on your situation, click here to go directly to Debt Remedy.

Regards,
Matthew.

Cokey28

Hi I am looking for some advice on how to tackle our debt .We have around £28k of debt but the thing is we were managing fine up untill a few months ago and our circumstances changed .What has happend is that our child minder became pregnant and had to give it up so due to this we had to go to a private nursery where our fees nearly doubled over night per month.My main concern is now that we have some credit cards that we have had for some time and that they were supposed to be removed when we remortgaged 20 months ago this did not happen as we were around £8k short of this .Our cards are as follows Egg,Amex,Bank of scotland preference account ,Barclay card and Capital 1.The ballances are
Bos pref £3900
Egg £3500
Amex £200
Barclay 850
Cap 1 £560
The barclay card is with the finanacial Ombudsman as I had an Insurance policy when I became redundant 3 yaers ago Barclay card said I did not have this at the time but when I returned to work 6 mnths later told me it was on it
.The preff account is on a adefault list even though I HAVE NOT HAD A STATEMENT IN OVER 5 YEARS !!!How this can be allowed I cant understand and even though they normaly gets a payment every month they wont take it off the list of bad debts.Is there any thing we can do what I have done is to send a letter for my statements to reclain my charges to the Bank of Scotland and they say they cant find the account so now sent it to the debt collector What else can i do.We have had offers of debt plans but we are frightend this affects our mortgage as wev will be looking to remortgate at the end of the year when we come to the end of our fixed rate.Any help will be appreciated thanks.

CCCS_Alan

retsbed wrote: »

Hi MSE'ers,

I hope this is posted in the right place...please feel free to move it Mr. Mod

In March 2006 my partner entered into an IVA with Debt Free Direct (DFD). Included in the IVA was our joint account that we held with Natwest with an OD of £650.

On 1st April '09 I received a letter from Natwest (addressed to me only) demanding £1038.68 for the joint account. I contacted them immediatley and informed them of the above. The person I spoke to asked me to get DFD to call them. I contacted DFD and they asked me to send in the letter and they would deal with it. DFD never contacted Natwest and now the debt has been handed to Triton Credit Services.

Upon receiving the letter from Triton I contacted them (Triton & DFD) immediately and they both tell me that because I am not in the IVA I am responsible for the entire debt of the joint account . Neither of us were aware of this as for the last three years my partner has duly paid the IVA.

Please could someone shed some light on this matter as my income has been included in the voluntary arrangement and we really don't have the money to pay them especially as we thought it was all taken care of. I have tried explaining this to Triton but they are not budging. The last person I spoke to asked me to fax in my partner's IVA documents to prove the debt was included - I have done this earlier today and thought I would post on here to get some advice before they call me again.

I hope this doesn't sound too long winded and please accept my apologies if it is

Thank you all in advance :beer:

Hi Retsbed

You would need to look through the agreement of the IVA, probably under the unsecured debt section to see what stipulation is made regards joints debts. It may say that you are still joint and severally liable for the debt, minus any payments made from the IVA.

It is possible that when Natwest received the proposal that they thought it was initially a joint IVA and It may have recently come to light it is a singular IVA which could be why they have taken so long on taking any action.

If it turns out you are still liable for the debt still only offer what you can afford to the debt each month.

Regards

CCCS_Alan

CCCS_Matthew

Silas_greenback wrote: »

Hello, This is my first post on here so please forgive me if I ramble a bit.

In March of this year my wife was made redundant and we began to struggle paying our minimum payments on our debts (1 joint unsecured loan, 2 credit cards for my wife, 1 for me) and then in May I was also made redundant. We're both now in reciept of income based JSA and awaiting our housing bens and council tax bens to be sorted (at the moment we are paying our rent still from the redundancy package I got)

We have contacted the CCCS after a raft of calls from Lloyds regards our missed payments. Because of our situation and the amount of outgoings we've got we can only make a token payment and yesterday I recieved a default notice. I've paid all our accounts a £1 token payment per week in June and will be making another one shortly but I don't know what else to do. The CCCS can't put us in a DMP without having excess money to pay them which when on benefits with a now 5 month pregnant wife is looking unlikely until I get another job.

Is there anything else I can do?

Hi there,

As your current situation is likely to be fairly short term, token payments is a viable solution until things improve. Unfortunately whenever reduced payments are made (whether it's token payments, or reduced payments via DMP) creditors are probably going to issue default notices. You don't really need to do much to acknowledge them, you are best to continue with your token payments until your situation improves when we can then re-assess whether a DMP or indeed anything else can be looked at as a more long-term solution to help with your situation.

Regards,
Matthew.

CCCS_Alan

LolaCola wrote: »

Hello everyone,
I am so glad I have found this forum
Me and my OH have managed to get ourselves into debt on credit cards. I am so ashamed that we let this happen but we got into the pattern of paying off the credit card with money withdrawn on the credit card.Now the min monthly payments have gotten so high and the credit card is maxed (so no longer possible to borrow to pay)we are struggling. We've been really scrimping in order to pay our 400/mth min payments and its been so hard. Then I found the link to CCCS debt remedy, filled it all out and have my stuff through the mail for DMP and letters to start sending to my creditors. I didn't even know such a thing existed so am grateful to the site for that. However,I'm now cra**ing myself!!!:eek: As once I do this and send the notional payment to them for this month that will be us officially defaulting (we've defaulted before but have always managed to scrape enough together borrowing Peter to pay Paul, and catch up)on our payments and I'm soooooooo worried about the consequences of this should my creditors not accept my lower payments. I feel sick about it.
Should I just bite the bullet and proceed with my courtesy payment??? And what if they turn around and say I should be able to pay more as I have in the past??? sorry to go on but its worrying me sick. Its only now that I have stopped spending on the cards (maxed out)I have actually realised the extent of my debt problem.
MAny thanks in advance :-)

Hi LolaCola

If you have just stopped spending it would be advisable to cut up the cards and send them back to the lender to show you are serious about your situation.

It does not matter if the creditors are happy regards what payments you can make, as they can’t make you pay money that you don’t have at the end of the day. Normally once a plan is set up until the creditors have had a few months’ regular payments they may try and pressure you into paying more money. It does not matter what they say just advise them you are on a DMP and that a copy of your details would have been sent out to them and you cant pay any more than what is been offered and that’s it. Once they have had the regular payments for a while things calm down.

Do make sure you make you make the courtesy payment of what ever you can afford to acknowledge the debt before the plan is set up.

Regards

CCCS_Alan

CWSG

Thanks Alan

I've done all the online bit and now waiting for my Welcome Pack. It feels good to be dealing with things though I am horrified that it has got to this stage - my parents would be so ashamed if they knew...

Anyway, I just have one more question (for the moment!). A lot of the posts talk about debt collectors coming to their doors - does that happen every time? I am utterly terrified at the thought as I'm not good with confrontation. My creditors are Clydesdale Bank (O/D), Egg (CC) Bank of Scotland (CC), MBNA (CC), Northern Rock (Loan) - do any of them employ these kind of tactics? My monthly payments will be about half of what they are used to receiving so not tiny but clearly not enough!

Can anyone reassure me on this or should I take an assertiveness course?!!

Thank you.