DMP Mutual Support Thread (Part 5)

St0lli

Hmmm.. the prospect of a Charging Order is scary but like you said, give Payplan a ring and they will probably put your mind at rest.

I do sympathise as this is all scary stuff when it comes to Charging orders etc.

Best of luck with your phone call xx

princess-of-plastic

morning everyone! I glad to see everyone is getting on ok! I have had my final pack through from cccs telling me that our dmp is set up and the first payment is due on the 1st of may! I have already sent my token payments for february along with my dmp notification. All cheques have been cashed. I have had late payment and overlimit fees on both barclaycards (b******s) but havent heard anything from anyone else, YET! lol. I think things will hit the fan at the beginning of march as dd's are due on the 30th for loan. I honestly cant see halifax accepting £50 instead of thier usual £185, but time will tell! You are all an inspiration and its great to know im not alone. Keep posting everyone!

love,

pop xxx

dlb

Good morning all!!

How are we all ?? Good i hope.

Bexixe-the best thing to do is tell you dmp company everything..include all debts on the dmp that they will allow you too, other wise the budget they sort out with you will not work for you as you will be left short if any debts or bills have not been taken into account.
That is the whole point of sorting your debts out, open and honest and that way you will get given the best information for your situation........when i first started out i didnt includ 2 creditors as thought i could still manage to pay them min each month....guess what it didnt work....i was left short on my budget because of cause these creditors hadnt been accounted for i bit the bullet and added them to my plan and its been plain sailing ever since.

Dont forget anything...down to the last penny you need each week.

Md- Great to see you are feeling more possitive today, regards phone calls..its up to you..if you dont give them security they cant talk about the account with you, but even if you do go through secerity, start to tell them about the dmp...if they start questions and asking for payment, SPEAK OVER THE TOP OF THE PERSON AT THE END OF THE PHONE... Tell them you have tried to infom them and they are not listening so this is my ref number..this is their phone number..they are fully autherised to talk about the account...HANG UP AND SMILE XXXXX

Donna
xxxx

bexxie90

Post got lost somewhere?

Just phoned them and they said it is fine leave it where it is as it is attatched to the mortgage BUT NR may make the others secure. But they will make sure my payments go down from credit expenditure,now this is where it gets tricky. My original sums for loans were £543 and my new payments plan is £279 so how can I add £543 onto my budget as there will be a deficit for my other creditors,would NR reduce the amounts if they were to secure them eg; By making term for loans longer like the one attatched to mortgage(it is 25 years)? Sorry if rambling

bex.xx

loopylu36

Hello

I haven't posted on this site for a long time. I joined almost a year ago to the day and just thought that I would pop in to tell you my story in the hope that it will put some of the worried people's minds at rest.

To say the the last year has been a rollercoster is a bit of an understatement! We started the beginning of last year £136,000 in debt - no I haven't accidently added a zero! Clearly this is a HUGE amount of debt but bearing that in mind, by the time I have updated you as to my current situation, hopefully a lot of you will be a lot less worried than you are now.

When we (myself and DH) decided a DMP was the way to go we went to CCCS. I did everything online and can't say it isn't scary waiting to hear if creditors have accepted. I have to say that in fact most didn't - but don't panic! To begin with I had a good job and our DMP deposit was £1,450 per month which would have seen us debt free in about 7-8 years, but still this wasn't good enough for most creditors. Personally, I think that this is because we had up to that point always paid on time, and so maybe they were thinking that if they pushed hard enough we still could - not so. However, I then lost my job 2 months into DMP and things went into free fall a little bit. There just didn't seem to be any money and so we stopped paying anything to anyone. Partly this was lack of money and partly it was due to me being on anti-drepsessants and just not having the energy or the care to deal with any of it. Yes, we got lots of letters but what eventually happened is that 90% of our creditors sold our debts on to DCA's. As most of you will know DCA's generally purchase the debt for a lot less hat the actual balance and generally freeze interest. We were offered lots of full and final settlements and had initially hoped to settle on this basis with a loan from my dad. Unfortunately, that didn't work out as dad needed the money himself in the end.

About 4 months after losing my job I started working again, albeit in a minimum wage job and we have subsequently agreed repayments with all of the DCA's creditors. They are tiny amounts in comparison to the debt and god only knows when (if?) we will ever be debt free, but that's not really important at the moment.

Along the way we have received CCJ's from GE Capital, HSBC and Northern Rock . In respect of GE Captial and HSBC, these I don't think would have happened if we had made at least some payments. Although we are making payments now and when I say CCJ's I mean the papers were issued but they were unable to supply CCA's so we filed a defence on that basis and judegment has never been entered. But they fact that we are paying again probably helped.

Now - the biggy - Northern Rock. We always knew we would have problems with them. At one point we nearly gave them a voluntary charging order to avoid a CCJ but they wanted the full monthly repayment which we didn't have. So they have secured a forthwith judgement and are now applying for a charging order. On the bright side tho, they are now willing to accept what we can afford and all interest has been frozen. And the charging order really is just another peice of paper. They won't sell our home and as I pointed out to DH last night as we sat on the sofa watching a movie - nothing has really changed. We owed the money before the CO and we still owe it. In retrospect I think I should have allowed NR to obtain the judgement last year (we fought with them for a long time but all that really acheived was more interest being added :rolleyes: ).

The long and the short of what I am trying to say is that the last year has been a nightmare financially, but we are still here, we still have each other, our son and our home. This time last year, I had a job I hated and that made me depressed and that I only did because I had to in order to service our debts. Any of the "oldies" reading this and remember me from a few months ago, will remember what a complete state I was in - when I first thought that Northern Rock would get a CO, I really went into panic and depressive mode. But a year on and we have come out the other side and living life pretty much as we did pre DMP, but without the credit cards! And I have to say I really can't think what on earth I used to buy with them!

We now manage our own DMP and I have standing orders set up for everyone on the first of the month. Managing our DMP ourselves has worked for us but I suppose if I had been in the right mindset I could have continued making token payments via CCCS. Although they were helpful tho, we got so much correspondence it was impossible to keep them up to speed, so ultimately we went it alone as it was easier to correspond with creditors directly.

It is impossible to know when you start out how you are going to cope but as with most things in life, actually living it is a lot less scary than thinking about it!

I suppose with our level of debt bankrutpcy would have been an option and I did consider it at one point, but ultimately I know that's not for me. Not one of my creditors has ever mentioned it either.

I don't think the way we have dealt with our debt problem over the last year has necessarily been the "right" way, but it does go to show that the lenders are pretty much all hot air (they basically did nothing even when we didn't pay a penny) and ultimately we do now have all interest frozen and are making payments that we can afford. Generally speaking, I am also so much happier than I was a year ago, even tho I'll probably never so much as get credit for a jar of jam ever again! Working a minimum wage job isn't great but I also do some volunteer work with young offenders and have therefore decided to go back to college in September to do a degree in Criminology and Youth Studies, so that I can pursue this work as a full time career in the future. As my DH pointed out, I'm not getting any younger and if the last year hadn'd happened I would never be thinking about doing what I really want because I HAD to do a job I hated just to service debts. I guess it's a bit Ying and Yang. The Ying being that I can now pursue a career that I really want but the Yang being that I've had to ruin my credit rating and probably be in debt for the rest of my natural in order to do so!

I know you will have heard it before, but IT IS ONLY MONEY, and your creditors CANNOT HAVE WHAT YOU DON'T HAVE, so don't let them tell you otherwise!

I' ve dealt with a lot of cr*p over the past year and if anyone has any questions or if I can help in any way, Id be only too pleased.

Loopy x

bexxie90

Loopy-If there was a clapping smilie I would insert here

YOU HAVE MADE MY DAY!

I was sitting here all glum and miserable and now I am feeling 110% better
Thank you
Bex.xx

dlb

Hiya loopy!
Thank you so much for your post........it just goes to show us all that anything is possible, well done on getting through the year and for being so possitve.......and the end of the day its only money and like you pointed out there are alot more important things such as family and friends.

WELL DONE YOU
Donna
xxxx

princess-of-plastic

go loopy! lol, so glad you posted, gives us all hope!

pop xx

massivedebts

LoopyLu
:beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer:
Thankyou soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much!! :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j
You don't realise what a difference you have made to so many of us today. especially me

MD xx

loopylu36

Thanks for the posts. I asked loads of questions and got loads of advice when I first joined MSE so it's nice to be able to cheer a few of you up

If I can get through it then trust me any of you can!

Once we had decided in our head that the creditors would just have to do whatever they had to do, it really helped. When they would ring and say, "we'll take you to court, we'll make you bankrupt, we'll put a charge on your house", we would say "well you have to do what you have to do but I STILL don't have any more money to give you!". It really took the wind out of their sails as they then had nothing more to threaten us with. For example, when we agreed a payment of £30 per month to RBS Credit card, they originally wanted £300 per month!! During the conversation they threatened all of the aforementioned and then settled for £30, after we stuck to our guns. So it can certainly be done.