DMP Mutual Support Thread (Part 5)

loopylu36

massivedebts wrote: »

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

Gosh - no I didn't realise I would have quite such an effect, but I'm very pleased if I have!

discogirl78

I do hope that some of you can put my mind at rest, I am now have a sicky feeling in my stomach that I have done the wrong thing, and I am really not clear about what to expect or what could happen..

After years and years of struggling, robbing peter to pay paul, etc, I took my head out of the sand the realised I needed some help. But no one know about my debt, not even my husband. We have seperate finances really, we have a joint account that the bills and mortgage comes out of but the rest is completely seperate. I have always paid my bills, never missed a payment, etc, but realised I just couldnt keep doing it anymore, nothing was going down, only up!!!

So, I have entered a DMP with Payplan, my first payment goes out on the 28 February.

But not sure what to expect, I have sent all my token payments off, but not heard anything, I have had a few phone calls chasing for the missed payments, etc, but nothing accepting anything, etc. Would I get this, or would payplan... I am just really worried I did know what to expect. Any help and advice would be really gratefully received!!

DiscogirlXX

Tigert

Hi Discogirl,

It sounds like you've done the right thing. If you weren't managing before then you needed to do something.

I've been with Payplan for a year now (you can find my experience back around Page 59) and they've been great. Also read Loopy Lu's excelent post above which should re-assure you.

What you can expect is that you will get letters and phone calls from your creditors for a couple of months wondering why your suddenly not paying them as much. Just politely give them your Payplan reference and let them know you are entering a DMP. Don't be pressured into making any additional payments - some of them will try quite hard! Don't worry about the letters, just file them and don't let them bother you, most of them will be computer generated.

After a couple of months whilst the creditors are coming to terms with things things will quieten down a lot. Apart form a couple of issues I very rarely hear anything.

Payplan have been fantastic, they always answer my questions promptly by either phone or email. If you are ever worried, this thread is a fantastic source of advice and supprot.

I know it's really hard, but the "old hands" in here told me not to worry and they were right. I'm now paying my debts at a level I can afford and don't have to worry anymore.

There are always the odd issues that crop up now and again, but they are much easier to deal with knowing that it's just one problem instead of all my creditors.

You'll get to the point where things settle down and it'll be a massive weight off your mind.

loopylu36

discogirl78 wrote: »

I do hope that some of you can put my mind at rest, I am now have a sicky feeling in my stomach that I have done the wrong thing, and I am really not clear about what to expect or what could happen..

After years and years of struggling, robbing peter to pay paul, etc, I took my head out of the sand the realised I needed some help. But no one know about my debt, not even my husband. We have seperate finances really, we have a joint account that the bills and mortgage comes out of but the rest is completely seperate. I have always paid my bills, never missed a payment, etc, but realised I just couldnt keep doing it anymore, nothing was going down, only up!!!

So, I have entered a DMP with Payplan, my first payment goes out on the 28 February.


Hi Discogirl

When I first joined this website, I got very confused! There is an awful lot of advice out there and no two stories are the same. I ended up thinking "if I do that then this..." and then "but if I do that then.." and then "well that happened to so and so, so if I do that..." you can see what I mean!

That's not to say that i didn't pick up some excellent help and if nothing else it is extremely reassuring to know that you are not the only one !:rolleyes: But if my story tells you anything, it's that you have to do what's right for you. I do think you may have to tell your DH tho and in fact I would go as far as to say that you should. You will need his support and it will be very difficult to keep it from him. Really when you get to the point that you are at (and that we all got to) a DMP is really the only way forward (be it CCCS, Payplan or independently) and the secret really is not to worry about how long it will take you to repay the money, but to be doing so at a rate that you can afford so that you can start to enjoy your life again. I started off thinking that if I repaid everyone within 7 years or so that would coincide nicely with everything dropping off my credit file after 6 years! But why on earth would that benefit me? I'd hardly want to start all over again! I know it's hard but please try not to worry, it really,really isn't going to be as bad as you think it is.

discogirl78

Thank you both so much for your advice. I guess I just need to have faith in Payplan and that it will be OK, with a bit of hard work. They have said it will be 8 years before I am Debt free!!! ARGH!!!

But there are many tips on here for making money and saving money, so I am on a mission now!

Having looked at the list of creditors on my Payplan site they are being offered what I had been paying before, with the exception of my Halifax Loan which is half what they were getting!!!

So, you are thinking it normally takes about 2 months to get everything sorted out?

Both of you, thank you again!

hayley11

I've received a letter off CCCS today saying LIttlewoods wont accept the reduced payment :rolleyes: After not receiving any money for about 6 months you think they'd just be grateful wouldn't you? :rotfl: They said not to do anything, they'll just keep sending them the payments.

Just found out that my OH is going full time at work (he was doing 25 hours a week) and it's an extra £5k a year! :j So we're very happy! We will be able to increase our DMP payments a bit, which is good because at the moment it's going to take us 8 years to pay it all off :eek:

elsie52

WHAT DID WE USED TO BUY WITH OUR CREDIT CARDS??

looplu.....I have just read your thread, and when I came to the part where you said that you now don't have any credit cards and what on earth did you buy with them. Well, it got me thinking, I had this same conversation with OH yesterday. What did we buy with them?. We don't have the latest gadgets, tv car etc. We very rarely went out, bought new clothes or DVD's CD's . we don't smoke, drink only very occasionally. So how did we get into this mess?.....

One thing is for sure, it won't happen again...no more credit cards, stores cards, loans etc for us. Our motto now is.......if we havn't got the cash we don't buy/have it. Its a motto I wish I had adopted years ago, but hey ho !!..... That's Life.

Daffykjs

You lot are great!! You really are! And it is indeed great to know I'm not in this alone!!

Just been catching up as didn't come on over the weekend!

My second payplan payment will go this week!! I'm excited!! Is that strange??

Altho have to say this whole Northern Rock thing is a bit of a concern! I have a loan with them (only about £6000 now i think) but our mortgage is also with them! I've always felt happy that none of our debt is secured as the house has always been our prioritybut this whole charge order thing is scary! I'm not sure I understand the whole thing but I'm also not sure i want to! So I'm going to stick my head in the sand over it i think!! I know normally that's bad but i don't think it should affect us and hopefully once they receive my marriage cert (this was their excuse for arguing over the dmp, the names didn't match! pathetic! ) I'm hoping it will be ok! Fingers crossed!!

As for the letters and payplan. The lady I deal with told me to send everything! So I do. i didn't HAVE to send stuff in the beginning but she did say if I had recent enough totals to send them, as it can often be quicker than getting it from the creditors, if not it's fine, they'll just get it from them!

And I've received one letter (MBNA surprisingly) accepting it etc. I asked her about this too and she said i won't necessarily receive this off everyone! Some will send the letters to them instead!

And phonecalls, knowing it's being sorted and all i had to say was 'i'm on a dmp, don't speak to me, speak to payplan' i actually didn't mind them! h3ll of a lot easier than before when i didn't have that line to use and HAD to deal with them! I normally pick up the phone, even if i see it's a creditor. But i certainly don't phone back! and i even more certainly don't phone those with electronic messages! if you can't be bothered to get an actual person to call i can't be bothered with you!

Had a bit of a !!!! up today tho! i had 20p left in my account until wednesday but it was fine as nothing was due to come out!!

Stupid blooming pet insurance, who i'd phoned 2 weeks ago to change dd, both account it came from and date, hadn't changed it! so dd tried to take it out today and put me in my overdraft! and i don't have an overdraft! I was fuming to say the least!!!!!!

phoned pet insurance first and they said to send them the charges letter when i get it and they'd 'look at' getting it back to me! then phoned bank and nearly pased out with shock when they said as long as i pay it in before 3.30pm today, there will be no charges and payment will still go! Luckily I had a tenner in my purse! and even if i didn't, luckily i am overpaying into bills account plus no council tax this month!

so anyway i went and paid it in at lunch, all sorted! quite sensible for a bank i thought! Was still a bit peeved i'd had this unplanned trip to the bank, and that the pet insurers cocked it up in the first place! But it was meerly a minor irritation in the end!!

Anyway, that's my update! will let you know how my second payment goes! But reading some of these stories I feel quite lucky (and very hopeful that it lasts) that mine seems to be going well so far!! Hope this isn't me speaking too soon but n general I feel stronger and a lot more in control of everything!!!

I hope it goes well for all of you starting it too!

billybobberyl

still stressing
have not managed to get in touch with cccs all day and now dont know what to do as previously said our dmp was half way to being arranged and now realised we are losing £318a month income from april and our dmp payment was meant to be £298 so cant pay anyhthing.
cant see a way out as we cant afford to pay our creditors and now cant even do our dmp
HELP

hayley11

elsie52 wrote: »

WHAT DID WE USED TO BUY WITH OUR CREDIT CARDS??

looplu.....I have just read your thread, and when I came to the part where you said that you now don't have any credit cards and what on earth did you buy with them. Well, it got me thinking, I had this same conversation with OH yesterday. What did we buy with them?. We don't have the latest gadgets, tv car etc. We very rarely went out, bought new clothes or DVD's CD's . we don't smoke, drink only very occasionally. So how did we get into this mess?.....

One thing is for sure, it won't happen again...no more credit cards, stores cards, loans etc for us. Our motto now is.......if we havn't got the cash we don't buy/have it. Its a motto I wish I had adopted years ago, but hey ho !!..... That's Life.

Do you know, I haven't a clue either

Since I started running up this debt (in my early 20's) i've had two holidays abroad, one of which was paid with redundancy money. I don't drive, I don't buy expensive jewellery, gadgets, clothes etc. I don't gamble, I don't smoke, very rarely drink, I very rarely go out in fact.

I know a fair chunk of my debt went on my wedding (waste of money that was, we're divorced now ) but where did the rest come from??

And the thing is, we haven't used any debt for about 6 months and we don't miss it at all. We are living within our means now and we are perfectly happy doing so (well I say that but we are obviously only paying a fraction of what we were paying towards our debts but do you know what I mean?) I just wish we'd realised we could do this a few years ago and we wouldn't be in this mess.