My SOA - Gulp! Lightbulb moment!!

kimdegsidash

Hi Stolli
Just to let you know I posted my template letters today offering each of them a token payment of £1 for the next two months until I go back to work.

Let's see how they react!:rolleyes:

Have you heard back from anyone yet?

I'm pretty confident I know how to handle any calls anyway due to the excellent advice that appears in posts on this site. But how it will go for real there's no telling yet!

St0lli

Hi Kimdegsidash... not heard anything back yet.... I'm just dreading the calls! Oh well, just have to be a big brave girl and deal with whatever the outcome is :j

How you feeling? Fingers crossed for you that they accept your token payments. Whats the plan for paying when you go back to work? Are you still going to be making reduced payments?

Good luck and well done! :T

kimdegsidash

Morning
OMG just checked my emails and Egg have increased my CC interest rate to 26.9%!!! Re-done my snowball calculator and it's added months onto my DFD, depressing. Will probably have no room to negotiate as I have missed January's minimum payment (and cancelled my DD - which is probably why they upped the int rate). Sods!

I have tried to estimate what my income will be when I go back to work, but I don't know yet what the after tax figure will be as I have a new tax code (paying back earlier year's tax bill) and a pay rise that hasn't taken effect whilst I've been on mat leave. Hopefully I will have enough income to cover my full debt repayments (if they don't increase the int rates anymore!), but it all depends on how they react to my offer of token payments.

Paid £1 to each of my catalogues at the bank counter yesterday - it was sooo embarrassing! I couldn't even make eye contact with the teller - but I just tried to act as though the £1 was the full balance owing!

Went 7p over my overdraft limit yesterday - so thats another £28 in bank charges next month!

It's never ending. Why is it when you have no money the banks just take more off you????

Paulgonnabedebtfree

7p over?
Don't accept a bank charge for that.
Phone them up and discuss it with them.
Maybe offer them a pound or two for an admin fee for it.

St0lli

Just catching up with you both,,,, snowed in here so I've been out having snowball fight with my son :j

I would definitely question the bank charge.... I forgot to cancel the one last standing order on my old current account with Halifax and they've charged me £35 for the pleasure of rejecting it :mad:

I've now cancelled it and and intend paying off the overdraft and closing the account as soon as I can get the one remaining standing order out. The standing order is with Halifax for a loan but they won't let me cancel it until I give them my new bank account details which everyone says is a complete no no. Not sure why though

Hope you get your charges refunded!

kimdegsidash

Hiya
I've seen the other thread about your halifax account and loan. I think it depends what you want to do - are you planning to offer token payments only on the halifax loan repayments or are you able to maintain the monthly dd from your new bank account?
Not sure Halifax will let you close an account that has a live standing order on it for their own loan - I can see why they would insist on having new bank details to set up a standing order because they want paying!
Maybe the trick is to get them to agree the token payment first, then leave just enough money in the Halifax account to cover the token payment each month? Otherwise they will try and draw the standing order on an empty account and you're back in charges and default territory again. Grrrr.

kimdegsidash

Also, you would have complete control over a DD or a SO from your new account, as you could cancel it if you couldn't afford the repayments. So even if you were to let Halifax set up a loan repayment from your new account you could in effect cancel it at any time because they don't have the power to stop you any more! Tee hee!
When have you got your appointment with the CCCS counsellor?

St0lli

Yeah those were my thoughts about giving them my new details... can't see how they can control the payments which are taken out but I will check with my new bank before I do anything. At the moment I've got so far as sending out letters to all my unsecured creditors asking them to freeze charges/intetest for the next 28 days whilst I carry out a full financial review (as recommended by CCCS). My appointment with CCCS is booked for 12th so I guess then I will know how much I'm going to be able to offer each of the creditors (about 1/3 of the min payment according to my calculations!)

Just noticed your debt free day... how fantastic! Thats only 3 years away!!! Well done!

kimdegsidash

Just had a look back at your original SOA. Would it be worthwhile having another go at it yourself now that you have taken some action to reduce your priority expenditure? Things might look a little better and provide that bit of extra motivation to keep on moneysaving!

Yeah, my debt free day does however rely on my being able to keep up payments and not overspend - which I have proved unable to achieve in the past! £1500 of my debt is in fact with various catalogues (gorgeous clothes for my children has been a weakness of mine for too long) so these should be paid off fairly quickly as interest isn't added to the balance each month. I will then use the cash freed up to pay over the minimum on the obscenely high interest Egg and Capital One CCs and finally an RBS loan.

Reading your posts it strikes me how similar our positions are - I bank with and have a loan with RBS so I've had to withdraw all my cash on pay day to avoid them taking it off me - which resulted in them removing my current account from online banking and placing a stop on my debit card. Our mortgages, income and other outgoings are pretty similar and I too am on a fixed mortgage rate until 2012 - although thought I was getting a good deal at the time!

I'll post my SOA later, but it's shot to hell at the moment as my income has slumped to only £500 per month now that I am on SMP. If my creditors don't accept my token offers of £1 then it will take me a long time to get back on track.

Have you put this month's saved mortgage payment to good use yet?

St0lli

Yes, I'm going to pay off my £900 overdraft and close my Halifax accounts. I'm hoping this is a good use of the money! It's more a psychological thing as well because it's one less debt to worry about. I've found my original loan agreement with Halifax and no where does it state that it has to be paid by Standing Order. In fact it just mentions what charges I will incur if a DIRECT DEBIT is returned! :rolleyes: Hopefully I will be able to set up a direct debit from my new account and then change the amount once its set up. More than one way to skin a cat I always say Need to double check this before I do it and make sure the DD is set up before closing my account.

I have been really good this year in the shopping stakes. I've just bought one pair of trousers and that was with a gift voucher I was given for my birthday. Like you my weakness is my son and its hard not letting him have things but luckily he is old enough to understand the situation (I've made him aware of the situation but maybe not quite the full extent). He is off on a ski trip with his school at the end of March and he know's that he will have to pay for his own ski clothes and spending money out of his savings.

Good idea about updating my soa... I'll have a go at that later.
Be good to see your's as well!:T