Swirling in and out of debt

debttornado

Hi,

I've been lurking for a while and yesterday made my first post which managed to delete itself. So here goes attempt 2.

I had written about OH being a bit of a head in the sand kind of guy, but he appears to have had a little lightbulb moment. Tomorrow we are going to go through all our payments and the big pile of post (currently teetering on top of a cupboard).

We think that we may need to do a DMP, but as we owe council tax arrears do we clear these first and then set up a DMP? Or can we do both at the same time?

I have written to get the ppi off a loan and already have a breadmaker and slowcooker! So have been making little inroads.

Jo_R_2

Hiya

Congrats on starting to get things sorted.

I'm a relative newbie compared to some on the board, but I do know that council tax is a priority debt. However I'm not sure about the finer points of what you are asking about a DMP so hopefully someone a bit more knowledgeable will be along to advise more specifically.

Keep up the momentum and good luck with getting things sorted!

debttornado

Thanks.

We knew that council tax is a priority, we owe two lots of arrears, to 2 councils - which makes things tricky. The sooner we sort things out the better, that is why I want to get started. Tomorrow will confirm how good/bad things are :eek: . The thing is, do we only pay nomimal amounts until the C Tax is done? Tricky stuff!

Numpty_Monkey

:hello:Welcome along

Your council tax is a priority this must be paid,
if you want to talk to one of the debt charities
Non-profit Debt Counsellors' List
they take your priority bills , mortgage/rent, council tax secured loans, living expences,utility bills first
whats left goes to your creditors

If you want you can post your SOA on here
http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html
it maybe you don't need a DMP, just a few tweaks to your budget

The good and clever ones will give all the help they can:A

debttornado

Thanks for the replies. I'm feeling rather nervous but also kind of excited now that the decision to sort stuff out has been made.

The plan is to contact our existing council to see if we can spread the arrears along with next year's payments. We have offered our previous council £150 pm, but said if we can afford more we will pay it. I don't want to get in a position where we end up agreeing to pay more than we can afford and then missing payments. I think it is probably best to have the arrangements in place with CTax before sorting out the rest. Hopefully they will agree!

debttornado

Well, step one complete. The towering pile of letters are now in a box (out of their envelopes) ready to be gone through tomorrow. Slightly sick feeling thinking about how bad things will look tomorrow. But we got ourselves into this position, and we will get ourselves out.

debttornado

So - the task has been done! It didn't take too long once we started going through things. It's bad, and rather shameful, but not as bad as I had feared. Total debt, excluding HP on the cars, £22711 :eek: .

The most serious of this is council tax arrears. Our current council wants 3 payment to clear the arrears or they will take us to court. I have written agreeing to pay £454 pm. Horrible, but own damn fault! No word from old CTax, hopefully they will accept the offer of £150, we can just about manage more if they insist. So, for the next 3 months we will be paying £604 pm in CTax :eek: :eek: . That would be 2 pairs of Jimmy Choo's a month (not that I would spend that amount on shoes :rolleyes: but it gets you thinking)!

Other, non priority debts will have to wait for now, or at least put up with token payments.

Feels a bit better seeing it all in black and white - like we are making some progress, finally.

Jo_R_2

I had a similar situation with the council tax, bit complicated to explain how it got to having arrears but it ended up the council wanted two payments which there was no way I could afford, and had the same threat of taking to court.

I was advised the letter they send out is a standard one, so I called and explained, and asked about a repayment arrangement. I don't know how much it varies, but the only thing they did request was that if I had to take repayments over into the next tax year, that I repaid the total amount owing in that 12 months whilst continuing to pay that year's council tax as well (if that makes sense!)

So from 1st of next month I will be starting to repay the amount outstanding, then come April will be paying that year's council tax instalments as well.

Keep the momentum going!

debttornado

Oh carp! 3 days before payday I thought all would be well what could go wrong . I had paid a cheque into my bank last week which would clear tomorrow giving us more than enough to do until Friday.

:mad: found out today that my account is £95 overdrawn - with 2 payments of £1 waiting to clear - my cheque was for £97!!!!!!! Grrr.

I'm so annoyed. My OH bought some clothes from a catalogue company and paid for them at the start of the month. The clothes arrived about 2 weeks ago. But (and this is the most annoying) they only took the money on Friday. :eek: I've told him he will have to wear bin liners from now on.

Luckily I am a bit of a hoarder food wise so we have just enough to do us.

debttornado

How odd! For once today's post didn't include bills, instead we got a £5 voucher from OH's cc company. Must be Karma!:D

debttornado

Argh! Received a letter today from Newlyn bailiffs :eek: . Before I found this site I would have panicked but not now! :cool:

Bravely, I called them, and when I didn't get a sensible reply or explanation, have now sent them this:

"Further to your recent letter regarding council tax arrears and proposed bailiff visit, I called your office. As the staff member I spoke to, XXX, was uncooperative and rather abusive I decided it would be better to put my response in writing. In future I ask that all communication be in writing.
First and foremost, we are not disputing the fact that we owe XXX council tax and fully intend to pay the arrears as swiftly as possible. We received a demand from XXX in January and have written to them with a proposal to clear the amount owed - our first payment will be made direct to them on Friday.
As we had not received anything from XXXX, except for the demand, my husband called and spoke to one of your advisers two weeks ago after receiving the first letter from yourselves. He asked for some points to be confirmed before an arrangement was set up: a copy of the Liability Order and a breakdown of your fees, to date we have not received these and would be grateful if you could send them by return.
Following receipt of a letter from yourselves today, my husband called but felt that the answers he was given were not entirely clear. I subsequently called and spoke to XXXX.
XXXX confirmed that the Liability Order was for £804.97 - I would be grateful if you could forward me a copy for our records as we never received one. I then queried the amount on your letter, dated XXXX, £1035.59. I was told that this was for your fees, so I asked if he could explain what these fees were for. XXXX replied that these were for visits, letters and other costs. I asked for more specific details and was told that this was for 3 visits on XXXX- as I told XXXX, we received no notice or card for these visits and in any case the maximum charge would be £24.50 for the first visit and £18.00 for the second, a total of £42.50 (as per the schedule of charges on the National Debtline site http://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk/england_wales/factsheet.php?page=02_bailiffs_and_council_tax).
I asked what the remaining fees were for, XXXX told me letters and a visit. I informed XXXX that:
“the regulations do not allow for a bailiff company to charge a fee for sending you a letter when collecting Council Tax.” (http://bailiffadviceonline.co.uk/bailifffeecomplaints_examplect.htm)
XXXX then said that it was for attendance with a van to collect goods on XXXX. I told him that this could not be the case as Levy had not been made (as per the National Debtline information) and that, in any case, my husband had been in the property all day. I was informed that my husband was lying because the visiting bailiff “rang the bell of the first floor flat” and there was no reply. When asked to repeat this, XXXX said that the bailiff had made a note on his PDA to this effect. I informed XXXX that the bailiff had got the wrong property and that he had not called at our property as we do not live in a flat. He told me I was lying and said that he knew I would lie as I was calling to dispute the fees.
To confirm:
We will be making direct payments to XXXX as per our letter to them, dated XXXX.
We will be making our first payment on XXXX.
We ask that all future correspondence be made in writing.
We request that you send us a copy of the Liability Order issued in XXXX.
We request that you send a full and accurate breakdown of the fees your company are charging us.
A copy of this letter will be sent to XXXX for their information."

Phew! I hope I'm doing the right thing, I haven't sent it yet.