Anyone organising their own DMP?

boo80

I've found reading about other peoples DMP's very useful, but am yet to find posts about people who have organised their own.

I'm unable to get CCCS or Payplan to organise my DMP for me as my baby is due in July and I'm self-employed, so I'm trying to organise it myself.

I sent my offer letters off yesterday and now waiting to see what response I get. I've had 2 missed calls on my mobile today from Lloyds but no voicemails, wish I'd answered them now!

Anyway, I thought this may be a useful thread to those of us who can't tell our creditors to speak to CCCS. Would love to hear how you have managed to arrange everything and how it is working out for you.

Lula-Hula

Hello & welcome to DFW,

well done for taking matters into your own hands, that's a very positive & brave move to take :A .

I'm not actually on a DMP myself (yet, although that could change :rolleyes: ) but just wanted to wish you lots of luck with yours, I'll be very interested to see how you get on so will pop in again if that's alright with you

Lula

Treacle1983

After a bad experience with a DMP - I now manage my own - I contact my creditors every month by phone and have regular standing orders set up - I also pay extra amounts when I do overtime or have extra money about.

I arranged accounts to be frozen, charges removed, smaller payments etc... just the same as a DMP would.

I am saving the £40 a month fee I was paying and putting it towards my debts.

My DMP was useless and didn't get any of my accounts frozen - 1 creditor was still adding interest and charging for ppi every month etc...

My debt whilst with the DMP over a year went down by about £1000, since I have been doing it myself - I have had £50 with Avon written off, made a reduced settlement on one which should have been £1000 paid £450!! they completely wiped it from my credit score - you have to watch that a bit... and in total i have reduced my debt by £2500 in 14 months.

If you have the time and keep in touch with your creditors then go for it.

boo80

Thanks Lula, just hope I can handle it lol!

That's brilliant Treacle, I'm still really new at this so may pick your brains if that's ok? Why do you contact your creditors each month? How long had you been paying reduced amounts before you offered a reduced settlement? Sorry, hope you don't think I'm being too nosey, I just don't have a clue!

susieanne

I have been on a DMP with CCCS but i am just about to go it alone only because i think i have been doing quite well myself over the last 12 months with dealing with creditors .I know people say when you are with a debt management company dont phone or speak to creditors but i do and i always seem to get a result if i talk directly with creditors .Creditors in the past have not accepted my DMP but when i have phoned them they accepted it .
I use template letters from this website and just post on here if i need any advice .
Goodluck and well done , its quite worrying at first setting up a DMP but you will soon feel a whole lot better when its up and running ,the only regret you will have is why did i not do it sooner .

Treacle1983

boo80 wrote: »

Thanks Lula, just hope I can handle it lol!

That's brilliant Treacle, I'm still really new at this so may pick your brains if that's ok? Why do you contact your creditors each month? How long had you been paying reduced amounts before you offered a reduced settlement? Sorry, hope you don't think I'm being too nosey, I just don't have a clue!

Regular contact with my creditors is a must - if I am having a good month I can make extra payments, a poor month i can ask to pay less. It shows that I am trying to deal with things and not bury my head in the sand - I think thats why my problems got worse, because I got scared and kept out of touch with them.
I have built up a very good rappor with them and I think it makes them more willing to be flexible when I need it.

I had been making reduced payments for about a year then they wrote offering a reduced settlement. They realised that my income isn't going to change anytime soon and that my situation is going to stay the same. The small amount they were getting every month - probably wasn't worth the letters and calls etc.. so they offered a settlement. Plus quite a bit of it was late payment fee's and charges etc.... They knocked all those off when i started mentioning I might try reclaiming charges.

Karen_30

Hi,

I am really interested in this thread. I've been on dmp with Payplan for 15 months and although all seems to be ok, some are starting to charge interest.

I am thinking of going it alone in a few months as some have been passed to DCA's etc and would feel better being in control so to speak - hope that makes sense? I feel out of touch with my finances and not in control until I receive random correspondence now and again.

I would much prefer to be making the offers etc myself. Also sometimes I am able to make as much as £500 in overtime in a month (not regular enough though!!) and would love to be able to pay this off a debt however payplan do not let you do this.

Will keep reading with interest :-)

Treacle1983

I got fed up with my DMP gregory pennington - I was paying them £40 a month and also had a managed bank account with them costing me £12.50 a month.
It cost premium rate to do anything with the bank account like move money etc... and premium rate to call my account handler.
The last straw was when i lost my job and became redundant in November - My DMP wasn't very nice at all and DEMANDED I give them some of my job seekers allowance towards my debts - and not just a couple quid, they wanted £45 a week!! Out of the £60.50 I was getting.
They also hadn't managed to stop the interest being charged on one of my debts with natwest so the payment going to them every month meant my debt with natwest was going up rather than down!!

I snapped in the end and had an argument telling them how useless they were and that i'd do it myself.

I stopped my DMP and cancelled the bank account with them.

I opened up a free account with Halifax - just a basic account with internet access.

I made contact requesting all my statements, payments, total amount owing, interest details and settlement amounts from all my creditors etc... whilst waiting for this i carried on paying what they had been getting from the DMP.

When I looked into it my natwest account had gone up by a couple hundred quid and not down - because the DMP hadn't stopped the interest or late payment charges etc.. After a couple letters these costs got removed from my account backdated to when I joined the DMP.

The DMP had also negotiated a lower payment on my loan - but on looking into it they hadn't done it very well and had actually just exteneded the loan for a few years - so I would have been paying loads more on the interest and apr etc... I have manged to do a deal to lower the rates of interest and apr to that of when I took the loan out, but will be paying the lower amounts over a longer time. With the option of paying off £100 chunks as and when I have the money.

Hope this helps guys...

homealone_2

Treacle1983 wrote: »

After a bad experience with a DMP - I now manage my own - I contact my creditors every month by phone and have regular standing orders set up - I also pay extra amounts when I do overtime or have extra money about.

I arranged accounts to be frozen, charges removed, smaller payments etc... just the same as a DMP would.

I am saving the £40 a month fee I was paying and putting it towards my debts.

My DMP was useless and didn't get any of my accounts frozen - 1 creditor was still adding interest and charging for ppi every month etc...

My debt whilst with the DMP over a year went down by about £1000, since I have been doing it myself - I have had £50 with Avon written off, made a reduced settlement on one which should have been £1000 paid £450!! they completely wiped it from my credit score - you have to watch that a bit... and in total i have reduced my debt by £2500 in 14 months.

If you have the time and keep in touch with your creditors then go for it.

i was just having one of those days when the whole hopelessness of the situation gets you down and saw your post. you have done so well and achieved so much. your post particularly caught my eye because although still early days for me, 3 months behind on payments. i too want to sort a dmp for myself. cccs, payplan etc dont seem to undestand or want to help with my case being slightly different from the norn they just want to plough on and set a dmp up regardless of whether or not you feel you will have trouble sticking to these amounts. i feel i must be able to do better myself. any tips or advice you may have i would love to read either on here or by pm. keep up the good work!

Numpty_Monkey

There is the DMP support thread, quite a few people on there have done or doing there own DMPs:A:T

DMP Mutual Support Thread (Part 5)

boo80

Numpty_Monkey wrote: »

There is the DMP support thread, quite a few people on there have done or doing there own DMPs:A:T

DMP Mutual Support Thread (Part 5)

Thanks Numpty. I've read quite a bit of the DMP Mutual Support Thread and it's really helpful, but most of the posts I've read on there have been from people who are going through CCCS or Payplan, so I thought it might be useful for those of us who are dealing with the creditors ourselves to share advice on here as the posts may get lost on the DMP MST as it's rather long!! Boo.x