Anyone organising their own DMP?

gargrave50

Well done with your letter writing myopic. Glad to hear your husband is on board, and that the template letter was useful:money:

Off for a quick shower and then into UNI for the last day ever! Been asked to take refreshments in....... think it will be a bit of p1ss up to be honest and a chance to say goodbye and thanks to our lecturers.

gargrave50

bradfordlad wrote: »

Hi everyone

I've been on the DMP support forum a few times as we've been building up to a DMP with CCCS for a few weeks.

We had our phone appointment with them today, but it appears they can't / won't do it for us for a couple of reasons....

1) we have a Northern Rock Together mortgage and we don't want to include the unsecured element of the mortgage in the DMP as they historically go for a charging order, which isn't good - also the mortgage rate is up for review in February and although I accept a remortgage will be out of the question (Negative Equity!), it'd help us sleep easier knowing the "full" mortgage is being paid.

2) My wife has a loan with her employer which she has no alternative but to pay - it would not be possible for her to keep her job if she tried to make reduced payments - hope its ok if I don't say much more on that? Trying to stay as vague as is reasonably possible with that one!

SO - CCCS can't help us, although they have offered any advice they can.

We are going to to administer the DMP ourselves, and are waiting for the pack from CCCS, but when it arrives I was wondering if anyone has any advice or suggestions to help us "get the ball rolling". We are completely up to date at the moment, but that will change in September! She will be on maternity pay from October - March (£100pw), but we've also got a mortgage payment break for that period so not too bad.

One thing we are REALLY worried about (and it may be just through ignorance) - is there any chance that by making reduced payments with creditors that we could lose our home? It is likely to take years (20+) to clear everything, but I suspect that we may be in a position to make full & final offers to various creditors over the first few years - if its allowed of course!

Any help, support, hand holding or shoulders tocry on would be SO gratefully received.

Thanks all.

BL

Hi BL,

To get the ball rolling, I would write to all of your unsecured creditors setting the story straight offering token/reduced payments. This gives them the heads up and will always work to your advantage as you have told them at the earliest possible time. Cancel all direct debits to them and replace these with standing orders for the reduced payments.

You need to post an SOA, work out the amount you have available to pay your creditors monthly, and then I'll post the formula you use to work out how much they should be paid on a pro rata basis.

The first couple of months might be rocky, but you ARE doing something about it which is excellent.

I can post a template letter if you like, however I am on my way out. So i'll check in tomorrow to see if you need this. There are good templates on the national debtline website so look these up. I think there is also a calculator for working out reduced payments once you know how much you have available for repayments first.

Lots of work to do I'm afraid, but try to make a start.

Its likely you (like many) are in negative equity and therefore it wouldn't be worth their while going for bankrupcy. Ensure any secured debts are up to date and your home should be safe.

Also, have you considered requesting a CCA on any of the older debts? It might put you in a stronger position to make low F&F offers when you are in a position to do this.:rolleyes:

Good luck, let us know how you get on.

katchambers

bradfordlad wrote: »

Thanks Kat, thats really interesting! We also have 2 x rock "normal" loans which we will have to include in the dmp. Are they likely to go for a charging order on those too?

As far as the house goes, it's not the fear that we will be forced to sell the house, more that in some sneaky way or another that we will have the house repossessed. We are so scared of this.

thanks for all the help & welcomes so far!!

BL

Hi,
They can't start the ball moving on repossessing you until you have missed 3 months of your mortgage payments, and you will get notice, we get a letter every month because we are slightly in arrears with our mortgage payment, not quite 1 month in arrears and we overpay by £10 a month as thats all we can afford, they were fine with that. According to the last letter we are about £3k in arrears with our unsecured loan with them, but since its unsecured they can't do much about that, and as I said they took us to court, so now they have to accept the payment, before they took us to court they said they would not accept any lower payment from us, so they took us to court and tried to get us to pay the whole lot, so now ha ha they have not choice but to accept the lower payment - sometimes court is a blessing in disguise as we no longer get any hassles from them, just a letter every month.

We also have another loan with northern rock besides the together mortgage - so again you are not alone!!! Whats funny is they accepted the lower payment straight away, no questions asked and have never hassled us in 18 months - ITS THE SAME COMPANY!!! We went from £250 a month to about £60 a month and they were fine with that.

Good luck

p.s The national debt line has a brill template for helping you work out how much to pay each creditor, it works it all out for you, its brill:

http://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk/england_wales/budget_sheet.php?country=england_wales&time=monthly

HTH

Kat x

MyopicMoo

Hi all,

Gargrave enjoy your last day! :beer: Love the smiley.

BL I had spoken to CCCS but they couldn't help us as we have arrears on priority debts. All I did to work out my offers was to work out my surplus income, I used the pack on the national debtline website. Then work out for each debt what % it is of the overall debt figure and to offer that % of the surplus (I hope that makes sense ).

I've now sent out 16 letters! It cost me nearly £20 but as I sent a copy of our SOA with each letter it means I can check that they have all received them. Now I'm going to set up a spreadsheet showing what I owe to each one and what the current situation is for each. I have to say it is a big relief (although a pain for the poor woman at the post office!).

BlueJeans_2

gargrave50 wrote: »

Well done with your letter writing myopic. Glad to hear your husband is on board, and that the template letter was useful:money:

Off for a quick shower and then into UNI for the last day ever! Been asked to take refreshments in....... think it will be a bit of p1ss up to be honest and a chance to say goodbye and thanks to our lecturers.

Have a great day. Don't get to !!!!!! up:p

vikkiharris

Hi. I've just set up my own DMP and found it surprisingly easy. I spoke to the National Debtline who very kindly forwarded me an I & E template which I completed. This meant that I had all the information in front of me when I spoke to the various companies and therefore I didn't feel nervous or flustered etc and was able to ask all their questions.
The people I spoke to were extremely helpful and non-judgemental which was refreshing and I obtained very positive outcomes.
My husband has used a dm company and therefore pays a fee. I didn't want to do this if possible because I wanted to maximise the amount of money I had to pay off my creditors. Also, because I'm off work at the moment, I have the time to set this up myself.
I would definitely recommend this method rather than paying another company to do this for you but, if you don't feel you have the time, use one of the many FREE debt advice companies out there.

Good luck. :j

MyopicMoo

Hi Vikki and welcome.

Just a question, out of curiosity really, why don't you run your husband's DMP as well saving him the fees and meaning he will also be DF sooner?

bradfordlad

Amazing!! Thanks so much to everyone for the advice & reassurance :T

We got our pack through from CCCS yesterday, but haven't had time to read it yet. I've also downloaded the help pcak from National Debtline, so we are going to sort it ourselves.

It is really "empowering" to sort this mess out - I feel more confident now about it all than I have for months. As I said before, our biggest concern is about some unsecured creditor somehow getting it to court & having our house repossessed. The mortgage is, and always will be up to date.

NOW - I have a question about CCA's - I've read loads of people are finding out that there agreements are non-existant or are not "legally" correct - but I have NO idea what its all about!

How do you know? What do you need to ask for? What does it mean to me as the "borrower"? Do the debts become "null & void"

If anyone can give me an idiots guide or point me somewhere with explanations & templates I'd be grateful. Some of these (barclaycard springs to mind) go back maybe 10 years or more, so anything I can do would be useful.

Cheers gang...:beer:

BradfordLad

gargrave50

MyopicMoo wrote: »

Hi all,

Gargrave enjoy your last day! :beer: Love the smiley.

BL I had spoken to CCCS but they couldn't help us as we have arrears on priority debts. All I did to work out my offers was to work out my surplus income, I used the pack on the national debtline website. Then work out for each debt what % it is of the overall debt figure and to offer that % of the surplus (I hope that makes sense ).

I've now sent out 16 letters! It cost me nearly £20 but as I sent a copy of our SOA with each letter it means I can check that they have all received them. Now I'm going to set up a spreadsheet showing what I owe to each one and what the current situation is for each. I have to say it is a big relief (although a pain for the poor woman at the post office!).

Well done, you've made a great start. Remember, they don't all necessarily reply which can be frustrating but just keep plugging away making reduced payments.

CCAs I'll post a thread which should explain all. Basically the debt does not become null and void, instead it becomes unenforceable meaning they can't chase you for it. I am using it as leverage for those who don't have a valid CCA to offer low F&F offers when I can afford it.:rolleyes:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=767025

The beginning of the thread explains a bit about CCA's and the people on there are very friendly if you need to ask any questions. There should also be a CCA request template letter on there. Make a cuppa and have a read from the beginning:money:

bradfordlad

amazing again - enormous thanks

BL