Going Bankrupt and building your life again

passiongrace

Hi, hopefully this is on the right part of the Forum.

Decided to write this, as have seen a lot of people considering going bankrupt or have just come out of it and don’t know what to do next.

Well in 2002, I went bankrupt and I am now in my first year of being discharged. First things first, what ever you hear people say, its not an easy way out. From the moment you leave the court room(I had a very nice judge) your phone will ring to have you car picked up , the Insolvency office will want to see you and if it was the same as my meeting, I spent 5 hours with them going through 3 years of spend as its there job to get every little penny. There after, you will have the people managing the estate, wanting to know everything you spend until you are discharged, in my case they literally hassled me for 2 years, I had to give monthly breakdown of costs, income etc, which is the law, so you do it. It pays to keep them happy, that way at least they will work with you.

Ok tips I can give

At the beginning

1)Make sure your estate is valued correctly. For example I had a car, worth 50k, that was sold for 17k the day after I went bankrupt. I later found out that indeed I could have done something about it, at the end of the day, it would have helped me clear the debt. I would suggest you make the court aware, as the DTI didn’t know the difference between an escort or a 50k car.

2) Best advice i was given at the start , was not from lawyers, was from the judge
a) Walk out of this court room, with a clean sheet and let these people cut there nose to spite there face.But the law is the law, so i have to put this through, but suggest you go and earn a lot of money.
b) I suggest any legal fees which have been presented on both sides are reviewed, before the court will accept them. I had a 50k bill from the other sides lawyers alone, it was accepted at 15k in the end.

3) Chase the people dealing with your estate. Sounds silly, but I had money owed to me, shares in a company etc and i found the company dealing with my estate were easily fobbed off, even with full documents to support everything. This is a tough one, as part of you wants to get on, the other part should fight this, i wish i had.

After a month

4) Open a bank account. I went to the Halifax, who gave me a basic account, with no credit checks. The other banks will not do this.Do not pay these companies 250 pounds to start up a account for you, its only the Halifax one anyway.

5) Make sure you pay all bills on time.

6) Think about what you have learnt from the bankruptcy. I wrote down what got me in trouble and then also set targets over the next 3 years, to build my confidence back slowly

Discharge

A GREAT DAY!!! and not all doom and gloom. I hear so many rumours about, you will never get credit, you will not get a mortgage etc. Well first thing I did was applied for the online credit check system, to look at my credit history. I had always had good credit history, and it was still pretty good.

I then applied for a credit car, in this case EGG and CapitalOne, both gave me credit. AllI have done is use these for fuel spend etc, so each month they are paid off. Since then I have another card and although i did not take it, they offered a 35k credit limit.. crazy!!

Mortgage - So partner and i wanted to buy a house. Well thanks to this site, we now own an 1870 school in a village. We got a mortgage, with a good rate and just 10% deposit.

Loans - Cahoot and Egg again, as long as you have the earnings, they will help you.


REMEMBER

Don’t ever forget you went through this, it sucks, I hated myself for a couple of years for allowing it to happen. Luckily I am on the other side of it now, but I have those moments, when I could spend again, so what do I do, I look at the paper work I have for the bankruptcy and it still makes me remember all the reasons why I never want to be back there.

I know everyone’s case is different, but all I can say is, if you have received a petition, don’t ignore it, in many ways, I spent 13k on legal fees fighting it, to be honest, you are as well off doing it yourself. If you ignore the debts while the petition is going through, the costs build up, so at least write a letter to the companies.

99% there is a chance to negotiate, so take it.

Talk to your family.. I was so embarrassed, but had a partner and her family who supported me from day 1.

So I hope this helps one person out there. I was lucky, but some other people may not have the same options as me. Please always feel free to send me a mail, I don’t mind helping with some of the jargon, I know what its like.

Most of all, remember , there is a way through.

Kind regards

David

djn576

David

thank you for writing this as I'm sure that it will help a lot of people. my guess is that it was a difficult thing for you to write about but that you've done hopefully shows that you're getting through. well done.

Glad

David
firstly welcome to MSE
thank you for taking the time to put your experience in writing in the hope of helping someone else,
well done to you and your wife for taking control of your life again
and good luck for the future