DMP Mutual Support Thread (Part 6)

JoJoB

Well the first payment on the dmp should be going out on the 24th - if I can get OH to take the standing order form in to his bank. Maybe he doesn't realise what day it is already?

Heard from one creditor by letter - Barclayloan, who say the terms received by payplan are not acceptable to them so they are passing it over to their recovery dept. Assume this is all par for the course.

And in the midst of all this we have booked a little holiday next August - a cottage in North Wales. Initial feeling was "we can't afford"... then realised if we actually stick to a blummin budget and don't squander it on alcohol then we flippin well can stick aside £50 per month. This will be the first time we have ever saved for something and it feels good!

Hoping to get a xmas temp job at argos to contribute.... as OH's dmp is just in his name will they ask to look at my bank statements too when they do the yearly review? I would like to get a bit of part-time work to both chuck at debts and also give us a little extra - but if payplan are going to take all of it for the dmp then there ain't a lot of motivation for me to put up with the misery of mcjobbery is there? Just being realistic!

OH was considering applying for some part-time OU work too, in addition to his current job. Would payplan expect all those earnings to be going on the debt or just a proportion? If he had them paid into a post office account would they even know? They have his NI number, does that mean they can access his tax info, or do they ask for P60s?

DevonGirl

WorriedofSurrey wrote: »

Hi Devongirl

I was in exactly the same boat as you, was brutally honest with CCCS and had every penny accounted for in eagerness to pay it off quicker, two months down the line and we were really struggling by mid month (even though we had been ebaying/car-booting). I gave them a call and they were absolutely fantastic, we talked through every outgoing again and now the DMP has been reduced by almost £200 per month. Obviously it will take us longer to pay it off, but at least we know we have money for food, fares etc.

I think the whole success of a DMP is getting the balance right between paying everything off as fast as possible and being able to live without thinking of money every waking moment.

Massivedebts that was a great post, I am only a few months is but have never in my life felt as in control as I am now, and that's a good feeling.

WoS

Thank you WoS. :A I appreciate your suggestion and will go over my outgoings and see if CCCS will amend my figures.

I think you are spot on :T with the bit highlighted in red, above.... I've been so desperate to get as much money to the creditors that I think I've lost sight of the fact that I do need to live in the meantime!
Thanks again
DG

DevonGirl

mozzyc wrote: »

To be honest with you, its completely up to the creditor if they want to freeze the interest. There's nothing more you can do but keep pushing for it. Get you dmp company to also write and request that the interest gets frozen. And if i were you, i'd keep a template letter of the request to freeze interest letter on your desktop, change the date, and re-send it every month. That's what we are doing at the moment.
Good luck, and feel free to ask any more questions. Been on my dmp for 4 years now, and have faced all kinds from my creditors!!

Thanks mozzyc :A. I appreciate you giving me the text of your letter, which I will adapt and get sent off shortly! I know creditors don't have to stop interest, but I think that contacting them every month might be the way forward to see if they finally do it, or pass me over to a DCA, just to shut me up!!

I thought at my 6 month DMP mark I'd become a bit of an expert, but having read your remarks, I sit at the feet of a DMP master!
Thanks again for this
DG

Daffykjs

pinkiepie68 wrote: »

Hi Twit Head
I have only just begun on my DMP route and I have loads of debt. When I completed CCCS online debt remedy I had never even visited this site so I was even more of a novice than I am now, but when I completed the remedy, I decided to put figures in for all categories that we reasonably spend in (& even a littl ein those we don't), even down to saying we buy newspapers when we only buy 1 per week, but I use this allowance to apy for my daughter's swimming lessons & dance class (I know that OH & I have been clowns with money & had crappy circumstances but I want her to suffer as little as possible). I reasoned that if I was living a virtaully hand to mouth existance for the duration of our DMP (between 6 & 9 years depending on the date our CSA payments end), we would never completely learn our lesson as we would go through the "hunger and burst" scenario every payday (like so may others (daffyks, bigmammamoppet etc) all mentioned and I know will probably still happen to me anyway!!!) Also, since finalising my paperwork with CCCS we have had a couple of surprise reductions (CSA payment reducing & arrears finishing due to reassessment and mortgage fixed deal ending and our mortgage going down!!), so I am going to wait a couple of months before informing of this reduction in priority payments to give us a further cushion in our Co-op saver account. (Conversely, our electricity has gone up by £ 20 per month due to arrears following estimated readings, so what goes round comes round.)
I just feel that I am wary of being on the phone to CCCS every time I have a change, as I feel that if they keep going back to my creditors to either reduce or even to increase my payments every little bit of time , it is a bit like poking a wasps nest (I keep hoping that they will forget about me!).

Maybe I have the wrong attitude, but I hope that by doing things in the way I am trying, we will be able to slightly have the best of all worlds (I.e. pay the debt, not affecdt DD too much and still have a little cushion) after all, if we had been more careful with our cushion in the 1st place we would not have got into so much bother!!

PP68 x

this is exactly how I did it PP! When filling out the form in the beginning they allowed me things i wouldn't normally have (like hair cuts for example or I went for the top of what i was allowed for everything possible, even if i wouldn't always spned it). i have sky and it's a fairly high bill but obviously is not included, but ideally i don't want to give it up unless i really have to.

I also did the same thing with bills. My electric and gas went WAY up right around the start so i did tell them that and adjusted my second payment onwards, but then later one went down but my water went up. and i just left it as was as they almost balanced each other out anyway. also i got a payrise (small but still there) and i didn't tell them that. i will go through it all at the year's review (when hopefully the bills will be lower anyway coz i'll have paid the arrears).

At the end of the day this is supposed to help you 'live' so needs to be realistic but fair. i'm not saying it should allow you to go drinking it up in London every weekend, but if there was nothing spare for the odd bottle of wine or visiting friends or my weekly tap class, i for one would be even more depressed than i am now! so you have to balance it all and make it work for you!

anyhelptaken

Well i have just had a call i think from MBNA, i was sat at work when the phone rang, picked it up, Hello can i speak to Miss Bugs Bunny, speaking i said, having caller id on the switchboard i could see it was a mobile number, straight away this person said, hello becuase of your finanacial problems and the fact we have not been able to agree a figure with you through CCCs, we want to help you by making this offer, we are willing to reduce your debt from £10,000 to £3,000, this will be a full and final amount and will write of the rest of the debt, by this time i had steam coming out my ears, i challenged him and said, hold it arent you supposed to go through some security check with this before disclosing information like that, no he said you identified yourself whern you answered the phone, i was like that is against data protection, to which he said if i phone you its not a probelm, if you were to phone me it would be different and you would have t go through security checks, he then said he was not getting into an argument with me, to which i said you should not be calling me any how, i am really annoyed, how can someone from MBNA be phoning me of a mobile telephone, it could have been anyone answering the phone saying it was me, he then said well if you dont take up this opportunity we will ahve to pass it to a dca, TO WHICH I SAID GO AHEAD, has any body else had this tactic tried on them, and who is the best peron to contact regardin this.

WorriedofSurrey

Hi again Devongirl

Just to say none of the creditors even contacted us again (16 in all!), they accepted the reduced payments without problem.

I would say definitely give it a try. You ARE doing your best to pay everybody back, but you need to live, not saying fancy holidays or nights out, just to not have to worry so much about how long away payday is!

I was having problems with Citibank regarding stopping interest, they were the only ones left who wouldn't. I wrote to them a few times along the lines of the templates shown on here and they said they would not stop interest. I got a statement this morning showing the interest as 0 - persistance pays off, just keep writing each month and good luck.

WoS

Daffykjs

JoJoB wrote: »

Well the first payment on the dmp should be going out on the 24th - if I can get OH to take the standing order form in to his bank. Maybe he doesn't realise what day it is already?

Heard from one creditor by letter - Barclayloan, who say the terms received by payplan are not acceptable to them so they are passing it over to their recovery dept. Assume this is all par for the course.

And in the midst of all this we have booked a little holiday next August - a cottage in North Wales. Initial feeling was "we can't afford"... then realised if we actually stick to a blummin budget and don't squander it on alcohol then we flippin well can stick aside £50 per month. This will be the first time we have ever saved for something and it feels good!

Hoping to get a xmas temp job at argos to contribute.... as OH's dmp is just in his name will they ask to look at my bank statements too when they do the yearly review? I would like to get a bit of part-time work to both chuck at debts and also give us a little extra - but if payplan are going to take all of it for the dmp then there ain't a lot of motivation for me to put up with the misery of mcjobbery is there? Just being realistic!

OH was considering applying for some part-time OU work too, in addition to his current job. Would payplan expect all those earnings to be going on the debt or just a proportion? If he had them paid into a post office account would they even know? They have his NI number, does that mean they can access his tax info, or do they ask for P60s?

Not sure about the extra job thing, but I don't see it would be a problem! Don't know about you but when i started with payplan they didn't even ask to see payslips or proof of earning so I don't know how they'd even know.

You could always ring National debtline for an impartial answer, just to check tho. that's what i did when i had a question about pay!

Daffykjs

anyhelptaken wrote: »

Well i have just had a call i think from MBNA, i was sat at work when the phone rang, picked it up, Hello can i speak to Miss Bugs Bunny, speaking i said, having caller id on the switchboard i could see it was a mobile number, straight away this person said, hello becuase of your finanacial problems and the fact we have not been able to agree a figure with you through CCCs, we want to help you by making this offer, we are willing to reduce your debt from £10,000 to £3,000, this will be a full and final amount and will write of the rest of the debt, by this time i had steam coming out my ears, i challenged him and said, hold it arent you supposed to go through some security check with this before disclosing information like that, no he said you identified yourself whern you answered the phone, i was like that is against data protection, to which he said if i phone you its not a probelm, if you were to phone me it would be different and you would have t go through security checks, he then said he was not getting into an argument with me, to which i said you should not be calling me any how, i am really annoyed, how can someone from MBNA be phoning me of a mobile telephone, it could have been anyone answering the phone saying it was me, he then said well if you dont take up this opportunity we will ahve to pass it to a dca, TO WHICH I SAID GO AHEAD, has any body else had this tactic tried on them, and who is the best peron to contact regardin this.

shocking!! i'm sure they are not allowed to not check your identity, even when they phone you! because there's been people on here refusing to give it and therefore the conversation can't happen (if that makes sense). not sure how you go about complaining tho! never had it happen to me!

Twit_Head

Hi pinkiepie
Thanks for your useful post. Although only started my DMP August have been living to the budget since April so feel I'm doing quite well. Can manage the low allowances it's always the unexpected that gets me- exhaust pipe sheared off car, microwave blew up etc.etc (This is as much excitement as I can muster on my budget;)) but have just scraped through financially so far.
Was feeling guilty because my electricity has just gone down £10 month and water £5-was going to inform CCCS on review but having read your sensible words I might just let it ride, as slight increases in insurances etc.
Good luck to you - sounds like you've got head round everything.

cheesedoffwithdebt

Daffykjs wrote: »

shocking!! i'm sure they are not allowed to not check your identity, even when they phone you! because there's been people on here refusing to give it and therefore the conversation can't happen (if that makes sense). not sure how you go about complaining tho! never had it happen to me!

If its any help to you I reported MBNA to the Data Protection commissioners last month- when I asked them for a copy of my CCA they went full steam ahead and sent me someone elses credit card STATEMENTS!!!. If I were you I'd do the same- I get the feeling MBNA are actually running scared at the moment they have too many toxic debts (I am one of them) and they are bamboozling their way through to try and recover as much as they can.
It's a weird feeling when you suddenly realise that most of these companies haven't got a clue really- hey ho:eek: