Deep in Debt

nic_santorini

i think the people on here are trying to help you, but £26k of debt must have been spent on something in the first place, perhaps it was years ago, or student debts etc, I don't know, but you are right, your actual spending now is pretty low, it is your cards that are crippling you. Will wait until you revisit your SOA and tell your parents, they will probably hit the roof to begin with but they will calm down. They will find out if you don't tell them if you default on your payments and they try to get credit and can't because the home address is blacklisted.

Ames

Addresses aren't blacklisted, the only way your parents will be affected is if you have joint financial products. Credit ratings go on people not addresses.

beanielou

We all know & love Numpty

I thionk part of the difficuty is that your SOA shows you have so much spare money its hard to see why you are in so much debt especially when your basis outgoing are so low.That is not meant to be a criticism BTW.

Its not an address which is blacklisted BTW but an individual.

beanielou

Has it been suggested that you keep a spending diary to see where your money goes?

OneTrickPony2008

I will re-do my SOA based on 1 user.
I do not currently contribute towards council tax, gas or electricity.
My cable, telephone and internet package is with Virgin Media. There is no BT line in the house now, and I believe the reconnection fee for this to be extortionate so I although I agree that I could get a cheaper deal, this would not be possible without a BT line.
The car I find to be of great use over weekends as I don't want to rely on others to get me to where I need to go.
I agree that the Life Assurance policy is rather expensive. It's a Horizons policy with Countrywide Assured that I took out back when I thought about buying a house and kept on even when I decided not to proceed. I have today written to Countrywide to arrange to cancel this policy.

Now the unsecured debts are something of a story. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I'm a 40 year old man who still lives at home with his parents and it's really because I'm just useless at managing my finances, hence the mess I'm in. The Beneficial Finance loan was a consolidation loan I took out back in 2005 to cover Credit Card balances. Same can be applied to the HSBC loan which I took out two years ago, and then rather than cancel the credit cards there and then I kept them and found myself using them again in order to supplement what I was being paid each month. Up until just a short time back I was regularly buying a rather large number of DVDs and CDs and it was the credit cards I was using to purchase them. I was also rather overspending on my grocery shopping and I rather think I was just spending money for the sake of it. Then rather too late, I realised that I was getting myself in deeper and deeper and my credit card bills were getting higher and higher. So I took the decision to cancel all the credit cards, but realised that I could only afford to pay back the minimum each month. These on top of the two personal loans, plus other things like weekly grocery shop (I buy quite a bit of the food that I personally eat like my sandwiches for the working week, yoghurts etc), weekly rent to my parents, cost of cable and internet (Virgin Media) all combine to leave me somewhat short each month to the extent that now I have been eating into my overdraft each month. I do think that I need to keep a spending diary, because I really need to know exactly what I spend the money on as I agree it does seem odd that my SOA shows I have quite a bit of spare money, when I don't actually have any.
Anyway I'll finish now, this is something of a rather rambly post and probably not very easy to read. Feedback would be much appreaciated.

Deep_In_Debt

Hi
I'm on a dmp with CCCS and it's the best thing I did. It takes a while for the calls to stop and creditors to stop hassling - they just like to see a regular amount coming through so you need to ride the storm for a while. Simple thing to do is not answer the phone to them and if you do, refuse to go through their security questions, give them your CCCS ref number and hang up. It's scary at first but you will get used to it and you become an expert at dealing with them.

One thing that I did when I was setting up my dmp was to ring all my creditors and explain the situation to them, that they would hear from CCCS in due course, that I was not prepared to enter into any further conversations with them as that they could see from my SOA that they were getting all I could afford and any constant telephone calls from them wouldn't be answered and would be noted and classed as harrassment. I made a note of all the calls and wrote to their complaints departments and had really apologetic and grovelly letters back and the phone calls stopped.

In terms of court action, it's not happened to me in the 18 months I've been on my dmp. As long as you keep paying what you can afford, the courts are likely look favourably on you. As you are living with your parents and not a homeowner, not sure creditors will bother. They will threaten but they are full of hot air.

Good luck and keep posting.

sorry, I've waffled on a bit...am good at that!

Numpty_Monkey

Hi again
Going by the SOA figures, you have £26.111
and paying £682.

The problem is you are comeing up £146 a month short
I really would urge you to contact one of these
Non-profit Debt Counsellors' List

:A

OneTrickPony2008

Hi, Numpty Monkey (oh I don't really like to call you that, even though that's your username).

Anyway, I have already contacted the Consumer Credit Counselling Service and based on all the figures that I have supplied them with they have advised me to take out a DMP with them which I intend to do.

I think I need to fine tune those figures a little though, just to make sure that I am indeed picking up everything that I should be.

I think a spending diary is indeed something that I will find useful, it will give me more of an indication of just where the money is going.

Deep_In_Debt

A spending diary is great. I didn't realise I was spending £3.00 a day on coffees from the the coffee bar at work (when I could get vile muck for free from the vending machine) but add up £3.00 per day and that adds up to a lot of dosh over the month, money that could be going towards debts. Also, I used to buy a newspaper every day ...can read them for free on line. It's quite an eye opener.

Numpty_Monkey

OneTrickPony2008 wrote: »

Hi, Numpty Monkey (oh I don't really like to call you that, even though that's your username).

Anyway, I have already contacted the Consumer Credit Counselling Service and based on all the figures that I have supplied them with they have advised me to take out a DMP with them which I intend to do.

I think I need to fine tune those figures a little though, just to make sure that I am indeed picking up everything that I should be.

I think a spending diary is indeed something that I will find useful, it will give me more of an indication of just where the money is going.

Just call me Numpty then:p everyone else does:T:A

The spending diary is a real eyeopener:eek: but well worth it