Newbie just starting out...

Newdawn00

Hi everyone. My husband and I owe a lot of money. Around 18,000 in total in credit cards and catalogues etc. I've read lots of unfortunate stories of people who have run into bad luck and ended up in this situation but I feel awful to say that this was our own doing. We got married 2 months ago and most of it was on credit. In fact, we've been living well beyong our means on credit for a long time now. And it has caught up with us!

We have 4 children, a house rabbit and 2 cats and I'm finding it hard to give everybody what they need financially and pay for the bills. My husband is doing over time but there's only so much we can do. We don't have any arrears as yet. We have been behind with a few payments but caught up. But everything is going up next month - new council tax bill, water rates, buy now pay later catalogue bills etc so we know we won't be able to pay everything next month.

I'm doing a self managed DMP. Self managed mainly because it seems payplan and companies like that will want to include every single creditor on the DMP yet I only want a few. Well over half but leaving a few out because I have a loan that is nearly finished and I want to pay it off as soon as possible plus I have a really old debt which I've been paying for years now and I don't want that to be effected. My plan is to send all the creditors I'm including a letter (sample from debt helpline) to ask to freeze interest together with our budget plan. If they refuse the payment offer then I will appeal to them and hope that they reconsider.

I just have one question. I have catalogue bills that are due tomorrow and next week which will obviously need to be paid before they receive the letters but we can't afford to pay them all as we will need to save for next months increases. Should I just pay nothing until we have heard back from them and the DMP is in place or should we pay the amount offered in the letters so they know we are at least making payments?

Thanks for any advide. It's good to finally get this off my chest:-)

nanna58

:wave:Hi personally i would pay a token payment of whatever you can afford.
Do not let them bully you as they only try to get more from you on the phone.and when we are vulnerable we tend to agree to anything.i find its always better to write not phone.Hopr this helps if only a little.

char_student

Yes Payplan/CAB etc will want you to include all debts as have to be fair to all creditors. Its not fair if you are paying one creditor more than another. (And creditors are unlikely to accept your offers if they found out you have other debts which are getting full repayments). Well if you dont pay the bills due then obvioulsy interest/charges would accrue. In your letters I suggest you ask interst/charges are stopped.

Nargleblast

Hello newdawn and welcome. If you write a list of all your debts, who you owe, how much in total and what interest rate, then you can do the snowball thingy people talk about on here. In simple terms you list your debts with the highest interest rate one first. Pay only the minimum monthly payments on the debts that are second place and below on your list, and pay as much as you can afford on the debt at the top of the list, the one attracting the most interest. That one then gets paid off first, then you concentrate on the next one and so on. However, if you find that you cannot afford to do this, then you need to seriously look at your household budget and see if you can cut costs or increase income. If you post a Statement of Affairs on here people will be able to advise (sticky at top of threads list).