Removing the interest off my credit card repayment

albmoney

Fiddlestick wrote: »

Sorry to be blunt but banks DO tell you the major exclusions and DO tell you to read the terms and conditions for the full details.

You know, that's the terms and conditions that YOU sign and that YOU are ultimately responsible for reading?

If you aren't happy with the terms and conditions then don't sign them.

What, the 4 pages of legalese written in small print by Oxford educated lawyers from freshfields and linklaters for £250 and hour? Oh.. yeah.. thanks for letting me know.. you're a star! :-)

euronorris

albmoney wrote: »

Thanks for the responses.
I'm in the UK, so it must be 6 yrs then (whoppee!).

The UK is amazing, one bout of unemployment and your life is ruined for the next 15 years.. lovely! I earn even more than I did before I got made redundant, but according to the "system" I am less worthy..

Every time I pay £150, I'm paying about £75 in interest. I think the debt is about 5 grand now. If it had no interest I'd try to hammer it down, but I cant afford to end up paying an extra 5 grand above what I borrowed.

It seems to me that if a debt goes into recovery now. They would have to stop the interest part in order for me to be able to clear the debt. Therefore I would only pay back 5 grand rather than 10 and I would clear it faster, thus getting my credit rating back quicker.

Letting them keep my credit card "alive" is basically killing me! Is my calculation wrong?

You're not the only one paying a lot of interest.

I pay out a minimum of 500 GBP to my debts each month. Currently, about 120 GBP of that is in interest alone! :eek: But the amount of interest reduces each month and hey, it's my own fault for messing it all up in the first place.

There is no guarantee that interest/charges wouldn't be incurred if the debt went to a DCA. Plus, it could take the current company months and months before they give up and send it to a DCA. All that time you will be receiving hassling phone calls all day, every day, along with letters. Then it goes to the DCA and starts again.

Yes, there are ways to deal with the above also, but it's a lot of hassle to put yourself through when you might not get the benefit your after!

You really should head over to the debt free wannabee boards for some further advice on this.

ILW

albmoney wrote: »

What, the 4 pages of legalese written in small print by Oxford educated lawyers from freshfields and linklaters for £250 and hour? Oh.. yeah.. thanks for letting me know.. you're a star! :-)

In the end you screwed up.
Doubt if you were complaining when you were spending the money.
Stop trying to make excuses and you will get more helpful advice.

euronorris

Oh, and do an SOA (statement of affairs) too. That way, you can easily pinpoint areas to cut back on, especially if you post it in the DFW board.

Also, if we see exactly what your situation is: how much you owe, who you owe, interest rates etc etc, then we can provide you with much better advice. It's really very, very difficult to advise you on such limited information.

euronorris

albmoney wrote: »

There is no risk on their part if you put down 100 grand on a 250 grand property. Why on earth wouldn't they give you a mortgage? Even if you default their quids in because they get to keep your 100k as collateral. It's a no-brainer as far as banks are concerned.

They still won't lend to you. They got hit way too hard recently.

Whilst a property is usually viewed as a 'safe bet' for security, there's still no guarantee that the market wouldn't crash and they'd end up out of pocket.

It's all too raw and recent, especially with entire countries in dire trouble (Greece for example).

Plus, if you were able to save 100 grand in 6 years, then I can't see why paying off 5 grand for you now is an issue.

Fiddlestick

albmoney wrote: »

What, the 4 pages of legalese written in small print by Oxford educated lawyers from freshfields and linklaters for £250 and hour? Oh.. yeah.. thanks for letting me know.. you're a star! :-)

If you want to be sarcastic about it then fine, that's your choice.

However I'm being extremely serious - I always read the terms and conditions of any contract that I sign, especially if it's one that I'm going to be relying on in the event that I fall upon hard times.

You really don't need a law degree to understand it - you just need to pay particular attention to the sections where they advise you on all the policy exclusions and the circumstances in which they would not pay out.

al_hunter

lisyloo wrote: »

That's not entirely true.

It's not unemployement, it's not paying your debts as agreed that's the problem.

If you'd not taken on debt you weren't sure you could pay back, or had taken our reasonable precautions (like insurance) then you wouldn't be in this mess.
It's the lack of financial plannign not the event that's the problem.

I'm not saying that to be nasty, but if you don't learn from it you might just epeat the same mistakes.

Everyone makes mistakes, sure, but to blame someone else without reflecting objectively is not good.

Everyone knows that death, sickness, redundancy, accident, can happen to any of us.
That's what insurance is for.

I agree with this to an extent. I recently went through a spell of unemployment and it was extremely[u/] difficult. I have a loan with circa £8k left to pay over the next two years, two credit cards with debts totalling around £5k, a mortgage that I pay half of £626pcm toward, council tax etc...

When I took out the loan in 2007 the construction industry was extremely buoyant and the downturn wasn't foreseen at all. I actually turned down PPI cos I was so sure my job was secure. Even when we took out the mortgage the company I was working for at the time were in such a good position in terms of workload that redundancies were completely unforeseen. I was lucky that I got a very good redundancy payout due to my length of service but have since struggled with debts since I'm now working in a job paying a lot lot less than before plus it's paid weekly so having used my redundancy pay and overdraft to get by for 4 months I now can't get out of my overdraft because I'm paid weekly and obviously dd's go out over a spread period.

But, beyond all this, I accept responsibility for the debts and intend to pay each and every one off, in full, including interest.

albmoney

euronorris wrote: »

You're not the only one paying a lot of interest.

I pay out a minimum of 500 GBP to my debts each month. Currently, about 120 GBP of that is in interest alone! :eek: But the amount of interest reduces each month and hey, it's my own fault for messing it all up in the first place.

There is no guarantee that interest/charges wouldn't be incurred if the debt went to a DCA. Plus, it could take the current company months and months before they give up and send it to a DCA. All that time you will be receiving hassling phone calls all day, every day, along with letters. Then it goes to the DCA and starts again.

Yes, there are ways to deal with the above also, but it's a lot of hassle to put yourself through when you might not get the benefit your after!

You really should head over to the debt free wannabee boards for some further advice on this.

Thanks.

I suppose it's the debt and charges that they could hit me with before it gets to a DCA that would worry me. I don't mind the phone calls, they can do that all day. At the end of the day I just dont want to pay more than I have to, simple really. If the only threat they had was a bad credit rating, then they've already done that, so I'm just asking what else can they do?

Has anyone had any experience with the Co-Operative bank Visa? I think I might just call them and say what I'm thinking. (Strangely, I was given this card from Northern Rock as part of my first mortgage.. didnt even want it, never used a card before then!)

Finally, there's alot of "beating yourself up" on this forum like it's an AA meeting! Yes we made mistakes, but you have to understand that there are institutions preying on our weaknesses that have contributed a lot to the situation. Financial institutions spend billions in marketing / psychology / advertising / high pressure tactics etc.. to get you to borrow money. Government relaxed loads of fiscal rules and regulations precisely to get you to borrow more (and forget about the fact that your salary has stayed the same for 10yrs!).

The more you borrow, the more assets the banks have to use as collateral which allows them to loan out more. They were doing anything they could to get people to borrow more pre-crunch. So don't be so hard on yourselves. It is not by accident that many of us are in this mess, rather it's by design! So chin up!

Tixy

albmoney wrote: »

Thanks.

I suppose it's the debt and charges that they could hit me with before it gets to a DCA that would worry me. I don't mind the phone calls, they can do that all day. At the end of the day I just dont want to pay more than I have to, simple really. If the only threat they had was a bad credit rating, then they've already done that, so I'm just asking what else can they do?

If you don't pay and let it intentionally fall into arrears then they might then let you agree a repayment plan and possibly might freeze interest - if they are genuinely convinced you cannot meet the current repayments - they'd want to see an income & expenditure before they'd agree to it and would also expect you to be paying any other creditors at a reduced rate as well so they are not unfairly penalised.

Or they might take you to court and obtain a CCJ against you. Which will obviously then be on your file for a further 6years. And judges don't look to kindly on those that won't pay rather than those that can't pay, so the judge would be more likely to enter a judgement in full rather than granting you time to pay in installments. Plus there will be court fees etc added on.

By the way, the defaults you mentioned eariler - they only stay on for 6years from the date of default not the date they were settled.

ILW

albmoney wrote: »

Thanks.

I
Finally, there's alot of "beating yourself up" on this forum like it's an AA meeting! Yes we made mistakes, but you have to understand that there are institutions preying on our weaknesses that have contributed a lot to the situation. Financial institutions spend billions in marketing / psychology / advertising / high pressure tactics etc.. to get you to borrow money. Government relaxed loads of fiscal rules and regulations precisely to get you to borrow more (and forget about the fact that your salary has stayed the same for 10yrs!).

The more you borrow, the more assets the banks have to use as collateral which allows them to loan out more. They were doing anything they could to get people to borrow more pre-crunch. So don't be so hard on yourselves. It is not by accident that many of us are in this mess, rather it's by design! So chin up!

So its all somebody elses fault, they made you spend all that money.
Grow up.