For the last five years I have been living in debt and its getting worst!

newlifeplease

Hi,

For the last five years I have been living in debt and its getting worst!!

Altogether I am in around 7k of Debt, my biggest one is a HSBC Loan,Overdraft, Credit Card all in one for £4000. This started at about £6000 and have got it down over the last five years. However my situation has got worst as I am slipping into more and more debt. I have 3 or 4 debt collectors demanding money, threatening CCJs for different debts. I rung up more debts trying to sort my self out on my own and keeping it to my self....

However All my efforts failed and i have just become depressed....

So when it got so bad I sold my car which was the only thing I owned got £1500 and just left the country and went to south east asia for 3 months to clear my head.

So i have just returned and been off the plane for 24 hours and started work again and now online, I have started take action on my problem and this time not on my own as that is where I went wrong last time. I am hoping I will get some help from people on MSE.com

I am going to start ringing all my debt collecting agencies tomorrow and get the ball rolling to become debt free by the 2012 Olympics (don’t know why 2012 Olympics just a goal I guess)

So I guess the first help I could do with is what say when I call the debt collecting agencies in the past they always seem to win on the phone and I end up giving what I can and end up having no money to live with!!!!

So I will be updating over the coming days, months and years!!

All help will be much appreciated, If you need any more info please ask and i will post as answer as quick as possible!

Thanks

podperson

Hi Newlifeplease,

Welcome to the forums! Well done on deciding to tackle the problem, it is scary but the first step is always the hardest (and trust me have been there!). I would say the first thing to do is work out a budget for yourself, there is a template on here called Statement of Affairs or SOA. Make sure you list all your incomings and outgoings and if you want to post on here people tend to have some great advice on where you can make savings. Once you have that set out you can see what you have left over for the debts.

Second I wouldn't suggest phoning the debt collectors up, as you have found out before they specialise in pressuring you into agreeing payments that you can't really afford, their job is to get as much money as possible out of you and they don't really care about your personal circumstances. Write out to them, I prefer to deal with the original company I had the debt with if it's just debt collectors and they haven't actually sold the debt but that's up to you. State what you can afford to pay them and if you can enclose a first payment. If they ring up or write to you saying it's not enough, then tough, that's all you can afford and they are highly unlikely to take you to court if you are making regular payments since all the court will do is look at your budget and see what you can afford to pay anyway.

If you find this intimidating (and I did at first) then there are debt charities like CCCS or Paypal who can help you with the budget and deal with the debt agencies on your behalf.

Also if they are mainly credit card debts worth checking if you have any charges with them that you could claim back, am in the process of claiming mine and should knock a chunk off the balance. Lots of guides and templates on here if you need help with it.

Good luck with it

bottleofred

Hi,

Before you contact the debt collection agencies please contact the consumer credit counselling service or debtline who can provide advice free of charge. They also have template letters you can send to your creditors with a financial statement in order for them to accept reduced payments. Deal with the creditors only in writing and you can also ask them not to telephone you using the link to a template letter below.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/...html?t=1837507

I hope this helps and good luck

Bottle of Red

GeorgeUK

Before you contact the DCA's (Debt collection agencies), it might be worth seeing where you are right now and get an idea of where you can go.

Try doing a statement of affairs and post up your income and expenditure
https://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

You can check out the free debt charities incase you want advice from them too - Payplan and CCCS are most commonly recommended here.

If you don't make payment for a while and the debts are all with DCA's, you may be able to save up and make reduced full and final settlement offers (don't agree to partial or short settlements)