Im in a bit of bother

debt_dunce

Hi everyone, this is my first post so go easy..:o

Ok, the long and short of it....

Im a 29 year old man in rented property that owes about £12,000 to hsbc
In augustr of last year i got made redundant from my job, it was quite well paid and came as a bit of a shock, I recieved a redundancy package from my employers, which initially planned to pay off a big chunk of my loan,Actually i hoped to settle the final lump sum with hsbc, but they were not interested in taking it as payment. my redundancy was about £8000 so around £3000 short. The clerk said that the final fee was too low to settle the loan and due to me being 2 years into a 5 year loan i would another £2000 to settle it.

As i was now out of work i decided instead to use my redunancy to pay the rent and loan payments as wasnt sure how long i would be unemployed.. It turned out i was unemployed for longer than i thought the money lasted until december when i finally decided to go on job seekers allowance (should have done this earlier in hindsight:( )
but pride got in the way, stupid i know, but thats who i am.always worked and NEVER claimed off the state.

In february of this year i started working again after 2 months on job seekers, but i am now working for an employment agency doing a similar role, but for half the wage (£250 a week) It is regular work, but the money is around £450 short of paying all my bills and loan.And as i now get paid weekly i never have enough money on the 21st of each month when my loan payment is due to be able to pay in one go.

(Loan contractual minimum payment is £423 a month)
Rent is £460 per month
Car insurance is £40 a month
petrol is £30 a week, but needed as new job is in the middle of nowhere
council tax is £144 a month, but i pay that as my housemate pays the water, gas ect..and it breaks even.
Phone is £20 a month, but needed.
plus living expenses.i try to spend under £20 a week on food


Ive spoken to the cccs and on my budget plan i am apparently
(with very conservitive estimates) Have around £34 surplus left every month i have not accounted for such things as car spares and dental work which i need, nor clothing.

Now, they've advised me against a debt management plan. also the bank will not accept it..

I am not eligable for an I.v.a as i don't owe enough money.

I cannot apply for a debt relief order as i have a small company pension with my previous employer which i stopped paying into when i was made redundant. (its around £8000 total) also, i cannot recieve the money for another 40 years!:mad:if its even still there when i retire?!

My question is, is bankruptcy my only option?
My car is worth £70 according to we buy any car.com
(25 year old toyota)
i sold pretty much everything i own and have less than £50 every month, but as pension is classed as an asset over £300 i think the doors have closed on my hope of having a Debt relief order.

hsbc ring me up about 10 times a day, and have been advised by the cccs to ignore it,
and im happy to as ive made arrangements in the past, then the next day someone else rings up and dismisses their previous collegues arrangent as impossible and says im lying, to which im not, even if i take their employee number as reference it doesnt make any use as no one seems to put arrangements on file..:mad:

danthemoneysavingman

so where did the original 12000 go??

BILLIE

Dan to be perfectly honest don't think it makes any difference where the original £12K went - as we all say hindsight is a wonderful thing. I can sympathise with some of your story, as I have had HSBC on the phone one day and the next a different person tells me "can't do that". So I put everything in writing and sent to the CEO. Explained my situation, asked for help, and eventually, not everything I wanted but they did help. Likewise a loan with a different Company I asked if we could move the due date for monthly payments as OH now working but not paid weekly and they said couldn't move the due date, but it is noted on the file that the payment will be late and they have accepted it. Again with hindsight if I was you I would have used most of the £8K redundancy to pay a chunk off the loan and reduce the payments if possible. Anyway the long and short of what I am saying is put it in writing to HSBC. Good luck you will get there in time. Billie xx

debt_dunce

I actually had a string of bad luck and being young and nieve when i took the original loan out in 2001
went into the bank a fresh faced 21 year old and was bombarded with offers for loans from hsbc,
"borrow as much as you like" they pretty much said, "please take our money" tbh, So i originally took out a £5000 loan to buy a car from a local garage, £4000 for the car, £850 on insurance and the rest tax.
Bearing in mind i took home about £1800 a month back then drove the car for a year, went to M.O.T it One day and found it was a cut and shut:(
Phoned up the police and trading standards who promptly came round to asses it. i wasnt allowed to sell it on, so had to break for parts.
Trading standards told me that if i wanted to claim against the garage i would have to take them through court myself, so i contacted the family solicitor who persued the owner of the garage.. he did a runner and the garage went into administration.

As i still didnt have a car i decided to go buy another one, so took out a similar ammount of money again (huge mistake) but that one was decent and had it for a few years until i sold it on, thats about 10 grand gone already i had a perfect credit score and didnt really think that far into the future..

the other money i've used for deposits on houses and supporting my girlfreind at the time . i had a credit card for a year, but chopped it up after i racked up 1000 on it. the a.p.r was crazy

In hindsight, ive probably borrowed £14000 in total, and since 2001 of paying £3000 a year plus things like p.p.i which was inforced to me at the time of the original loan at £50 a month plus any charges like overdrafts i've easily gave tha bank around £40,000 in total of my money. but it never seems to come down due to the extortionate a.p.r im paying when they did the old mixing the loans into one payment trick..

hope that fills in all the gaps for you dan, my blood type is o positive for your info too

KingElvis

It's always the darkest hour before the dawn mate. In the end, they'll just have to accept what you can afford or f**k off.

You can't go to prison for debts any longer so the worst they can do is telephone you, write nasty letters or generally harrass you, some of these can be minimised using letters and advice on this board.

I wish you luck and hope you find a solution

Tixy

Why did CCCS advise against a DMP?

Is it because this is your only debt so they will not run a DMP on your behalf? Or is it that they think you don't have any money at all to put towards your debts?

What have they advised? bankruptcy? token payments in the short term?

You share a property with someone and pay £460 rent? Do you both pay this same figure? ie the rent actually being £920? Just wondering if you would be likely to find anything cheaper at all?

If you are earning around £13k have you checked to see if you are entitled to any tax credits to top up your income?

Hannah_10

You can only go to prison for council tax and then you'd have to be pretty much saying "oh I CAN pay, but I wont" like those old people who made front page news... It makes front page news because even prison for council tax is nearly unheard of.

Billies right, it's none of anyone business how you got into debt, it doesn't make any difference to how you're going to get out of debt either.

About those HSBC calls, we've got a letter for that... Right at the bottom of this post http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=33791363&postcount=2 click on the green bold writing next to templates 27.1 to 27.5 as required.

Tixy

Probably too obvious a question - but did you have PPI on this loan? and if so did you make a PPI claim whilst you were unemployed?

I suspect people were asking where the money had been spent just to see if the poster had any assets that could be sold to help repay the debt.

Numpty_Monkey

Hi :hello:
I ain't got a clue what my blood type is:eek: so your 1 up on me:D
If HSBC is your only creditor then CCCS or any debt charity won't do a DMP
You can do reduced payments on your own
with help from them or National Debtline or us:A

If you post your SOA use this http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html
post it here and we'll try to see if you can make savings to keep up with your payments or go to reduced payments (don't worry we have the letters and stuff;))

As for the phone calls tell HSBC you will only deal with them in writing and hang up
go through the ecurity checks ) and then send them this Harassment by Telephone

In fact have a quick read of this http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1837507

:A

Numpty_Monkey

Good point by Tixy re the PPI
have a look at the http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/
If you couldn't claim for some silly reason or you were forsed to take it out
you could reclaim it all back
There is a board on here about it on here

debt_dunce

thanks elvis, yeah, i realise that i cant go to prison for it really, suppose i've properly learned my lesson and will never borrow any money again (not that the banks are offering) if i cant afford it i dont need it.
As all other avenues seem to be closed to me and im working as much as i can to bring home the money do you think that bankruptcy is my best option for £12k? i dont owe any other money to anyone else than hsbc, and have applied for a refund of the p.p.i i was forced to take out, but they have dragged it out for over 3 months now, apparently due to the number of people trying to re-claim. Im thinking that now i missed one loan payment last month they probably wont be too forthcoming in giving me my refund (approx £2400+ 8% interest) i cancelled the P.P.I in late 2005 due to working out it cost me £600 a year and my employer had full medical and sick cover and if i ever lost my job then missed a loan payment the p.p.i would be invalid anyhow. Seemed no point in having something that wouldnt pay out if the thing is was meant to cover actually happened.