Help and advice needed !

MichaelCR01

Hey

I'm currently unemployed after leaving work 2 months ago, and have signed on to jobseekers allowance for the mean time whilst I seek work, however my phone bill this month is £379.71 and I owe £232 to greenwood and £70 to natwest, I know it's not a major amount of money but it's enough to stop me from sleeping at night as I have no fixed income meaning I can't pay this off, I have untill the 20th august to pay off my vodafone account, and need to pay my greenwood loan off asap, is there any way I could get at least a £600 loan whilst unemployed ? I desperately need to clear theses debts, or else I'm going to end up with defaults on my credit file (which is good at the moment) please help me I'm stressing so much over this and I don't know what I can do

Thanks

spursfan14

I'm sorry to say that it will be difficult for you to get a loan if your unemployed, unless you have a guarantor. And even then, the APR will be quite high.

Have you looked into the possibility of entering a debt management plan? There are several threads on the forums that will give you advice on DMPs. In short, there are three options-

- A free service like the CCCS that will manage your debts on your behalf for free. The plus point of the free service is that 100% of the money you give will go towards paying your debts back. On the negative side, they tend to be very heavily subscribed so the customer care that you can receive can not always be 100%

- a fee paying service link Debt Line, Harrington Brooks or Gregory Pennington. The plus side of these guys is they are independant businesses, so they tend to be focused on delivering for the customer or else they lose money. On the negative side, the fees that you pay them is money that could go towards repaying your debts

- Doing it yourself. There are some excellent template letters/budget sheets on this forum that will help you to produce your own DMP.

I personally produced my own DMP and have been sticking to that for nearly 4 years, but financial management is not a one size fits all thing. It really depends on what suits you.

All the best!

P.S. Have you thought about getting a pay as you go mobile so you can manage your bills more effectively? Tesco are offering some excellent deals at the moment.

Marisco

Hi Michael, with JSA being only £64pw, I think you'll struggle to find anyone willing to lend you the money. Could a family member help? Whatever you do stay away from payday loans with their shocking interest rates or "loan sharks" Far better to default than get into their hands no matter how desperate you are!!! The only other alternative is like spurs says, either do a DMP yourself or go with the one of the free ones.

Hannah_10

More credit is never the answer mate, I know it seems like the answer, but it isn't. The only people who'd look at you now are providers like Greenwood whose interest rates are between 200 and 300 percent or paydays loans companies whose rates are ten times that- yes really. Voda doesn't have an interest rate, you'd be nuts to shift a cheap debt to an expensive one.

First step, write to Greenwood and Voda and explain your position. With regards NatWest consider how to raise it fast, can you borrow it from Mum or raise it on eBay just to get that one tidied off sharpish and save you a third of the aggro?

Percy1983

I would ask how confident you are you will get work? phoning people you owe money too will buy you time to which if you may be working again soon might be fine.

As you will know they amounts owed are quite low, so do you have anything you can sell to pay it back?

Hannah_10

spursfan14 wrote: »

- A free service like the CCCS that will manage your debts on your behalf for free. The plus point of the free service is that 100% of the money you give will go towards paying your debts back. On the negative side, they tend to be very heavily subscribed so the customer care that you can receive can not always be 100%

And on the other negative sides...

They take around half of your money for themselves when you do the hard maths. (Which they always hope you wont).
They can't do anything for you that a charity wont do for free or that you can't do yourself even.
They frequently do not pay creditors on time, or in some extreme cases at all.
Which means you then get defaults and arrears for thier errors and your credit rating takes another blow it never deserved.
They wont go to court for you or arange lowered full and final repayments. You still have to do all that all on your own.
They can't stop a baliff calling.
They wont stop the phone calls from creditors and certainly not the doorstep calls from Greenwood.
Creditors hate them because they take a fee (less money for the creditors) so you get better rates if you do it yourself.

Have a think about it, who exactly are these for-profit business's making thier profit FROM? Because it's not the creditors.

Spurs I don't think I've ever seen a post where you didn't send someone to a paid company, or one that was written outside office hours. Is there a conflict of interests here?

spursfan14

Hannah_10 wrote: »

Spurs I don't think I've ever seen a post where you didn't send someone to a paid company, or one that was written outside office hours. Is there a conflict of interests here?

Hi Hannah,

Thanks for your response. I think its very important to give people in financial difficulty a balance view point of the options. As you will see, I always talk about free, paid and DIY solutions, with no bias for any of them. I can only talk about my own experiences of a DMP and I felt that the DIY solution was right for me. But my levels of debt were relatively low.

FYI I work nights in a hotel, so normal business hours for me are 7pm until 3am. All you posts are between 9-5, and you have an incredible amount of posts in a short space of time. Does that mean something untoward is happening?

ex-rayday

Spursfan worried me naming the companies that offer the services, they are not a good service at all, half of them have kids working who don't even know what a living expense is let alone pay them. They are also on commission and have very little idea of how things work off script.

If you want full control outside of a charity - then do it yourself with national debtline templates do not ever entertain any companies that charge, you can't afford interest on your debts then you also can't afford paying commission to 16 year olds in a call centre!

spursfan14

ex-rayday wrote: »

If you want full control outside of a charity - then do it yourself with national debtline templates

This is exactly what I did and it worked very well for me. It is much more effort but my mentality was, i got myself into debt so i need to get myself out. Plus i was a student so i had a lot of free time!! :-p

dorisday

Take it from an oldie!!! keep away from any fee paying company. And listen to Hannan-10.