Struggling to pay loans (continued)

nickdj

Hello again.

Thank you for your advice previously about trying to deal with ourstanding debts and loans which I 'was' going to get a third party company involved. After your advice I went to CCCS and used thier advice to write out to creditors.

On a good note I managed to get AA Finance to agree to a £10 per month repayment.

HSBC ignored my letter by the looks of it. I can't even phone them because I have to go to the branch. So I am now racking up late payment fees!

The worst is the loans my wife has. I bet they just see it's a woman and think "hey, we can scare this one into paying".

We are left with two which have not accepted our offer of repayment. We generously offered £10 and £5 per month to Santander (who now want £200 p.m) and Additions (£50 p.m) but they refused it. To be honest we felt guilty offering £1 per month and the offer we made may have been a little too generous.

What do we do now? Do we write another letter explaining that we will not have the money? I feel like I should now write another letter stating a repayment of £1 per month!

This all happened when I lost my job. Luckily, I found another within a week but this only covers the mortgage. My wife now has to use all the benefits and £100 she gets a week for her part-time job to pay for the bills. We are still very short and struggle to meet our household bills let alone repayments. I am now having to work over 50 hours a week just to cover the mortgage and the council tax.

Any ideas what we should do. Write another letter? Contact CCCS again? If it goes to court I don't think they will get anything as they have all the details about our creditors and income.

Thanks again.

Nick

Tixy

They key thing is to ensure you make the payments you have offered whether or not the creditors say they will accept them. They may say they will refuse them or ignore your letters but in practice they may not take further action providing you pay something.

I assume you sent out an income & expenditure statement with your original letters? if so and circumstances have not changed then there is little else you can do other than to ensure you do pay what you have offered each month.

If you cannot afford what you have offered then you could write again only offering £1 to all your creditors, though they would need to see why your income & expenditure has changed so that this is all you can afford now compared to when you offered the £10s and £5s.

If one of your creditors does send court papers then you need to complete them and ask to pay in installments, and a judge would then assess what you can afford.

nickdj

Hi. Thanks for your reply Tixy.

After carefully reading the advice provided by CCCS I did indeed tell them about our expenditures. Even without paying the creditors we would struggle and would have to cut back somewhere. To be honest if it wasn't for the benefits we wouldn't have food. It worked out that we were £500 per month short and over £400 of that was loan etc.

I am now working 50+ hours a week just to bring that little extra in. Of course I am also looking for better wages and I am confident that we both will find new employment. I am concerned that the more we earn the less likely we will get benefits and may not be better off.

Anyway, I will send them a letter again to reinforce our situation and set up standing orders to pay the amounts even if they don't agree.

I take it this is exactly what we should do?

Thanks again.

Nick

Tixy

Yep - exactly what you should do Nick.

dancingfairy

just keep paying them - month in month out - if all you can afford is that then that's all you can pay.
Be wary about increasing the amount when you earn a little extra otherwise they will lean on you to get that every month - save it up in order to offer full and final settlements or as a small emergency fund. If after say 6 months then you are happy to increase the payments a little then fine but don't chop and change too much.
Also you might want to send them a letter every so often reminding them that they are a responsible lender (I guess somewhere in their literature you will find something about them working with debt charities or being sympathetic to those in debt etc), and that you would appreciate them freezing interest and stopping charges - eventually hopefully they will do this , or you will be able to offer a full and final settlement or they get bored and sell the debt on to someone who does want to stop interest and charges.
Like you said also - at court they aren't
going to get anything if you haven't got it.
Keep at it.
df
I am assuming these are not secured loan on your house - if so then the situation is different.