cccs - TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE?

ironmonkeystrike

Tixy wrote: »

Is your wife/partner not getting maternity pay?
You need to check out why you are only being paid £80 per month for child benefit - it should be £20.30 a week. Also have you looked into putting in a claim for tax credits? If not you need to do this and get all you are entitled to before you can finalise your statement of affairs - as creditors will be wondering the same questions.

F&F in a full & final settlement. Once someone has been on a DMP for a few years and the debts have been sold to debt collectors they will often accept a reduced figure to settle the debt.

But if you get a payrise then you do need to inform CCCS and will need to increase payments (subject to any increase in costs that might go with your increased earning) but basically CCCS expect you to do a new statement of affairs every 6months and go through all your income & costs etc again then. So any savings you were making towards F&Fs would have to be by spending less in areas than your SoA shows. So its generally slow going. But many people do finish their DMP by making offers.

Yes my wife is on full maternity pay until end of march.

am awaiting child tax credits to come through now...

Ok so i am jumping the gun a bit here.... I will wit for tax credits to hit our bank accounts, then go back to CCCS for a SOA review... :money:

Jesthar

ironmonkeystrike wrote: »

Yes my wife is on full maternity pay until end of march.

am awaiting child tax credits to come through now...

Ok so i am jumping the gun a bit here.... I will wit for tax credits to hit our bank accounts, then go back to CCCS for a SOA review... :money:

You also need to review your spending, I think, or you aren't going to know what habits you need to change to keep you from going further into debt. Do you keep a spending diary? If not, you should probably start one ASAP - get all your bank and credit card statements from the last few months and account for EVERYTHING you have spent - you will be amazed where the pennies slip away! You can also use these numbers to do a more accurate SoA, which is always useful - in particular find the interest rates for those cards, as you should always pay off the one with the biggest interest rate first.

If you have no special diet needs, you should also be able to greatly reduce your grocery bill (me and my cat live on under £80 a month for the both of us, including cat litter and household products, and occasional treats) - I find taking packed lunches to work saves me the most money. I'd hope you could lower your gas and electricity bills, too, unless you are in arrears, as they are pretty big - have you looked at changing provider?

Also, do you know what you will be doing when your wife is no longer getting full maternity pay?

~Jes

dancingfairy

Clearly you need to find a balance between getting your expenses as low as they can go and being realistic on your SOA - too tight and you'll end up in a worse mess as more credit means your dmp will fail, too much slack and you'll be forever paying off the debt. You need to kind of come to a realistic figure - having said that if you manage to say shave 20 off the shopping with special offers etc you can tuck that away for an emergency or to make a full and final settlement offer - obviously if your situation changes drastically say a pay rise/pay cut then yes you would get your budget redone with CCCS but they aren't going to want to know every time you save 20 pounds at the supermarket or something.
df

ironmonkeystrike

Jesthar wrote: »

Also, do you know what you will be doing when your wife is no longer getting full maternity pay?

~Jes

i really dont know my options once this stage happens.... I guess I must phone child tax credit and inform them of change in situation?

ironmonkeystrike

UPDATE:

Been with CCCS since approx March - now paying £160 per month. Much happier with life (obviously a lot to pay off still) but with baby now 8months, I definitely needed to do this, so happy I did. A bit of a late update, but hope this helps anyone that may be in similar situation to me... thanks guys for all ur help too.