Debt management,can i leave and approach creditors?

odydog

Hi im new here looking for some advice.

We have been with a debt management plan for around 5 years and seem to have got nowhere with our debt.Is it possible to leave the debt management company and approach our creditors ourselves?
Are our creditors likely to allow us to pay over a few years to clear the debt?i just feel that 5 years down the line and we are nowhere near paying off what we would like to have done. what is the likelyhood of our creditors accepting £300 a month,will they pester on a monthly basis or would it be like an aggreement? Our circumstances are alway changing but we would really like to be debt free in the next 5 years.
Any advice would be great,especially if anyone has done this themselves!:o

Tixy

Yes you can do a self-administered DMP.
First check the T&C of the current DMP company about leaving - a lot you have to give written notice of 4weeks to cancel your agreement.
Then just write a letter to your creditors to inform them you will now be running your DMP and ask for all future correspondance to come direct to you and nothing to go to the DMP co. You might also want to confirm in the letter how much your monthly payment to them will be.

How does the £300 compare to the amount you pay currently? if its the same amount as you currently pay then your creditors are likely to accept this as they should all be getting slightly more each month (if you no longer have a monthly fee to pay to the DMP co).

If its less than you currently pay then you'll need to write out a detailed statement of affairs to show why, and show that you are paying all you can afford.

They shouldn't pester you every month but mostly they'll expect you to complete a new statement of affairs every 6 or 12 months to show you are still paying what you can afford.

There is a thread here about people doing their own DMPs Anyone organising their own DMP? - although in general I would say the fact that you are already in a DMP should make it easier than trying to start one from scratch in terms of creditors accepting your payment/freezing interest etc, so you probably won't experience all the hassles some of the posters in that thread have been through.

Key thing is to make sure you always pay on time and make sure you always treat them fairly in terms of splitting your payment between them (based pro-rata on the balances to each).

odydog

Thank you for that. it just totally freaks me out trying to work it all out. my payments would be higher and will stick to them,regardless of whether i can afford it,i just want to pay it off! I wanted to ring creditors today and find out exactly how much i owe and whether it includes intrest etc.

Tixy

Good idea - to give them all a call to find out what you owe them all. If they start asking for extra payments or anything on the phone just be firm with them, say you are working out what payments you can afford and will write to them soon.

If you are doing your own DMP then you do need to be able to ignore any attempts they make to get you to pay more than you can afford/have offered.

Good luck