Welcome Finance Loan

Tenacious_G

I was silly enough to take a £2k loan with these in 2006 for which I paid it all fine for roughly one year, then I lost my job and fell back with payments and since then I've been in and out of jobs and have moved address 8 times over the last 4 years, because of losing job, parents seperating and loads of other stuff. So I haven't made a single payment on this loan in around three years, as all the paperwork is lost in amongst moving house and just got into the habit of brushing it under the carpet

Now I've lived in the same address for the last year and have managed to hold down a job with a regular salary, I now live with my longterm girlfriend who knows nothing about my situation and I need to start sorting out this last loan as one day we obviously want to get married and buy a house but this isn't going to happen as long as this loan is hanging over my head. I've managed to make regular monthly payments to my other creditors and havent missed any payments but just kept putting off the WF loan as I was scared of them telling me how much I owed them as I know the charges are crazy and I didn't want them knocking the door and my girlfriend finding out.

I still don't want her to know as I want to sort it out on my own............but where on earth do I start??

Any help or advice would be so much appreciated.

fozmcfc

Hopefully some others can give you some more detailed advice and I would post your post over in the debt free wanabee section as many members over there will have been in a similar/same position as yourself.

My take on it, I would get a copy of your credit reports from Experian, Equifax. If you can sign up for the free trial but remember to cancel before charge. Or you can for £2 get them to send a paper copy of your report.

http://www.equifax.co.uk/

http://www.experian.co.uk/

This will show just how bad your credit reports are at the moment.

After finding that out, I would contact Welcome who are winding up their business and trying to re-coup as much money as they can. If you have a lump sum to give them, they may be willing to take a settlement figure and ask them to put that the debt is settled on your credit report.

If you don't you are just going to need to get the arrears upto date and continue to pay the correct payments each month.

TBH the quicker you deal with it, the quicker it will be sorted out and the quicker you can get any bad marks off your credit report. I would say though that even if you do sort it out, you are still going to find having trouble getting credit for at least 6 years.