doodah's diy dmp diary

doodah

looking for a bit of advice really... as usual i am in a dmp with kensington (i know!) but so far it's taken nearly 2 months to sort out, they've only just written to my creditors! i received a letter from hsbc this morning stating that they couldn't accept my offer of lower payments (£8.77 of £1100 credit card) therefore they have no further option but to pass my account to their debt collection department blah blah blah................... i haven't had any letters of acceptance yet, i'm having to pay £23 off of my virgin card tomorrow because they were ringing me constantly and they kept asking for a payment, y'know 'we really need a payment from you now' etc. so i felt obliged... when i first spoke to kensington it felt like a weight had been lifted, yey someone to speak to my creditors and sort everything out, now i'm in a worse situation because i haven't paid any of them for 2 months! i did try payplan, but they said because my debt is under £8000 they can't help me i was thinking i could try and write to my creditors and offer them reduced payments myself rather than going through kensington, but maybe it's too late for that. any suggestions appreciated......

just thought, i better post an SOA as i haven't done so yet!

Monthly Incomings:

My salary - £758.77
Partners salary - £813.20

Total - £1571.97

Monthly Outgoings:

Mortgage/Rent - £337.50
Council Tax - £100
Gas - £60
Electric - £30
Water - £66.22
NTL - £20
Food - £130
Car Insurance - £55.70
Petrol - £43
Car - £164.35
Car (gap insurance + payment protection) - £73.09
Mobile phones - £100

Kensington - £100 (paid them once, due to pay again soon but want away from them so I'm not including them in the total)

Total: £1179.86

Left over from salary after bills: £392.11

Our debts:

Virgin card: £2050 15.9%
HSBC card: £1000 0% til January
Barclaycard: £1100 2.9% til July 2007
Egg: £580 16.9% (anniversary in February 2007)
Smile loan: £1100 6.9%
Smile overdraft: £671.55 (authorised £500)
Partner's Smile overdraft: £650 (authorised £500)
Alliance & Leicester default £412
Lloyds tsb default £350

Total debt: £7913.55

That doesn't look TOO bad to me, but the reason we're struggling is that my partner has been going from temp to temp jobs since we moved in together in march, and he's gone for say 4 weeks at a time without being in work. he's now got a permanent job (yey!) so i'm hoping we'll be in a better situation soon. So now I need to figure out how much I can comfortably afford to pay off each month...

LittleL_4

No it's not too late! Dump this company immediately!

I'd phone all your creditors and explain the situation and try and set up your own DMP or try CCCS.

The fee your paying Kensington can go towards paying your debts off.

Good Luck, but please ditch them immediately!
L
x

in-trouble_3

doodah wrote:

i haven't paid any of them for 2 months! i did try payplan, but they said because my debt is under £8000 they can't help me i was thinking i could try and write to my creditors and offer them reduced payments myself rather than going through kensington, but maybe it's too late for that. any suggestions appreciated......

sorry to hear this, we are debating whether to set up our own dmp or going with the company cccs who we are a client with but havent signed anything yet if that makes sense?

I know since being on these boards and relising what debt we are in, its best to be honest.

Just wanted to say i hope all goes well

madduck

Agree with the others - give CCCS a call. I've been on a DMP with them for over 2 years and I've always found them to be really good. Really surprised that Payplan wouldn't help because your debt was too low!

doodah

i gave payplan another go, they're ringing me tomorrow to go through everything does anyone know how long payplan take to make the first payment to creditors? mine are all getting pretty arsey now, most have given me to the end of the month to receive a proposal from a dm company.

CLAPTON

it seems to me that if your income is now stable i.e. your BF now has a permanent job then you dont really need a DMP and you will be able to go back to paying your debts off properly.

your debts are 7913....you dont say the minimum monthly payments on the original basis but you have about 500 (once you stop paying kensington) to put towards them which surely should be enough.

your SoA has several things missing for an ongoing basis like clothes, car tax, servicing, xmas, presents, holidays, socialising ...you need to work out your full spending.

however, your mobile spending at 100 is very high indeed...if you are within contract period phone them up and see whether you can reduce your package...if you're outside the contract period the consider PAYG and think £10 rather than £100.

also what is gap insurance and payment protection at 79? has this paid out with OH unemployment ?...if not what use is it...can you cancel it

if you can establish that once BFs income starts being paid you can indeed start paying in full, then contact each creditor and explain this and say when you can start repaying and ask them to freeze interest and charges until then .

doodah

hey. i didn't include kensington so i have £392 leftover after bills. our mobile phone bills are terrible, once we get to the 6 month mark we're going to lower our tarrifs. i think the gap insurance for my car is worth the money, although i haven't heard any experiences of anyone that's used it, but payments for that stop in march. payment protection is probably not worth it so that's a good point! i know we probably could afford to pay each creditor in full, but if they carry on charging us interest we've got no hope of paying anything off really we'll just be paying the interest. the other problem is we're now 2 months behind in payments, but we don't have the money to pay those amounts so we'll carry on being behind unless we do something about stopping charges etc.

Bunnie1982

doodah wrote:

just thought, i better post an SOA as i haven't done so yet!

Monthly Incomings:

My salary - £758.77
Partners salary - £813.20

Total - £1571.97

Monthly Outgoings:

Mortgage/Rent - £337.50
Council Tax - £100
Gas - £60
Electric - £30
Water - £66.22
NTL - £20
Food - £130
Car Insurance - £55.70
Petrol - £43
Car - £164.35
Car (gap insurance + payment protection) - £73.09
Mobile phones - £100

Kensington - £100 (paid them once, due to pay again soon but want away from them so I'm not including them in the total)

Total: £1179.86

Left over from salary after bills: £392.11

Our debts:

Virgin card: £2050 15.9%
HSBC card: £1000 0% til January
Barclaycard: £1100 2.9% til July 2007
Egg: £580 16.9% (anniversary in February 2007)
Smile loan: £1100 6.9%
Smile overdraft: £671.55 (authorised £500)
Partner's Smile overdraft: £650 (authorised £500)
Alliance & Leicester default £412
Lloyds tsb default £350

Total debt: £7913.55

Your water rates are exceptionally high, are you on a water meter?

We had cause to use the Gap Insurance on our car and in all honesty they were great in helping us out.

Which company do you have your car insurance through? Couldn't help noticing it was quite high

How much are your monthly payments on your debts usually?

doodah

according to a spreadsheet on here, this is what i can afford to pay

VIRGIN £62.14
HSBC £30.31
BARCLAYCARD £31.22
SMILE LOAN £33.34
SMILE OVERDRAFT £19.70
SMILE OVERDRAFT £20.36
ALLIANCE & LEICESTER £12.49
LLOYDS TSB £10.61

That is basically the same as the minimum payments anyway, except virgin the min payment is £45 and the smile loan minimum payment is £66.99 but it'll take nearly 12 years to pay off!!! nooo...

Kazonline

I'm in contact with CCCS at the moment and they have been far more helpfull in my case than Payplan. You can find out online whether they might be able to help you by doing a quick online assesment. Once you've done that they instantly produce a booklet for you that you can view online that tells you what options you have. Here's the link
http://www.cccs.co.uk/
Hope that helps,
Kaz x

sanfrancisco

What are your actual minimum payments and loan payment amounts?

As everyone above says, please stop paying these rip off merchants. They made you feel good when you first rang up because that is what they do and they do it well.