Where to start?!

maxheinze

I've been in debt for the past 10 years, since I turned 18, it all started out with a £3000 card barclaycard decided to offer me at 18 working part time, without attempting to excuse myself due to a whole lot of issues at home and school I ended up blowing the whole credit on seemingly nothing. Since then I've never been able to get a handle on my spending, I know I owe what I consider to be a whole lot of money to a small host of companies. I've never kept track of who or what I owe and have been highly successful at ignoring calls and postal communications. Most of my creditors have since passed my debts on to collectors, who in turn have sold them on to other collection agencies. As it stands I think I probably owe circa 20k to a plethora of companies, I've no idea who or how much is owed to each individual company nor do I even know who I owe money to. I cannot go on as I have been, I loose sleep over it and I know it's affected past relationships and my well being suffers to boot. I'm now in a fairly stable position in myself and know I need to start tackling my debts. The only debt I currently am making any real effort to repay is a 6month arrears on my rent, which I'm currently paying back over a 1year period, though that said I don't have any form of contract nor agreement in writing with my landlord...
My question I suppose really boils down to how do I find out who I owe, and how much?

amorge

Hi, well done on facing up to your debts
I would suggest getting free 30 trials with the 3 credit agencies..Experian, Equifax and Call Credit. They will list all your debts & amounts..make sure you cancel the subscriptions before the 30 days are up though as it's not worth paying their monthly fees.
Good Luck

Tixy

Hi and welcome

Have you moved address a lot and so lost touch with creditors or have you just been ignoring letters?
Do you know if you have any CCJs (county court judgements) for any of your debts?

How long ago since you ran up the bulk of the debts? and how long ago roughly since you paid anything towards them?

If its possible that some haven't been paid for more than 6years then thats important to know.

One option may be to get copies of your credit files - but if you debts are very old they won't necessarily show on there - and getting your credit file will inform your creditors of your current address.

maxheinze

Yes I have moved address frequently, but I have for a long while been ignoring the letters almost from the start, I would hazard that there are some that I've not paid back in the past 6 years, some that I've never paid anything toward. The majority of the debts date back to my days at university which would be about 2003-2006. Some few have been since then, but in recently and I'm almost ashamed to admit I've taken payday loans out within the past 6 months... I did start getting a spate of collector letters when I changed the address on my driving license (~8 months ago) but they've all but stopped sending now.

Tixy

Do you know about statute barred debts?

If you have a debt that you have not paid anything towards for 6years and have no written to your creditor(or debt collector) to acknowledge that you owe the money then if they haven't taken out a CCJ against you the debt would be statute barred. This would mean that legally you do not have to repay the debt, and that they couldn't now enforce the debt against you by taking you to court (or if they tried you could defend against it because it is statute barred).

If you are in scotland then the rules are slightly different and its 5years not 6.

So it sounds like a lot of your debts might already be statute barred and you might not need to repay them. (Thats providing they don't already have CCJs).

Obviously things like the recent payday loan debts are not going to be statute barred but if some are then at least it more manageable to deal with the others.

maxheinze

As far as I'm aware there are no CCJs against me, I've managed thus far to obtain my Equifax credit reference, both callcredit and experian need me to send them proof of ID/address by post before I'll be able to access their reports, the Equifax report only shows a couple of outstanding defaults (mostly going back to 2008-9) but nothing at all more recent, would it be that my other debts would only be in the other reports?

maxheinze

I started to look into reclaiming charges on both old credit cards and bank accounts, would doing so on accounts that have been closed and passed on to collection be possible or is that gonna just open a can of worms?

debbie_debt

Hi

I think for now you need to put your efforts into tracking down what you owe and who to.

Firstly, work out your current finances. Do a statement of affairs and figure out how much you can put towards your debt repayments. This way, you know where you stand before you look into your debts and you know what you can afford to offer in the way of payments.

Second - get out as much old paperwork as you can find lying about/stuffed in drawers etc and go through it with a fine tooth comb. See what you can find out. Start with the most recent first and work backwards. And as they said above - if you've not acknowledged a debt in the last six years, don't pay a penny - it's statute barred and you're not obliged. Equally, this means don't try to reclaim anything from these companies either in the way of charges, as this means you're acknowledging it's your debt.

Third - you say you've tracked down a couple of debts from Equifax. Equifax should tell you how much they are and who you owe. Add these to your list of any debts you've found round the house. Add any debts the other credit reference agencies tell you about to this list too.

Next, go through your list. Figure out what your total debts are and compare this to the amount you firgured out at the start that you can afford to use to pay it off. Now you can start contacting all the companies and explain your situation. They're generally not monsters and will be sympathetic to hear you say you want to turn your situation around and are willing to start making payments. Even if you can only offer each company £10 each, it's more than they were getting before and so may be willing to make an agreement with you to stop any interest being added as long as you set up a direct debit to make regular monthly payments. But do aim to offer as much as you can.

AFTER you've done all this and you know you're in control of the situation, THEN you could start looking at any possible claim you may have for unfair charges etc. and use any money you get back to pay off more of the debts.

I hope this helps and good luck!! :beer:

Debbie