DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 8

Tigsmom

donniet wrote: »

The last 6 years have been a pretty hard slog - paying debts of more than £40,000 via a DMP with Pay Plan (thanks for your contribution Mr Ex-hubby - much appreciated !! ). Still faced several more years of the same ....... but with a strange twist of fate have just been made redundant from the NHS. This could be considered a negative - other than it has given me the funds to completely clear the remaining debts ...... and I have managed to secure an even better job immediately meaning any remaining redundancy money will be a small nest egg :-)
It's a wonderful feeling ....... to be completely debt free for the first time in almost a decade. Add to that a divorce & a new career ..... I can see why they say life begins at 40 !! Thank you 2012 :-)

Hard lessons - tough times ..... but if I can get there - even with a little bit of luck - so can everyone else :-) All the best my fellow DMP'ers' ...... the advice given on this forum kept me going xx

Good for you. All the best for the future.

tricky_plus

Bleachbird wrote: »

Just a quick question for you knowledgable lot! Do you keep all of the letters from your creditors after going into dmp i.e pressurising ones and the like? or do you shred? Thinking its only good to keep the statements and any default ones to keep track or am i missing something? not had any yet so want to know what to do as I think it will be horrid to get them- initally anyway-!
bbx

Keep every scrap of paper they send you, never know when you might need to refer back to it and once you are finally confident everything is settled, you can have a bl**dy massive bonfire with it all and party the night away!!!

Growurown

Tigsmom wrote: »

That sounds very similar to my current system so I must be doing something right!

I think maybe I need another bank account though for non dd payments. Either that or draw the cash out. This month we have left it in and used the card but I am struggling to keep track so next month I might try the envelopes.

I think in our case putting it into another account is better because if we had the cash in the house we would be tempted to spend it. I only want to have cash around for the petrol and housekeeping/food then when it is gone I have no option (hopefully) other than to go without or make do.

I also calculate on my spread sheet whether I am over or under spent on the amounts we have given CCCS. Most of it is pretty straightforward. The DD's and SO's are the same every month and we pay all our bills monthly if we can. The 'flexible' budgets are the problem and in our case the worst one is the house keeping.

win123

I am desperate for some advice please

I currently have a mortgage with the Halifax at 106K paying 730 per month as i am fixed in a high interest rate it is due do come down at the end of October to about 630 per month which is still going to be a struggle - I am currently on a DMP for the next 20yrs I know my fault but the CCCS have been great re this and without them i dont know where I would be - Anyway as my mortgage deal is coming to an end at the end of October I was just wondering where to go and get advice from as I need to find a new deal and I have heard that if you are on a DMP that you cant get any good deals is this true? if this is true any advice on which banks etc will take you on with a dmp - I have never missed a mortgage payment and just want to reduce my mortgage payments so i can pay more to my DMP - Such a worry any advice would be great thanks

Tigsmom

win123 wrote: »

I am desperate for some advice please

I currently have a mortgage with the Halifax at 106K paying 730 per month as i am fixed in a high interest rate it is due do come down at the end of October to about 630 per month which is still going to be a struggle - I am currently on a DMP for the next 20yrs I know my fault but the CCCS have been great re this and without them i dont know where I would be - Anyway as my mortgage deal is coming to an end at the end of October I was just wondering where to go and get advice from as I need to find a new deal and I have heard that if you are on a DMP that you cant get any good deals is this true? if this is true any advice on which banks etc will take you on with a dmp - I have never missed a mortgage payment and just want to reduce my mortgage payments so i can pay more to my DMP - Such a worry any advice would be great thanks

Why do you need a new deal? Your payments will reduce by £100 anyway and any increase can be accounted for by adjusting your dmp. I paid arounf the same in a fixed rate for mine and when it ended I panicked but we are paying £150 less now than on the fixed rate.

Have a look back on previous post in this thread. Someone recently asked the same question and got lots of advice which might help you if you feel you really need to get another fixed rate but I'm not so sure you will save anything as you will probably have to pay a higher rate.

Tigsmom

Bleachbird wrote: »

Well, (deep breath) cccs dmp agreement posted recorded delivery and nearly there with sending token payments out.:)
No co op bank account details yet so have spoken to cccs and they said to post everything to them anyway so they can get started and to send in the direct debit mandate when the co op give me the account info. So am leaving off sending token payment to HSBC as its where i bank and have a cc debt with so dont want them to take all of my pay next month if I dont have time to move current accounts before then......
Got a letter from NRAM this morning telling them that HSBC have told them I have cancelled their direct debit and to set it up again before paymeny is due on the 5th sept. The cheek of it - havent even missed a payment yet!!! Well £1 will have to do am afraid.
So its all go at the moment and am looking forward to when this messy bit is over and I can start posting my sig updates and living life dreaming of the day its all over :j
Many thanks to Grand Benders whose letter to creditors I nicked off her!!

Well done. It's like deja vue for me reading your posts. Your letter from NRAM is a standard one. I got similar ones from my creditors. My bank account was HSBC with a CC too. Everyone is different but they hounded me with calls for 2-3 weeks after my first token payment. I left the answer machine on, didn't answer and logged the numbers and times of the calls. Once my last payment had gone into my new account I let CCCS know, they wrote to HSBC the next day and the calls stopped. I still haven't had anything in writing from them (apart from default notices) but I have written to them twice and so have CCCS so hopefully I will get something soon.

Hang in there. You're going through the tricky bit. It gets better.

Tigsmom

Latest update. Barclaycard have sent a letter saying they've accepted our CCCS payments, withdrawn the charges, will only write to us and will send us monthly paper statements from now on. Hurray!

Slight niggle, they are still charging interest at 6%.

I know it's a much reduced rate but is it worth writing and asking them if they would reconsider charging interest at all? We owe £3.3k. Has anyone managed to get them to remove interest on a similar amount?

Tigsmom

Growurown wrote: »

I think in our case putting it into another account is better because if we had the cash in the house we would be tempted to spend it. I only want to have cash around for the petrol and housekeeping/food then when it is gone I have no option (hopefully) other than to go without or make do.

I also calculate on my spread sheet whether I am over or under spent on the amounts we have given CCCS. Most of it is pretty straightforward. The DD's and SO's are the same every month and we pay all our bills monthly if we can. The 'flexible' budgets are the problem and in our case the worst one is the house keeping.

Oh that sounds so like me! We are actually managing to keep within the food budget at the moment but that doen't stop me freaking out everytime we need a loaf of bread!:rotfl:
I also feel bad because I do a disappearing act everytime there's an 'collection' for someone at work.:o
I think I will feel a lot better once we have managed to build an emergency fund up a bit.

Growurown

Tigsmom wrote: »

Latest update. Barclaycard have sent a letter saying they've accepted our CCCS payments, withdrawn the charges, will only write to us and will send us monthly paper statements from now on. Hurray!

Slight niggle, they are still charging interest at 6%.

I know it's a much reduced rate but is it worth writing and asking them if they would reconsider charging interest at all? We owe £3.3k. Has anyone managed to get them to remove interest on a similar amount?

I'm having a similar problem with Halifax. Going to write to them again and maybe put in a complaint if we aren't successful. I haven't got a Barclaycard so can't help with that one, but it is always worth asking.

Tigsmom wrote: »

Oh that sounds so like me! We are actually managing to keep within the food budget at the moment but that doen't stop me freaking out everytime we need a loaf of bread!:rotfl:
I also feel bad because I do a disappearing act everytime there's an 'collection' for someone at work.:o
I think I will feel a lot better once we have managed to build an emergency fund up a bit.

Yes collections at work are a pain, fortunately I am in a small office so not too many people! I am currently paying my council tax over 10 months and intend to put the other two months payment into a savings pot next year. We had a large repair bill for the car this year and had to reduce our CCCS payment (only for one month) and we got some hassle from creditors because we had broken our agreement. It got sorted but it would be better not to do it again if we can help it.

Tigsmom

Growurown wrote: »

Yes collections at work are a pain, fortunately I am in a small office so not too many people! I am currently paying my council tax over 10 months and intend to put the other two months payment into a savings pot next year. We had a large repair bill for the car this year and had to reduce our CCCS payment (only for one month) and we got some hassle from creditors because we had broken our agreement. It got sorted but it would be better not to do it again if we can help it.

There are only about 10 people at my work, doing different shifts so I don't often see them as I only work weekends. I find that's more of a problem because we are asked to donate a higher amount to buy something decent! I've only been there two years but in that time 6 people have either left, been sacked or transferred.

I was hoping to save our 2 months council tax payment holiday too but when I opened my new account they took that long transferring the dd that they had to change it to a reduced amount over an extra month. I still get one month free and I'm paying a little less now but that will no doubt just disappear!

Bad news about your car. 17 days to our MOT (same day as ds birthday ). Fingers crossed it will pass but if not it will have to sit on the drive until we can afford to fix it. At the moment we only use it a couple of times a week but we might need it more in winter. Hoping not using it has preserved it enough to get a pass!