DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 8

Time_to_face_the_music

Alice_in_Welfareland wrote: »

I think that Stepchange's budget is considerably lower than the official trigger figures. As an example Stepchange allows £341 for food, toiletries and cleaning materials for a couple. Northeast Derbyshire DMP allows £505 and I understand their allowances are from the CFS.

£505? Is that for real? Imagine how much wine I could buy!

Apologies for flippancy but I am a tad gobsmacked. How can there possibly be such a difference? Is it the same in other areas of the budget?

Hopelessly_Hopeful

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

It means Shut Up, Move On. It comes from Paul McGee who is a life coach and it's also a title of his best selling book. It's all about a philosophy for dealing with life and its challenges. My OH who is into NLP, CBT and Mindfulness thinks it's the bees knees.

The 6 principles are:

1. Change Your T–Shirt – take responsibility for where you find yourself inlife. Being proactive not passive.

2. Develop Fruity Thinking – The impact and importance of attitude and mindset.

3. Hippo Time is OK – Managing your emotions and developing resilience under pressure.

4. Remember the Beachball – Building better relationships with customers and colleagues.

5. Learn Latin – How to overcome procrastination and take positive action.

6. Ditch Doris Day – Forget 'whatever will be, will be′ take action to create the future you want.

It's actually very applicable to debt and debt management as well as business and life in general

Sounds like a good book, might have to check it out.

I can probably skip the second point, ooh hang on, just read the second half of that sentance, perhaps I need to read it afterall. lol

HHx

Hopelessly_Hopeful

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

£505? Is that for real? Imagine how much wine I could buy!

Apologies for flippancy but I am a tad gobsmacked. How can there possibly be such a difference? Is it the same in other areas of the budget?

If you went with debtline £511 you'd be even better off!

http://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk/england_wales/pdf/self-help-pack/step-2-working-out-your-personal-budget.pdf

HHx

Time_to_face_the_music

Hopelessly_Hopeful wrote: »

Sounds like a good book, might have to check it out.

I can probably skip the second point, ooh hang on, just read the second half of that sentance, perhaps I need to read it afterall. lol

HHx

I thought it was a waste of space until I picked it up from OH's book pile (one of many) one day. I have actually used loads of the techniques in work and with debts.

Fruity thinking? you? Never! :rotfl:

Time_to_face_the_music

Hopelessly_Hopeful wrote: »

If you went with debtline £511 you'd be even better off!

http://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk/england_wales/pdf/self-help-pack/step-2-working-out-your-personal-budget.pdf

HHx

Are these all from official sources? I actually spoke to CCCS or StepChange (I keep forgetting that) this week and they told me that the maximum housekeeping budget for a couple is £341.

How can there be such a discrepancy?

By the way, have you seen StepChanges TV advert? I haven't because I never watch adverts but am told it was directed by Ridley Scott :eek:

Standing in front of the firing range here and fully expecting backlash left, right and centre but I have to ask how much did this rebranding exercise cost? And why?

Hopelessly_Hopeful

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

Are these all from official sources? I actually spoke to CCCS or StepChange (I keep forgetting that) this week and they told me that the maximum housekeeping budget for a couple is £341.

How can there be such a discrepancy?

By the way, have you seen StepChanges TV advert? I haven't because I never watch adverts but am told it was directed by Ridley Scott :eek:

Standing in front of the firing range here and fully expecting backlash left, right and centre but I have to ask how much did this rebranding exercise cost? And why?

Yup on debtline website. Seen CCCS 2011 one and its much lower

HHx

Digitalscooby

All of a sudden I feel totally fed up. On a DMP with Stepchange and just coming up to completing our 3rd year.

I could cry when I look at how much debt we racked up.I honestly didnt have a clue at the beginning and my LB moment was a huge shock. It added up to over 100k with all the messing about and charges and interest added at the beginning. I am feeling a great amount of responsibility and regret for getting into the mess we were in especially when I compare our debt with the many posted on here. I know it's relative but I feel ashamed..

At least 2/3rds through the plan now and we have paid off over £60k (sixty thousand pounds!!) and have never missed a payment although sometimes it has been a big struggle.

I suppose it's a deep breath and keep our heads down and I know I should feel positive but for some reason I dont :-(

It's lovely to see the support give on this website - you guys and gals do a brilliant job. I cant help but look with envy at those coming to the end of their journey and soooo wish it was me :-)

DS

Allypops

It's only natural to feel down at times. I also feel that January, after all the frivolity and build up to Christmas and new year can feel a bit flat.

Our debts when entering the DMP were £80k and I try not to think about what I could do with that money now- let alone the various remortgagings over the years for which we seem to have nothing to show for!

Having said that you are way ahead of us in making inroads into the debts so while you may be envious of those nearing the end of the DMPs, I have to confess I'm a little envious of where you are now and just hope that we can keep going.
Remember you will have learnt various lessons in budgeting, saving etc. so the future will be very different. You're over half way, chin-up and keep on plodding - you'll get there!

Time_to_face_the_music

Digitalscooby wrote: »

All of a sudden I feel totally fed up. On a DMP with Stepchange and just coming up to completing our 3rd year.

I could cry when I look at how much debt we racked up.I honestly didnt have a clue at the beginning and my LB moment was a huge shock. It added up to over 100k with all the messing about and charges and interest added at the beginning. I am feeling a great amount of responsibility and regret for getting into the mess we were in especially when I compare our debt with the many posted on here. I know it's relative but I feel ashamed..

At least 2/3rds through the plan now and we have paid off over £60k (sixty thousand pounds!!) and have never missed a payment although sometimes it has been a big struggle.

I suppose it's a deep breath and keep our heads down and I know I should feel positive but for some reason I dont :-(

It's lovely to see the support give on this website - you guys and gals do a brilliant job. I cant help but look with envy at those coming to the end of their journey and soooo wish it was me :-)

DS

Hi Digitalscooby :hello:

I remember "talking" to you some time ago about problems with Lloyds TSB and I then went back to read your other posts here and it's still fresh in my mind how helpful you were to me and many other people :A

You have paid back a phenomenal amount of money in such a short time and must have made a lot of sacrifices to do so. We are just coming up to the end of year one and hope to have paid back 25% of our debt and we know this is a great achievement but we are feeling down in the dumps about it too. So I have to agree with Allypops, that maybe it's the long month, post Christmas, January blues all around

So much in this post and previous posts of yours rings true with me but I never feel ashamed of our debt, I feel proud that we are dealing with it. I still fight the creditors and am currently at battle again with the "baddies" Lloyds TSB. I don't win every battle but I give it my best shot and we will win the war in the end, our own personal war against debt! :j

Time_to_face_the_music

I wanted to find this post from Digitalscooby, which is full of great advice and is as relevant today as when it was first posted, long before I came here:

Digitalscooby wrote: »

DMP - what I have learned so far.....

Very close to setting up the dmp now(fingers crossed) with CCCS. For those of you considering the same route hereare a few lessons I have learned so far (nb: others may disagree but this ispurely based on my own experience):

1. If you are pretty certain you qualify for a DMP (plenty of FAQs to guideyou) go straight to CCCS or Payplan DO NOT go through the National Debtlineprocess. ND are lovely people and they helped me a lot but as far as I can see,going through them has simply held up things for a couple of weeks. I rangthem, went through the figures, they wrote to me, went through the figuresagain (my query), I sent back the dmp pack, they rang me and went through thefigures yet again. They wrote to me again with a form and a list of things tosend to CCCS and said CCCS would ring me to go through the figures yet again!

I misunderstood that the tight budget agreed with ND would simply be acceptedby CCCS but apparently not - CCCS will conduct their own separate review.

2. DO NOT AVOID YOUR CREDITORS. Answer the phone and tell them what you aredoing at the very least. All my creditors have been pleasant and as soon as youmention a DMP with CCCS they are much more understanding. Most will suspendcalls for at least a couple of weeks to give you time to sort things out. I didhave one who rang me 3 days running but I simply said if they didn't listen towhat I was telling them then I would refuse to answer the phone. I have alsohad 2 calls in work. I hung up, went into a quite room called them back, anddemanded they remove my work number. I double checked they had the correct homenumber and said I had no problem with them ringing me at home that but under nocircumstances must they ring me at work. Those calls have stopped.

Talk to them in the early stages - they see lots of people in the same positionand are geared up to speak to you.

3. Creditors will listen to you but until you have a formal reference number(in my case still waiting from CCCS) they will explain that they will continueto add interest and penalties and they will continue to call you. That is evenwith a holding letter and token payment. The reference number is the key. Mostcreditors have told me they will treat me differently when they have the numberbecause they have some people using setting up a dmp as an excuse to delaypayments (the dmp sometimes never materialises).

4. Open a new basic account now....even if you are simply thinking about a dmp.It's free and easy to do (I did mine online with RBS). When you have done itthen as soon as you possibly can get access online to your account and at leastset up the ability to create Standing Orders. It makes the whole process oftransferring and monitoring payments much easier. When you ring your prioritydebtors to change bank details some will do it there and then on the phone.Others will send you a form and it can take 2 or more weeks in thos cases.

5. Get letters and token payments to your creditors as soon as you can. I usedpostal orders. They are much more ameniable when you say you have sent them apayment (however small).

6. Be prepared for 2 dozen questions at the Post Office!!! Why do you want 13POs? You do realise we charge for them? Don't you have a chequebook? Who arethey for - there are other ways to pay people! (Actually she was lovely in theend and we chatted about caravans for the 25 mins it took to print them out:-))

7. Be prepared for huge mood swings (or is that just me) but whatever you do -KEEP MOMENTUM - do something every day. If it all seems too much break it downinto chunks and make a list and keep going.

8. Keep reading this forum and keep believing that things have to get better.

Cheers and good luck for 2010

DS