No job and a big heap of debt!

ve_vibe

Ok i will try make it brief so i don't bore people so hear are a few facts to my situation.
1 bank loan 16k balance.
2 credit card 11k balance.
3 credit card 7k balance.
4 o/d 3k ( up to limit)
As i type this i have a fantastic credit rating and have never defaulted on any payment for anything in my life.
Unfortunately i have been out of work for 4 months and my savings are about to run out.
I pay a total of 900 a month out on my loan (400) and 2 credit cards ( 250 each).
Is there any way to reduce this £900 a month to something like £150 just until i find employment again without using a 3rd party and without actually defaulting eg : By talking to my debtors direct ?
I have a mortgage and could just sustain paying that and all my bill for a while but not with my £900 outgoings on my debts.
Regards Steve.
P.s my loan is unsucured.

HappyMJ

ve_vibe wrote: »

Ok i will try make it brief so i don't bore people so hear are a few facts to my situation.
1 bank loan 16k balance.
2 credit card 11k balance.
3 credit card 7k balance.
4 o/d 3k ( up to limit)
As i type this i have a fantastic credit rating and have never defaulted on any payment for anything in my life.
Unfortunately i have been out of work for 4 months and my savings are about to run out.
I pay a total of 900 a month out on my loan (400) and 2 credit cards ( 250 each).
Is there any way to reduce this £900 a month to something like £150 just until i find employment again without using a 3rd party and without actually defaulting eg : By talking to my debtors direct ?
I have a mortgage and could just sustain paying that and all my bill for a while but not with my £900 outgoings on my debts.
Regards Steve.
P.s my loan is unsucured.

As you are unemployed you will only have probably £71 a week income and will have to choose to pay only £1 per month towards each of your debts until you have a job again. This will of course destroy your credit rating. The only way to pay less even if just a few pounds less is to go into default. Even if you do this for a few months you might get a few late payment markers but continued unemployment and non payment will cause defaults to occur. The £1 payments acknowledge that the debt still exists and is less likely for the creditor to take court action in the short term.

DS4215

With that level of outgoing and no job, you are going to default sooner or later whether you want to or not. Even if you found a job tomorrow it could be two months before you get a wage. You might not want to default, and talking to the companies could help.

You might also want to consider talking to CCCS or CAB to get advice now - you might not get a job for weeks/months and in the worse case years. Or get one with a much lower wage. In either of those situations you are only delaying the inevitable.

Idiophreak

Have you thought about talking to your mortgage provider and seeing if they could give you a break for a couple of months?

ve_vibe

It does seem a shame you have to default on payments before you can drastically reduce the cost of payments, i do realise i could be out of work for a while but it would be nice to be able to reduce the payments for say 6 months.
I am not signing on and without my £900 a month debt commitment have enough money to survive for 6 months paying the mortgage and bills.
I Will be in employment by then even if it means a substantial drop in income to tide me over.
Thank you for the replies .

HappyMJ

ve_vibe wrote: »

It does seem a shame you have to default on payments before you can drastically reduce the cost of payments, i do realise i could be out of work for a while but it would be nice to be able to reduce the payments for say 6 months.
I am not signing on and without my £900 a month debt commitment have enough money to survive for 6 months paying the mortgage and bills.
I Will be in employment by then even if it means a substantial drop in income to tide me over.
Thank you for the replies .

Why are you not signing on? You should sign on to get more help not only with the £71 a week contributions based jsa but also with other help in looking for work. You have paid national insurance contributions are are entitled to 6 months of benefits with little condition apart from just looking for work which you are already doing. You will not be forced onto any job programs whilst on contributions based benefits if that is what you are worried about. Signing on and having a jobseeker card will show to your creditors that you are genuinely out of employment and looking for work it may help them reduce the repayments. They will put you in default at some point though.

You should at the very least sign on for national insurance contributions.

OneLife_OneShot

HappyMJ wrote: »

Why are you not signing on? You should sign on to get more help not only with the £71 a week contributions based jsa but also with other help in looking for work. You have paid national insurance contributions are are entitled to 6 months of benefits with little condition apart from just looking for work which you are already doing. You will not be forced onto any job programs whilst on contributions based benefits if that is what you are worried about. Signing on and having a jobseeker card will show to your creditors that you are genuinely out of employment and looking for work it may help them reduce the repayments. They will put you in default at some point though.

You should at the very least sign on for national insurance contributions.

What this person said, its a great way to prove your unemployed if they think you are trying to not pay what they want you to, all they need to do is run National Insurance number checks.

chappers

Idiophreak wrote: »

Have you thought about talking to your mortgage provider and seeing if they could give you a break for a couple of months?

or switch to interest only

ve_vibe

Ok folks, finally got round to ringing CCCS today and explaining my predicament. To summarize i have gone from earning 30k a year for the last 8 years as a sub contractor, self trader, joiner, getting paid every week to struggling for work.
Over the last 12 months ( April to April) i have only earned 12k .... Ten of witch was earned in 3 months and the other 2k over the remaining 9 months so payments are very sporadic and impossible to predict until i can get full time employment or long term contract work again.
I have all the relevant documentation to read and digest from the CCCS and the generic letter i need to fill in and send off to my creditors.
It would seem the only option for my situation is to take the token gesture payment option and offer £1 a month until i get back in full time work .
After looking at the simple generic letter i need to send from the CCCS i just wondered if it would be worth me adding a little depth to it, my reasoning being i have been with this bank for 25 years and have had 5 mortgages/5 loans/2 credit cards and payed 1000s of pounds into the bank on a regular basis and never been out of work nor defaulted on any debt.