About to retire ... but in DEBT

lonely_2

I think the response to TTMC was very harsh considering he was trying to help. I have no experience of his previous posts but his advice was sound, if only reflective of one option available to Barnaby.

Barnaby, with an IVA you can often do something called a full and final settlement. Creditors will give due consideration to this if you can afford to do it using the equity in your property. If you could afford to downsize your property or move to a cheaper area, this may be an ideal solution. With a full and final settlement you usually pay a reduced amount of your total debt (from what I've heard anything between 40-70%). There is another forum where you will get plenty of free impartial advice on this - https://www.iva.co.uk.

In terms of a debt management plan, have you tried Payplan? They do exactly the same thing as the CCCS (and are also free). But they can also offer IVAs, so going through your finances with them, they can make an objective evaluation about the best course of action for you.

Good luck.

katecheshire

Does anyone know it it is too late to act on mis-sold endowments? I wonder why Barnaby has an endowment which (even if performing well) would not mature until well after his expected retirement date?

dancingfairy

Sorry I don't have any advice at the moment but want to wish you the best of luck with it all. If you post an SOA we'll see if we can shave any money off your bill ie food shopping/gas/electric/insurance/ bank charges for services you don't use etc and see if we can pay down your debt faster.
How much are you paying off your debt at the moment per year?

Barnaby

Thanks everyone there's quite a lot to digest there.
I'm going to print this all out set up a matrix and try and steer a sensible way forward as painful as that might be.
I'll add SouthernScouser's post to this too
If you all don't mind I'll present my plan for your comments and maybe some final tweaking before acting on it.

Thanks everyone for your time and trouble it really does help when your down that others stretch out a hand to help.

Keep it up people your offering a very valuable service.

keeperbear

TTMCMschine wrote: »

If you have been living in your property for a number of years then you will probably have built up a large amount of equity in it

The English seem to have a peculiar obsession with "owning" property (even though in most cases it is simply renting at exhorbitant rates from the bank)

You appear to contradict yourself. If you rent your landlord will built up the equity, and you will be paying his mortgage.

Totally disagree on your view about owning property. If the orginal poster had a mortgage free property, he would much better off in retirement. If you rent, you still have to pay rent once you retire. If you own with no mortgage, there is no rent to find during retirement. This is an issue that people need to think about when they think about retiring.

Barnaby

Not sure if this is the correct place for this except that it is linked to my problem.

In addition to the above I was given bad banking advice by Barclays.
When my debt had built up and I was incurring bank charges the advice I was given was to stop my standing orders etc
Unfortunately some of the items I shut down had been explained as insurance nothing else.
This was at a time when I was desperately trying to keep in credit etc and thought these were just extra insurance policies not linked to anything, I was not advised of their attachement to my mortgage.

Then several years later [2-3 years] I received a letter asking if I wanted to cash in this insurance.
It turns out when I went to do this there were 2 policies but that they were linked to my mortgage [endownment].
It was not until I went to cash them in that anybody at Barclays said anything.
Surely I should have been advised at the outset and warned of the consequences if I stopped the payments.
I was then told they could not be started up again.
The Woolwich Barclays advisor suggested that I complain but offered no help as to how.

Have any of you got any ideas on my best course of action, I am starting a claim for bank charges but this is something specific I think.

Thank you

eamon

Barnaby,

Can you be a little more defined on the "insurance premiums" that were not paid i.e. how were they linked to your endowments/mortgage? and insurance for what?

yours

Eamon

MUSTBEFUNNY_2

Hi Barnaby,

I have no advice for you I just wanted to give you a DFW hug:grouphug: Good Luck Mate.:money:

Barnaby

Mustbefunny - thanks for the hug - LoL

eamon - To be perfectly frank I am still not totally sure of the facts but as I understand it from Barclays bank in addition to my Mortgage I had to small endownment policies linked to my mortgage. I think they were on 2 loans which got added to my mortgage.

When I was in difficulties I was allowed to stop these without any warning of potential consequences.
The greater need may well have been to reduce outgoings but nobody from the bank warned me off.
It was't until some 2 years later that I got a letter asking what I wanted to do with the money acrued.
It was only when I tried to cash it in that I got warned it was attached to my mortgage. I then said why then was I allowed to stop these payment but basically got the shrugged shoulders. I also could not sart them up again either.

The Woolwhich Barclays mortage advisor said I should complain which is what I'm now trying to do.
I'm looking to see if it is worth it to complain and if so who to in the first instance, the manager of my branch, head office London, offbank if there is such a body etc.

Thanks

immoral_angeluk

I tend to agree with the above posts about liquidising your assets to clear your debt. I don't know if you were planning on the house being inheritance if you have children but it's worth mentioning that if that was your plan and the worst were to happen the house would be sold as your estate and the money used to pay any outstanding debt before any children were given a penny. So whether you sell or not its likely that the house would clear your debts anyway so you have to think of the hear and now and your upcoming retirement. Don't forget if you did rent you would be entitled to housing and council tax benefit, plus other benefits such as pensioners credit so it might be worth inputting the details as they would be when you retire into entitledto.co.uk and seeing what it comes up with to get an idea of what help you would recieve.
I'm sorry that you're finding yourself in this situation so close to retirement but I hope that you manage to sort something out.