Advice please

room512

We have some debts on catalogues which my brother is going to pay off for us. Do I see if I can get the amounts reduced or just pay what the statements say (as we're going to clear them)? Obviously morally I know I should pay the whole amount but ...One of the catalogues is with a debt management agency, the rest are just in default at the moment.

kerinat

if you have a dmp with an agency if you order something that is on your dmp the dmp could cancel your dmp. I would contact the agency and let them know and pay it off as you may give yourself more problems. good luck

room512

Oops maybe I used the wrong term (sorry am new to all of this!). We're not on a debt management plan with anyone, the catalogue that we owe the money to has passed it on to a different company to recover the debt. Not sure what they're called.

sistafromanothermista

I would pay what's owed personally.

FireWyrm

How old is the debt and how much interest have you paid over the lifetime of the loan?

Morally speaking, I suspect you know full well you should just pay the full amount and be done with it. However, catalogues are notorious for charging extortionate amounts of interest as well which often far out weighs the original debt.

I'm not saying that you should or even that they would allow you a rwduced settlement, but it's an option I might consider if I had other creditors to service as well and the money was available.

room512

The debt has been rising for years (but we were paying the minimum repayment, so I think have only missed 3 repayments - with hindsight can see how silly that was, we should have paid more and not had credit) and the APR is 39.9% on a balance of £2286.43! Been talking to the other half and have agreed that we got into the mess and we shouldn't try and rip people off so we will just pay the full amounts. Well my bro will on a 0% card and then we can pay him the monthly repayments instead. Even if we don't get it paid off in the interest free part then the APR of the card is far less than 39.9%. My brother has sorted out our monthly budget and we will throw all our spare cash at our debts and then they will be gone and I can sleep at night again!
If only we'd had the LB moment a few years ago!

sistafromanothermista

Join the club room512

room512

Thank you! Been following everyone's stories and they're inspiring! Once we've got our plan in place I'm looking forward to adding our debt to our signature and then watching it come down!

sistafromanothermista

That's the thing that inspires me to keep ploughing on tbh. Just seeing it come down by a fiver makes me