Debt free wannabe advice needed

yoshiyella

Hello,

Thank you in advance for any help that you may give me.

As you will have gathered I am in debt - approximately £17,000. I am only paying back on one (HP) loan at £90 a month with £4400 outstanding and have just finished paying off a loan with the same company. I did have a payment plans set up with a few of my debts but things happened and I had to renegade on my offers. Of course now (older and wiser) I want to pay off (not run away or cry statued barred) my debts.

The situation was that after university I had a few debts (some through my own stupidty and some through illness) which I had just about got back into order (CCJ's just falling off) when in May 2009 I had a car accident with only 2 weeks to go of my teacher training. Due to this I had no income from 1st June 2009 until 28th February 2010 and I had no savings, no overdrafts, no credit cards to fall back on and I was told I was ineligible to apply for any form of benefits and so as you can imagine with not having any income for 8 full months my debts became worse and even when I started to earn my debts continued to pile up as with getting a new job in a new area, rent and living for a month before pay took its toll (and stupidly so did payday loans).

The good news though is I have a secured captial one credit card (which I have been assured is like having a credit card on your credit file) and was accepted for a pay monthly phone contract (again having been assured this will help my credit file).

My real question I suppose is what to do - DMP (can't afford too much and my debts are to about 15 creditors with small amounts but all seem to want a minimum of £30-40 a month), an IVA or Bankruptcy but I thought the last two would be worst case especially as I now have a credit card (albeit secured) and a pay monthly credit card.

Any advice is most helpful. Oh, I am currently a teacher on £25,000 a year but am looking for a new job which would mean from January I will be on £29,000 a year as well as most likely saving £120 a month in transport costs.

Again thank you to anyone who can give me some much needed advice.

Mach4

Hi Yoshiyella.

You need to post an SOA if you can.

How sure are you on the amount of your debt? As you havent been paying this may have spiralled.

If it is £17K it should be possible for you to manage this on your salary without the need for any form of insolvency (this assumes you are single childless and are willing to make some sacrifices with your expenditure to fix this).

Paul

yoshiyella

Mach4 wrote: »

Hi Yoshiyella.

You need to post an SOA if you can.

How sure are you on the amount of your debt? As you havent been paying this may have spiralled.

If it is £17K it should be possible for you to manage this on your salary without the need for any form of insolvency (this assumes you are single childless and are willing to make some sacrifices with your expenditure to fix this).

Paul

Hi Paul,

Thanks for replying!
How do I post a SOA? And if I am honest I am not sure (in fact I am hoping the £17K is more than I owe)

Thanks again
Simon

Mach4

Simon,

Try this link

http://makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

select format for mse.

To do this you will need to look into exactly how much you owe.

Where are you with the debts? Are debt collectors chasing, any ccjs?

You should check your credit file see if your on defaults. Experian do a free trial

yoshiyella

Mach4 wrote: »

Simon,

Try this link



select format for mse.

To do this you will need to look into exactly how much you owe.

Where are you with the debts? Are debt collectors chasing, any ccjs?

You should check your credit file see if your on defaults. Experian do a free trial

I will request my credit files from the three agencies and then will post a SOA.

Thank you for the help thus far

Mach4

yoshiyella wrote: »

I will request my credit files from the three agencies and then will post a SOA.

Thank you for the help thus far

Your welcome, good luck!

ellesbellesxxx

Just to say, as a Teacher, if you sign up for www.schoolzone.co.uk they do surveys (£2 a time!) focus groups and paid projects - all adds up!

mildredalien

You can write to creditors and offer as little as £1 a month for the time being while you get things sorted out.

If you can complete an SOA and work out how much you actually have to split between your creditors, you can then explain to them why you are offering them a certain amount (generally it gets split as a proportion of your total debt). So for example a creditor who you owe 20% of your total debt to gets 20% of your total repayment pot. You could self manage this, or get some help from a free charity/company to sort it out for you.

Good luck!