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Up_the_creek

Hi as you can see by my user name I am in dire straits with my current debts.
I owe £50,000 pounds over 5 creditors. MBNA, virgin money,Tesco bank and Santander credit cards and Sainsburys bank personal loan.
I have been making minimum payments to cc and am up to date with my loan payments but the interest is crippling me and the cc amounts are not going down. To date I have not missed payments but this month I cannot make even minimum repayments on 3 of the cards.....all of which are over my agreed credit amount.
Any advise gratefully received.

Former_StepChange_Rachel

Up_the_creek wrote: »

Hi as you can see by my user name I am in dire straits with my current debts.
I owe £50,000 pounds over 5 creditors. MBNA, virgin money,Tesco bank and Santander credit cards and Sainsburys bank personal loan.
I have been making minimum payments to cc and am up to date with my loan payments but the interest is crippling me and the cc amounts are not going down. To date I have not missed payments but this month I cannot make even minimum repayments on 3 of the cards.....all of which are over my agreed credit amount.
Any advise gratefully received.

Hi there, thanks for posting.

I’m so sorry that you’ve been having a tough time dealing with this debt but I’m glad you’ve posted about it as I feel it’s something we can certainly help you with.

The scenario you’ve described is pretty common. Many people find themselves in situations where the debt they’re dealing with is manageable for a time, but something can change or other expenses slowly creep up and things can quickly become overwhelming.

I think it would be a good idea for you to get in touch with us. We can take a look at your situation and give you some free and confidential advice on the kind of debt solutions that may be available. In order to do this, we’ll need to take a look at your budget. It’s really important that we prioritise your living costs and household bills if we’re to help you determine the best course of action on your debts.

There’s two ways you can go through your budget with us:

Our online advice tool Debt Remedy can help you put together a solution in around 20 minutes: http://www.stepchange.org/Debtremedy.aspx

Alternatively, you can speak to one of our advisors about your situation. Visit our contact us page to find out more: http://www.stepchange.org/Contactus.aspx


I hope this helps

Kind regards

Rachel

Catakiller

I have a CCJ soon to reach the 6 years mark, but it is unpaid.

would it be best to pay it off or wait for it to run out and see what happens to my credit score? it's the only negative factor on my score but it seems to be doing a fair bit of damage haha

any help welcome thank you!

StepChange_Jen

Catakiller wrote: »

I have a CCJ soon to reach the 6 years mark, but it is unpaid.

would it be best to pay it off or wait for it to run out and see what happens to my credit score? it's the only negative factor on my score but it seems to be doing a fair bit of damage haha

any help welcome thank you!

Hi there,

Thanks for posting.

As a charity, we’d always encourage you to deal with your debts. If this is something you’d like help with, we can offer you free and impartial advice. Just give our Helpline a call and have a chat with one of our advisors about your situation: http://www.stepchange.org/Contactus.aspx

Although the CCJ may no longer appear on your credit file after six years, the debt, and the CCJ will still be outstanding until it's repaid.

If you ignore a CCJ, it could lead to further action from your creditors to get you to repay the debt. We’ve got more information
about this on our website here:

http://www.stepchange.org/Debtinformationandadvice/Whatyourcreditorscando/Courtaction/EnglandWalescourtaction/CCJ/CantpayaCCJ.aspx

If you have any more questions please let us know.

Kind regards,

Jen

SW132

So i've recently discovered my partner has an overdraft of £2200+ that she has been in for a few years without any attempt to pay it off and the monthly fees/charges now total around £100/month.
I'm trying to help her sort this out and just have a few questions.
Would it be better off to get a new loan to pay this off to avoid the ridiculous charges? Could i ask the bank to freeze the interest as my partner has been through financial hardship.
I've tried looking at 0% balance transfers however due to her low credit rating none were available so is there anything else that could help the situation?
Appreciate any help,
Many thanks.

StepChange_James

SW132 wrote: »

So i've recently discovered my partner has an overdraft of £2200+ that she has been in for a few years without any attempt to pay it off and the monthly fees/charges now total around £100/month.
I'm trying to help her sort this out and just have a few questions.
Would it be better off to get a new loan to pay this off to avoid the ridiculous charges? Could i ask the bank to freeze the interest as my partner has been through financial hardship.
I've tried looking at 0% balance transfers however due to her low credit rating none were available so is there anything else that could help the situation?
Appreciate any help,
Many thanks.

Hi there,

There's no harm in asking the bank if they'll freeze interest and charges but they may not be willing to accept this kind of proposal. If there are any charges that seem excessive or unfair then she could also ask for those charges to be refunded.

£100 a month seems like a lot of money, so it may be worth seeing how these charges are calculated. It may be that some of the penalty charges can be avoided by agreeing installments with the bank to bring the overdraft down.

I would recommend that your partner considers changing bank accounts to a bank where she doesn't owe any money. This helps to separate the debt from her day to day income and outgoings, which tends to make it easier to treat an overdraft like other debt and make regular payments.

I'm not sure if a loan to pay off the overdraft would be a good idae. I'd strongly recommend she plans a realistic budget for herself and talks to the bank about the overdraft before looking at taking out new credit.

We speak to a lot of people that take out loans to pay off debts but end up deeper in debt, so it's important to always be cautious.

Your partner might find it useful to us our Debt Remedy tool: http://www.stepchange.org/DebtRemedy.aspx. It will help her plan a budget and work out what she can afford to pay towards this debt.

Kind regards

James

rothschild1st

I have been in debt for several years.

Credit Cards £ -10.000 +

And much more!

Is there, any way of, to get credit through setting up (register) with HMRC Sole Trader and/ or Ltd company and get new bank accounts?

Many thanks

Nathan
nathanrothschild1st@gmail.com

Melangell1

I recently checked my credit score on Clearscore and found that they have a Bankruptcy registered against my name. I have had a Debt Relief Order, some years ago now, but never a bankruptcy. To the best of my knowledge one cannot have been declared bankrupt without having applied (or somene else having applied) to make one bankrupt and it would not be something one was unaware of, am I wrong? I contacted Equifax through Clearscore and they immediately closed the query without addressing this error. What can I do?

dethmart

Hello ,good evening.
I hope I am in the right place?
I was on facebook earlier this evening when I came across a post from a guy about how if you are paying a debt through the Debt Collection agency Lowell you can Write to them asking for them to prove that it is your debt and that they can not prove it and you can basically get the debt written off. At the time of finding this link to another web site to further explain the ways to do this, I was in the middle of other things however when I went back to the original post it had been taken down and now I can't find the links or any other info (its not even showing in my history)..


Is this a genuine way to write off some debt or is a hoax. Does anybody any more info?


Thanks in advance

Former_StepChange_Rory

Melangell1 wrote: »

I recently checked my credit score on Clearscore and found that they have a Bankruptcy registered against my name. I have had a Debt Relief Order, some years ago now, but never a bankruptcy. To the best of my knowledge one cannot have been declared bankrupt without having applied (or somene else having applied) to make one bankrupt and it would not be something one was unaware of, am I wrong? I contacted Equifax through Clearscore and they immediately closed the query without addressing this error. What can I do?

Hi there,

This is an unusual situation. Like bankruptcy, a debt relief order (DRO) is a type of insolvency but should be registered on your credit file as a DRO. Do the dates match up to the DRO you had a few years back? If so this might explain the situation, otherwise it sounds like it could be an error on your credit file.

If the credit file needs correcting, perhaps try and contact Equifax through Clearscore again. There are three credit reference agencies so you might have more success with this by trying to contact the others (Experian and Call Credit). Noddle uses data from Call Credit and is also free, so that could help.

It's the responsibility of the credit reference agencies to update this information in these situations, but you could also try and contact the Insolvency Service to see if there's anything they can do but I'm not sure if they'll be able to change the entry.

I hope this helps,

Rory