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daveo73

Morning,

Not sure if I am doing this correctly, if not I apologise.

I owe £750 to a store card, £350 to a vanquis visa that had a limit of £150 so its getting worse. About £750 for a mobile phone bill from years ago that I was arguing that it shouldn't be that high but to no avail and another one for about £250. All told it is just over £2k. did have an arrangement with the Vanquis people but they wanted £48 minimum a month and i just couldn't manage.

I want to sort this out but am having difficulty and am very stressed. This may sound ridiculous but I am married and my wife does earn a good salary but our house is in her name and is her house ( even though my name is on the documents also) due to me having moved around lots and having a poor credit rating.

I earn £969 clear a month but give that to my wife to pay bills. We have 1 child and 1 on the way. We are actually -£25 each month hence the problem to pay.

The debt is my debt and although my wife knows about it and will do all she can, it is mine. It is all my fault and I need to do this for myself. I am hopeless with money and cannot manage it in any way,shape or form.

The companies with the phone bills have been offering 1 off payments but we have no savings and the monthly minimum payment they offer is too much.

Can anyone please help me.
Regards.

StepChange_James

freesoon wrote: »

Hello,

I set up a DMP which started this month. There is an account with a company called Cabot which I thoughtwould be finished in December 2012. I found out today that there is a balance ofabout £300 on it (have been paying £35 per month for the last 10 years on it).

The total outstanding debt on DMP is £25k.

Is it too late to add this £300 account into the plan and is it going tohave an adverse effect on the plan I started this month?

I am extremely worried about this as I have read a couple of horror storiesabout peoples DMP agreements being cancelled or creditors reacting negativelyif another creditor is added on. I feel like a real idiot and should havedoublechecked this before.

Any help would be appreciated

Hi freesoon and welcome to the forum.

Given that this debt is relatively small compared the overall debt I would be very surprised if it stopped a DMP being your best option.

I'd recommend giving us a call and letting us know about this extra debt. The stories you've heard are more than likely people who've taken out extra credit after starting a DMP or tried to deliberately keep a debt out of a DMP.

As this is a genuine mistake I can't see why there'd be any problem. It'll mean recalculating the payments for your plan and sending them out to your creditors again but I doubt the change will be huge, so hopefully won't cause problems with them.

Kind regards

James

StepChange_James

daveo73 wrote: »

Morning,

Not sure if I am doing this correctly, if not I apologise.

I owe £750 to a store card, £350 to a vanquis visa that had a limit of £150 so its getting worse. About £750 for a mobile phone bill from years ago that I was arguing that it shouldn't be that high but to no avail and another one for about £250. All told it is just over £2k. did have an arrangement with the Vanquis people but they wanted £48 minimum a month and i just couldn't manage.

I want to sort this out but am having difficulty and am very stressed. This may sound ridiculous but I am married and my wife does earn a good salary but our house is in her name and is her house ( even though my name is on the documents also) due to me having moved around lots and having a poor credit rating.

I earn £969 clear a month but give that to my wife to pay bills. We have 1 child and 1 on the way. We are actually -£25 each month hence the problem to pay.

The debt is my debt and although my wife knows about it and will do all she can, it is mine. It is all my fault and I need to do this for myself. I am hopeless with money and cannot manage it in any way,shape or form.

The companies with the phone bills have been offering 1 off payments but we have no savings and the monthly minimum payment they offer is too much.

Can anyone please help me.
Regards.

Hi Deveo,

Thanks for posting.

If you're monthly budget is £25 overspent before you pay anything to your debts then we'd call this a deficit budget situation. The first thing to do would be to try and cut your costs by at least £25, so at least then your income is covering the essential costs.

If there's no money available after that for debts then we'd usually recommend making very small gesture payments towards your debts (something like £1 a month). If you offer this payment in writing and enclose a copy of an income and expenditure budget your creditors may be willing to freeze interest and charges.

It's harder to say what the longer term plan should be for dealing with debts but we can talk you through the options once we know a bit more about your situation. We can also give you everything you need to offer a lower payment to your debts.

You can get advice from us online using our advice tool Debt Remedy (http://www.stepchange.org/msehelp) or by giving us a call (http://www.stepchange.org/Contactus.aspx).

Hope this helps.

James

crushed00

We currently have about 18000 left to pay on 5 unsecured loans, monthly payments smallest under a £100 to largest over £400 per month, total cost per month is over £900, we can manage the payments and probably pay extra towards one if we cut back, but all we can see is what we are doing without now because of the monthly payments. Just by what I have wrote could anyone suggest anything we should be looking at, or is the best way just to try and balance living and paying debt. All we want is to be debt free but equally as much we don’t want our debt to hurt us anymore than it does ATM. Hope this makes sense and someone can give us a little point in the best way forward whatever that way maybe, because between us we are hopeless, hence the mess above.

THANKU

mum2one

crushed00 wrote: »

We currently have about 18000 left to pay on 5 unsecured loans, monthly payments smallest under a £100 to largest over £400 per month, total cost per month is over £900, we can manage the payments and probably pay extra towards one if we cut back, but all we can see is what we are doing without now because of the monthly payments. Just by what I have wrote could anyone suggest anything we should be looking at, or is the best way just to try and balance living and paying debt. All we want is to be debt free but equally as much we don’t want our debt to hurt us anymore than it does ATM. Hope this makes sense and someone can give us a little point in the best way forward whatever that way maybe, because between us we are hopeless, hence the mess above.

THANKU

sometimes a 2nd pair of eyes can make the difference, as we find ourselves in a rut, I would suggest putting up a statement of affairs (link on the debt free wanabee sticky) by doing that it might show where there are savings that can be made, xx

crushed00

mum2one wrote: »

sometimes a 2nd pair of eyes can make the difference, as we find ourselves in a rut, I would suggest putting up a statement of affairs (link on the debt free wanabee sticky) by doing that it might show where there are savings that can be made, xx

Thanks mum :rotfl: To be honest the SOA thing is a nono for us, we have tried and tried but cant put one together due to our eratic spending, and no will power. We have about 3000 coming in and the same going out. What i was after was, to consolidate or not.... or start paying more to big or little loan, balance transfers 0% and stuff like that. As near as i can work it out we are paying about 140 a month intrest on the loans, no credit cards or store cards only bank loans. :mad:

mum2one

crushed00 wrote: »

Thanks mum :rotfl: To be honest the SOA thing is a nono for us, we have tried and tried but cant put one together due to our eratic spending, and no will power. We have about 3000 coming in and the same going out. What i was after was, to consolidate or not.... or start paying more to big or little loan, balance transfers 0% and stuff like that. As near as i can work it out we are paying about 140 a month intrest on the loans, no credit cards or store cards only bank loans. :mad:

Please don't consolidate, you could ask 100 people on these boards and my betting is 95 of them would say dont, its the biggest mistake ever, unless you can be super disciplined.

If you can balance transfer to 0% I would say go for that, but if you clear any debts close them down, otherwise there be the tempatition to spend again.
If you managing your min payments and have some spare to chuck at the debts i would go for the cards with the largest apr on them, with loans a lot of them have penalty clauses for early repayment or others that you can only pay off at certain points throughtout the loan and thats the full payment outstanding,

Why don't you try keeping a spending diary for a month and see where the money goes, - maybe for spends instead of relying on cards, - set yourself an amount for the month.

x

bradsha3

Hi, I need some advice with my debt after several years of thinking that things will be ok when I get a better job - have finally come to the conclusion that in the current job market, this is not going to happen, certainly in the near future. I am also at that point in my life where the biological clock is ticking and I am wanting a family and getting very desperate as the prospects of me being able to afford one before I'm beyond that is looking increasingly unlikely!

I've tried going to CAB - told me I earn too much for them to help me and that no one can negotiate with my creditors until I stop paying them - I will point out here that I am only managing to pay by working three jobs, selling everything I own of any value and borrowing extensively from my retired and disabled mother!

This morning tried calling national debtline - they got fixated on the fact that I do 1 day per month self-employed, earning me an extra £100 per month after tax etc (this is not guaranteed at all!). They also worked out that I have a surplus of £540 per month and therefore it would not make sense to get an IVA or bankruptcy. I wish this were the case, my actual budget currently gives me approx £100 surplus per month (if I do my self-employed work), rising to £250 surplus per month (after tax) if I'm successful in getting a promotion this week! They told me to ring business debtline - ironically open 9-5.30 weekdays - when most people including me are at work!!! I work in an open plan office with no where private to go. (I also get quite upset when talking about this so not good when at work).

So I'm really stuck and feel no further forward and desperately need some help. I owe approx £19.5K to 2 loans, 4 credit cards and 2 catalogues. I take home £1444 per month from my full time job with £100 extra the months I get self-employed work and I also do some casual work which is impossible to predict.

I think an IVA or bankruptcy are the only solutions and at least it has an end date before my reproductive organs shrivel up completely but my mum is not keen in the slightest and as I'm not getting any decent advice from anyone else I'm completely stressed out and don't have a clue what to do.

Please any advice would be really helpful!!!

TeaUK

Thanks, however my question was about a non-defaulted debt, not a defaulted debt?

On another note, isn't it unfair that paying off a debt in full over 6 and a half years on a non-defaulted debt through a DMP results in another 6 years of AP, SETTLED and Debt management tags on your credit reference file. Essentially 12 and a half years of negative entries, when someone who defaults or arranges an IVA will have a clear file after 6 years.

This seems to suggest that not paying back the full amount and allowing a default to be served would be far better.

moneysavvy35

My best friend is always borrowing money off me and recently she admitted to me she has over £15,000 worth of debt. I was totally shocked as she is usually so well put together. It took a while for her to reveal the full extent. one of her debts iswith Halifax that she owes overnight £7000 and they her currently charging her £150 in interest alone :eek:

Anyway as she knows I'm an avid reader of this forum....(usually travel or jobs related) she asked me to look into help. I had a quick look on this forum and read a few post in here....cut a long story i advised her to do one of those means tested statements. She got a call from someone today and they told her she has no disposable income so she must offer these companies £1 a month. She says she's up to date with her payments with her debts except the Halifax one and a tv she bought last year. She has a plan set up with barclays which she has stuck to religiously also her car payments are up,to date. The person at step to says she has to offer £1 to ALL her creditors even the one's she's up,to date with. I don't really get that!! Also how would she ever get the debt down on £1 a month on £15,000?

Do they just set this assuming her circumstances may change in a few months? I've told her she better do as they say as they know best but sounds abit strange i. I would just like to get some understanding on why they say that? Its like their affecting the whole debt when it don't need to be. Couldn't she just come up with some type of payment plan for the other debts she is not up to date with like the arrangement she has with barclays? If she gives me permission can I speak to them on her behalf. She is really in a bad way at the moment. Also once these £1 a month thing comes into play can she pay than the £1 a month as I know she occasionally does bar work.

Sorry its long....any advice would be much appreciated...