Struggling with debt? Ask a debt advisor a question

InUpToMyNeck

I've been struggling with debt since being made redundant for 8 months in 2009, and I'm just getting on top of things.

I'm now at the stage of trying to improve my credit score and read with interest the article on mse's /loans/credit-rating-credit-score web page. Under the section "Manage and improve your credit score" it mentions getting a CCJ wiped - it's in the popup on the 'credit repair agencies' link.
"...you can include as a condition of final settlement that the CCJ should be wiped."

I want to do this myself rather than use a credit repair agency, but I can't find any further details on how to go about this. Can someone point me in the right direction?

I have to say that I've not used a credit card or had a loan since 2009 and have no wish to go down that route ever again (life is possible without certain types of credit) however I now wish to get a mortgage and so need to up my still abysmal credit score.

Thanks.

StepChange_James

Spammy1983 wrote: »

Hi everyone, I'm just gonna throw this out there and see what I get back. I've never been very good with organising money. Ok so what I owe out is as follows:
1. Overdraft £1000 (will be cleared next week so I suppose can discount this).
2. Barclaycard £500
3. MasterCard £2200
4. Unsecured loan of £15,000 (2yrs left to run)

Barclaycard is 0% but I'm out of 0% on MasterCard.

I'm earning around £3000 per month after tax.

What's best plan of action?

Thanks in advance.

Hi Spammy,

Thanks for posting.

Obviously I don't have the figures about your income or what you can afford to pay every month. But I'll assume that you're in a position where the standard payments are affordable every month and your credit card interest is higher than the loan interest.

If these things are true then your best bet is likely to be maintain the standard payments on your loan and focus all your money on your credit cards (paying the highest interest one the most until it's clear then moving onto the next).

By paying off the highest interest debt soonest you should save some money on interest and you'll get the satisfaction of clearing one of the debts off fairly soon.

It's also worth reducing all of your non-essential costs to as little as possible, so you can pay more to your debts. The Debt Free Wannabe boards are an excellent place to get tips on how to cut your costs.

I hope this helps. If I've misjudged your situation and you're struggling with keeping up with payments then I'd recommend getting in touch with us for advice (details in my signature).

Kind regards

James

StepChange_James

nicola302 wrote: »

Please can you help, My partner got into debt and he took out an IVA we are just going through the process of our last payments but are now being stumped with Large nominee and supervisor fees of about £7½k, on top of that they are requesting that we remortgage our house, (please note it is my partners IVA and we are joint owners of the house) and give them 85% of my partners share which at present works out to about £30k, even though from the outset i had stipulated that the house was not to be touched a that we would prefere to make a years worth of additional payments.
so the long and the short of my story is this sum...
£65k - original debt
£15K - paid monthly contributions (over 6 years)
£7½k - Fees
£30k - Remortgage.

what i would like to know is, can we replace the equity release with monthly payments due to Me being made redundant in a few months, and do the IVA companies take this into consideration?
it is putting a lot of stress on the family as we thought we would only have to pay an extra years payments and the fees, also we were hoping to move next year to a bigger property as my 3 children are now too big to share 1 double bedroom.

Hi Nicola,

I think Anondebtadvisor has covered most of the points in your question.

Your partner should also be able to get some more detailed advice from his IVA supervisor.

All the best.

James

StepChange_James

onyablue wrote: »

have just had to default on two payday loans with lending stream and wonga madness i know getting them in the first place i have emailed that i cannot afford to pay them and i have opened a new account with a different bank ,i intend to set up a dmp on friday will they help with the pdl as well as other debt i have

Hi Onyablue,

We've written a blogpost that talks you through how to cancel the payments on a payday loan: http://moneyaware.co.uk/2012/07/how-to-cancel-a-continuous-payment-authority-cpa-on-a-payday-loan/.

I'd recommend that you follow the steps on there to stop the payday loan companies trying to take payments from your old account.

Payday loans can go into DMPs just like any other credit debt. If you're looking at getting a DMP make sure that you go with a free provider. You can see if it's a good option for you by using our advice tool, Debt Remedy: http://www.stepchange.org/msehelp.

If you don't go with us then here's a list of other free advice organisations: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/loans/debt-help-plan#help.

Kind regards

James

StepChange_James

lessonsinlove wrote: »

notYou will probably have difficulty obtaining a mortgage with a default registered against you, could you raise some money and offer them a settlement in return for them registering the default as satisfied?


Do I contact them directly via the phone for this? And what is an acceptable settlement agreement? Is this usually calculated using a percentage of what's owed or is it simply negotiable? I only have my £1k savings that I could put towards it and would rather not involve my partner and her savings to pay off my debts.

Hi Lessons in love,

I think anondebtadvisor has beaten me to the punch a little bit on this query.

I'll not repeat the same stuff but I would add that it's OK to negotiate settlements over the phone with your creditor but anything you agree with them should then be confirmed in writing before you make a payment.

£1000 to pay off £5000 works out at 20p in the pound that you'd be offering. You'd be asking them to write quite a lot of the debt off with this offer, so it's hard to comment on your chances. On the other hand, the debt has been knocking around for a while and the current debt collectors may have bought the debt for very little.

It's always worth asking the question.

One thing that might help the discussion over settlements would be to send a copy of your income and expenditure budget, particularly if you're finances are stretched. This will show them what kind of monthly installment they are likely to get if they refuse the offer.

If you need help putting together a budget then I'd suggest using our debt advice tool Debt Remedy(http://www.stepchange.org/msehelp), which will guide you through planning a budget and give you some advice.

Hope this helps.

James

StepChange_James

InUpToMyNeck wrote: »

I've been struggling with debt since being made redundant for 8 months in 2009, and I'm just getting on top of things.

I'm now at the stage of trying to improve my credit score and read with interest the article on mse's /loans/credit-rating-credit-score web page. Under the section "Manage and improve your credit score" it mentions getting a CCJ wiped - it's in the popup on the 'credit repair agencies' link.
"...you can include as a condition of final settlement that the CCJ should be wiped."

I want to do this myself rather than use a credit repair agency, but I can't find any further details on how to go about this. Can someone point me in the right direction?

I have to say that I've not used a credit card or had a loan since 2009 and have no wish to go down that route ever again (life is possible without certain types of credit) however I now wish to get a mortgage and so need to up my still abysmal credit score.

Thanks.

Hello,

Welcome to the forum.

I've had a look through the credit rating page and have not been able to find anything about wiping CCJs from credit reports. When I search "wipe" I can only find things about wiping default notices that have been unfairly applied.

I'd strongly advise against "credit repair" agencies. We've spoken to people in the past who've used these sorts of places to remove CCJs from their credit reports It usually encouraged them to make false declarations to the courts, which could potentially lead to imprisonment (for perjury).

If the CCJ was correctly applied then it's a matter of waiting for it to drop off your file (this will be in 2015 if you got the CCJ in 2009). While it's not great to have the CCJ on your credit file, the further back in your past it is the less if affects you.

The article you've been reading on this site is great and it covers all the ways you can bump your score up a little. If you follow those steps then you're doing everything you can to improve your score.

One final thing, I'm not sure if you've paid back the CCJ debt. Paying off a CCJ should filter through to your credit report and make things look a bit better.

Kind regards

James

nelson1601

Hi

I am looking for some advice. Many years ago I had a credit card with citicard. Aprox. 4 years ago I moved out of the marital home and filed for a divorce against my ex-wife. My payments to Citicard would be paid each month by direct debit automatically. As its a new year I wanted to try and sort out my finances and noticed that I have payments going out to a company called Opus? I immediately cancelled the direct debit and eventually received a phone call from a rather determined Opus member of staff. I asked just who Opus were and how they got my number but they simply responded saying they needed to run some security checks with me before speaking any further. I have never set up any security questions with them, contact ended. I decided to write to them giving them my full address in a bid to find out what was going on.

Needless to say they wrote back saying I owed approx £7k and were demanding a couple of missed months payments. Given the fact that I had no idea who they were I decided to write to them confirming that I would not pay a penny to them unless I receive a copy of the original credit agreement using a template from here. I sent a cheque for £1 and approx a month later said cheque had been cashed and I have today received from Opus an envelope which provides me with generic copies of letters they allege was sent to me in April 2010 informing me that my account had been transferred from Citi to CC Asset Management and a further copy generic letter that was apparently sent to me October 2010 saying account was now with Opus.

Having moved out of the marital home in November 2009 I received none of these letter and or the credit card/pin number they also allege was sent out.

Opus have sent me a copy of my executed Opus credit agreement under Sect.78 and they are stating that this document is in response to my request to constitute a true copy of the agreement. They go on to say the copy agreement does not include the signature box, signature or date of signature in accordance with Regulation 3(2)(b)(ii) of Consumer Credit (Cancellation Notices and Copies of Documents) Regulations 1983; as permitted by these regulations we are not required to provide them.

They confirm that they to date have been unsuccessful in obtaining the original document but will keep searching and will send on if found.

Their parting line is as we have confirmed that you have received the credit facility in relation to this agreement, you remain liable for the debt. You should continue to make you contractural payments in accordance with the terms of your agreement.

Apologies for the ramble but I don't believe this is enough to satisfy me that my debt is with them. Surely I am entitled to a copy of the original credit agreement I signed if they say they bought the debt? The reason I ask is the Opus interest rate is far higher than what I was paying with Citi and if I had been aware of the transfer then I would have transferred the balance to a 0% card.

Can anyone advise how I stand? and what I should do from here? Opus are continuing to add interest to the debt as well as late payment charges so each month the debt amount is increasing. I obviously don't want this to increase but in the same time want to be happy that I do actually owe this debt to them.

Help.....

jgw123

Last year I entered into a voluntary agreement with my creditors (via debt advice at local council) to pay £300 per month towards paying off our 22k debt.

Allied International Credit (Tesco Loan) 5.5k, Aktiv Kapital (MBNA Credit Card) 4.8k, Metropolitan Collection Services 3.6k (HSBC Credit Card), Metropolitan Collection Services 3.6k (HSBC overdraft) and Santander Loan 4.3k.

I have been using pay day lenders to get by each month (1200 a month no arrears) and want to stop doing it. I have not paid the £300 last month and I don't want to each of the next three months to be able to stop relying on payday lenders.

Are the creditors likely to start adding interest again (when it had been frozen after agreeing a repayment) and how likely are they to obtain a court summons?

If they do take us to court how much are the likely costs I will have to pay for it going to court. Can they add interest on the court judgement?

If it is not likely to go to court immediately how long will they normally wait before proceeding to court (our previous debt advisor said it was high unlikely and would probably wait years before they pursued through the courts however the new advisor has suggested they might straight away).

I would be really grateful if you could offer any assistance on any of the matters I raised.

Thanks


J

MarieC5575

First of all a big thank you to everyone on here, the support makes this whole process a lot easier to deal with.

I have a couple of times regarding setting up a DMP with Step Change and the help has been fantastic. There are just a couple of things I wanted to check before going any further.

My main worry is whether I should be on a DMP or DAS as I live in Scotland. James on here from Step Change advised to phone the help line which I have done and both people I spoke to advised to go on the DMP and if it's not suitable then to think about changing to a DAS. However before speaking to Step Change I had contacted a private debt advisory who advised a Trust Deed but I chose not to go down that road as I'd rather pay the debt off. They called last night to ask if I had changed my mind and I advised them that I had been in touch with Step Change and was in the process of setting up a DMP. Straight away he said that I shouldn't be on a DMP as this is the English system and that being in Scotland I should be on a DAS. As far as I am aware a DAS is a formal arrangement and a DMP is an informal arrangement - can anyone advise further?

I'd also like to know if I should take all the money I have out of my accounts with overdrafts and allow the bank to charge me while they are waiting to hear from Step Change, I'm worried that I'll be charged for charges and that this will mount up and I'll end up paying even more?

Lastly I've read on here that the process can be a bit rough in the first few weeks and I was wondering if anyone could advise me what to expect.

Again thanks for all the advice, it is much appreciated.

Anondebtadvisor

MarieC5575 wrote: »

First of all a big thank you to everyone on here, the support makes this whole process a lot easier to deal with.

I have a couple of times regarding setting up a DMP with Step Change and the help has been fantastic. There are just a couple of things I wanted to check before going any further.

My main worry is whether I should be on a DMP or DAS as I live in Scotland. James on here from Step Change advised to phone the help line which I have done and both people I spoke to advised to go on the DMP and if it's not suitable then to think about changing to a DAS. However before speaking to Step Change I had contacted a private debt advisory who advised a Trust Deed but I chose not to go down that road as I'd rather pay the debt off. They called last night to ask if I had changed my mind and I advised them that I had been in touch with Step Change and was in the process of setting up a DMP. Straight away he said that I shouldn't be on a DMP as this is the English system and that being in Scotland I should be on a DAS. As far as I am aware a DAS is a formal arrangement and a DMP is an informal arrangement - can anyone advise further?

I'd also like to know if I should take all the money I have out of my accounts with overdrafts and allow the bank to charge me while they are waiting to hear from Step Change, I'm worried that I'll be charged for charges and that this will mount up and I'll end up paying even more?

Lastly I've read on here that the process can be a bit rough in the first few weeks and I was wondering if anyone could advise me what to expect.

Again thanks for all the advice, it is much appreciated.

The difference between a DAS and a DMP is that a DAS is legally binding this means that all fees and interest are guaranteed to be frozen and they cannot take any further legal action against you, this includes getting a decree against you and DMP does not guarantee this!

In both a DMP and a DAS you will pay all the debts back over a longer period of time, whereas in a scottish trust deed there may be an element of the debts being written off.

You can find further information on DAS and DAS advisors in your area have a lookm here - http://www.dasscotland.gov.uk/