DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 9

Andyph

Will this money either help you pay your debts of in full OR make a seriously shorten the timescale for you to get DF ? - if it doesnt , then I would suggest you put it to one side and keep it as an emergency fund.

Remember you dont *always* have to be 100% honest about everything with your DMP ( I wasnt !) but neither should you outright lie to them,

Hope this helps.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the quick reply, i owe about 20k so wont go that far! just not sure if i would be allowed to keep it as an emergency fund or it i will just loose the equivalent from future housing benefit payments etc payments.

also i cant really hide it from sc as they ask to see bank statements

Puzzcat

Sc haven't asked me for any bank statements? Only payslip...

Monkeyballs

Puzzcat wrote: »

Sc haven't asked me for any bank statements? Only payslip...

Same here, last 3 months worth when I joined... I've already had a budget review as well (after my gambling blip) and they never asked for anything? Not sure if this is standard for the annual review or not?

That said, Antonic right about declaring it... Once that is done and assuming it doesn't change matters then I would look at either saving half to use for emergencies (unless you already have an emergency fund?) and use the rest to maybe pay off any creditors charging interest still? I'd probably also keep a little aside for a treat

I have some shares coming to me in May, only about £300 I think but I plan on getting a couple of new things and maybe paying towards my Barclaycard.

MB

digley

duckie193 wrote: »

I had been on a DMP with Payplan for just over a year and really wasn't happy with how they were managing it.


The last straw was when the creditors were all contacting me asking why I hadn't paid them. My monthly payments were getting paid by DD to Payplan but they were slow in passing it on.


I ended up contacting my 5 creditors & asking if I could just pay the same amount straight to them & end my DMP - they all agreed.


I am now in a better position than I was with Payplan as the interest charges have been frozen & when I calculated the interest that I had been charged whilst on the DMP I was amazed - I have paid thousands in interest/charges in the year I was with them. I was always pestering them about my DMP so it wasn't that I was ignoring the issues.


I don't know if Payplan are having issues just now as I received a letter just a few days before this all kicked off that my advisor & manager had changed.


I would contact them as a matter of urgency to get it sorted out.


Good Luck !

Thanks. It's one of the options I am considering at the minute. Did you have to submit your own expenditure / income reviews ?

digley

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

Hi and welcome digley :hello:


Payplan need to sort this out and ensure that one way or another you are recompensed for these additional interest charges. Have you followed their complaints procedure?


If so and you are not happy with the result, take this to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), they can deal both with the creditor situation and with the Payplan issue. They are open today so you can call them and discuss the whole problem


Regarding the future, as already recommended by GUO, I use the NED CAB self managed DMP and can't praise it highly enough, it is excellent. Creditors have no right to treat you differently if you are self managing your DMP and I managed to get interest stopped that StepChange hadn't!


Good luck and please let us know how you get on.

Many thanks for the info. I am waiting for a response from payplan and will let you know when I do.
I will have a look at using the NED CAB self managed DMP. I don't feel in control with payplan.

duckie193

digley wrote: »

Thanks. It's one of the options I am considering at the minute. Did you have to submit your own expenditure / income reviews ?

I kept a hold of the expenditure details that I had with Payplan & when I spoke to the companies I used that info and in fact 2 have reduced the amount I need to pay them per month.
Argos are the only 1 out of 5 that are still charging interest but I will make sure that I clear off asap - so any spare money is going to them ( it isn't a big debt compared to the others), something I wouldn't have been able to do with Payplan.


I now feel more in charge. I know a lot of peoples experience with Payplan has been good but I honestly cant say that about my situation.


They contacted me after I had finished with them & the poor girl at the end of the phone didn't know anything about it but understood my frustration when I explained the situation to her. She said that as I was in Scotland there was another option that I should have been given & with that one the interest & charges would have been stopped. Not sure why I wasn't given this option but at this point I was just well rid of them.


Hope you managed to get your situation sorted whether its doing it yourself or getting Payplan organised.


Good Luck!

digley

Quick question. I am now considering going it alone after losing all confidence with payplan.
I will probably have to re submit my expenditure figures but am unsure what to quote for my mortgage payment.
We are one one of those flexible mortgages where the minimum you have to pay is the interest. This does not pay off the capital which has obviously got to be cleared at some stage.
Payplan took the interest only figure as my mortgage payment but surely I should be allowed to pay off some of the capital ?
What do you think ? Could I divide the remainder of the term by the amount owed and add that to my mortgage payment ?

Sazzie23

Hi Digley

Hope things are coming together for you.

I have just had to increase my mortgage repayment as the interest only portion had come to term & I've had to revert it to repayment as I couldn't remortgage due to DMP. I did the SC review on line and the DMP repayment had to be reduced to account for this - which extends my debtfree date but means I'm still in the house!

Anyway what I'm saying badly is that there needs to be a plan in place to repay else you are likely to run into problems if you reach the end of the interest only mortgage. So IMO you ought to be able to write into your budget some sort of repayment to mortgage schedule if you don't have endowment in place. Perhaps if you looked at what the mortgage would be if you took a repayment mortgage out now and then used the difference between that and the interest only payment to use as a mortgage capital repayment. As long as you do use it to repay the mortgage.....

Hopelessly_Hopeful

digley wrote: »

Quick question. I am now considering going it alone after losing all confidence with payplan.
I will probably have to re submit my expenditure figures but am unsure what to quote for my mortgage payment.
We are one one of those flexible mortgages where the minimum you have to pay is the interest. This does not pay off the capital which has obviously got to be cleared at some stage.
Payplan took the interest only figure as my mortgage payment but surely I should be allowed to pay off some of the capital ?
What do you think ? Could I divide the remainder of the term by the amount owed and add that to my mortgage payment ?

Good luck with it.


Housing and mortgages are considered 'priority bills'. It is reasonable to put in the figure for repayment mortgage.


Let us know how you get on.


HHx

Coinmachine

This is where I am up to with setting up my DMP to date, just posting to here for a bit of reassurance that this all sounds okay?

Setting up of a new current account seems to be going well as I visited branch on Weds last and got my debit card through the post on Saturday so I know my account number.

I have one joint account (credit card and overdraft) I am switching to a sole account so my partner is not affected. I thought this might be a hassle with the account overdrawn but it was just one form, signed by both of us and didnt have to give a reason. Told it takes two weeks to go through so fingers crossed as they reserve the right to refuse a request. If it doesnt go through before the credit card payment is due I will have to make the minimum payment as dont want to rock the boat.

This is the first month in which I have not been able to meet minimum payments so used one of the templates from here, quoted stepchange client number and made token payments to 6 creditors. Requested in letters to deal in writing only, despite that one creditor rings daily, not answered their calls though.

I have drafted but not yet sent an email to stepchange with pay details, details of account numbers and a request to start the plan in March. This will mean I will have to make one more months token payments to all but this will give me a small emergency cushion in the new account.

Made a list of all my direct debits for household bills, need to start process of setting up debits in mew accounts and switch pay.

I intend next month when making token payments to write to creditors again requesitng their patience until March when the plan is set up.

Does this all sound okay? To date I havent receieved any letters from creditors but I expect these will come through in the next week or so as payments are due.

Hope everyone is well.