DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 9

Time_to_face_the_music

bertman wrote: »

There have been various comments on here about paying additional amounts to creditors. Our DMP is with SC, we have recently started a major clear out and listed a lot of stuff on Ebay. If I pay bits and pieces into certain creditors accounts will this cause hassle with SC? Or do they turn a blind eye? I am not talking of thousands or even hundreds of pounds - just a few £ here and these.
Has anyone with SC done this? We cant do this every month but just if we had some cash we could.

Are any of your creditors still charging interest? If not, you may as well distribute any spare money "fairly" and not rock the boat.

If any still are charging interest, I would use the money to make extra payments to them. We did it right from the start of our DMP and throughout the 10 months we were with CCCS (now Stepchange), it never caused us a problem with Stepchange or the creditors.

Of course as always I would recommend fighting the interest chargers first ......

Hopelessly_Hopeful wrote: »

Ms TTFTM has been very fortunate/skilled with zero/low interest.

My twin means I am cheeky, shame faced and I never give up. Mea culpa :rotfl:

Hopelessly_Hopeful

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

My twin means I am cheeky, shame faced and I never give up. Mea culpa :rotfl:

And we love you for it and wouldn't have it any other way


Wish I'd have had your balls, probably be debt free by now as have aready paid back £59 763 of the £59214 so that's £549 of the interest with £5305 of it left to go.


As we say onwards and upwards!


HHx

runforlife

Equilibrium13 wrote: »

Barclaycard (2 cards) have reduced the interest from 29.9% to 12.9% from December's statement. Does anyone know if it's worth writing to them to request that they suspend interest, or is this what they usually offer customers on a DMP?

Barclaycard have frozen interest so far with me. 3 months in. I pay only 2% of the inital outstanding amount over a scheduled plan of 5 years. So whilst that doesn't sound like much each month the percentage increases...so long as the interest stays at zero. Barclays have been excellent with me so far.

Monkeyballs

Hopelessly_Hopeful wrote: »

2014 is defo going to be your year, especially with that spirit and positive attitude

HHx

Thank you! I'm really going to go all out to get as much as possible repaid this year - when I entered into the DMP I felt like a bit of a failure because I went through Bankruptcy back in 2005 and at the time never thought Id be back in this position but I hadn't had my LBM at the time... Now I'm finding the whole debt busting and finding ways to increase my income incredibly uplifting

bertman wrote: »

I can only echo HH's comments, well done!

Thank you Bertman! Nice comments do nothing more to spur me on

As for making overpayments? I only started doing this very recently after seeing some comments on this thread and running it past Step Change to see if it is allowed (from whom I got a diplomatic yes).

As I see it, every one of my creditors would rather I paid them first so the idea of us all entering into a "gentlemans agreement" is a romantic one at best I know that I've mentioned repaying a couple of creditors early but it is purely to save money (who wouldn't pay a quarter of an outstanding balance to a PDL with whom you've given £000's in interest?) or where the balance is small enough to manage without any detriment but gives a psychological lift

Currently I am making overpayments to Barclaycard who are the only creditor to have not stopped interest charges (although they have reduced it significantly and I'm challenging them on it) and it's literally just a couple of £'s here and there* so I don't feel like I'm breaking any moral obligations...

*Top tip - If you can afford it, at the end of every other day pay £1 and whatever change you have in your current account to any creditor still charging interest (Eg. if your balance is £104.36 then I'd pay £1.36) and at the end of each week I pay anything which I couldn't draw out of a cashpoint (Eg. if my balance on Sunday night was £97.89 I would pay £2.89 because I can draw £5 out from the cash machine inbranch at Barclays). By doing this you are reducing your debt and not impacting your weekly/monthly budget do the degree that you start to struggle - obviously if it was payday week and I only had a £7.89 on Sunday night I wouldn't leave myself with just a fiver to get through the week

Hopefully something here is helpful? It's certainly working for me

MB

Time_to_face_the_music

Monkeyballs wrote: »

*Top tip - If you can afford it, at the end of every other day pay £1 and whatever change you have in your current account to any creditor still charging interest (Eg. if your balance is £104.36 then I'd pay £1.36) and at the end of each week I pay anything which I couldn't draw out of a cashpoint (Eg. if my balance on Sunday night was £97.89 I would pay £2.89 because I can draw £5 out from the cash machine inbranch at Barclays). By doing this you are reducing your debt and not impacting your weekly/monthly budget do the degree that you start to struggle - obviously if it was payday week and I only had a £7.89 on Sunday night I wouldn't leave myself with just a fiver to get through the week

You are effectively using the payment a day or PAD method, which is a great motivation to many MSE members, in fact we used the current thread (number 14) to pay off or save £254,420.24 in 2013!

Check out this thread:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4629473

Monkeyballs

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

You are effectively using the payment a day or PAD method, which is a great motivation to many MSE members, in fact we used the current thread (number 14) to pay off or save £254,420.24 in 2013!

Check out this thread:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4629473

Really? Oooh...

I'd seen the thread but never looked because I can't do it everyday...

Thanks for the heads up I'll check it out, one more thread to harass LOL

MB

Growurown

Monkeyballs wrote: »

Not that I'm bored

Yeah you are....:rotfl::rotfl:

Agreed this debt busting is very addictive, seeing those amounts going down, those creditors dropping off the list:D

Well done MB. I can see you are going to be a great inspiration to other DMP'ers out there. Keep up the good work:T:T

debtdawg

Monkeyballs wrote: »

Really? Oooh...

I'd seen the thread but never looked because I can't do it everyday...

Thanks for the heads up I'll check it out, one more thread to harass LOL

MB

Ha and me

Growurown

Oh carp. Just opened the mail received yesterday (I was busy!) and OH has been done for speeding again:mad::mad:

Another fine to pay, and probably points as well seeing as he got done last year too and had to do the speed awareness course, where he told the trainer that he enjoyed driving fast:eek::eek:

Divine justice. Sigh.........

Puzzcat

Growurown wrote: »

Oh carp. Just opened the mail received yesterday (I was busy!) and OH has been done for speeding again:mad::mad:

Another fine to pay, and probably points as well seeing as he got done last year too and had to do the speed awareness course, where he told the trainer that he enjoyed driving fast:eek::eek:

Divine justice. Sigh.........

Sounds like oh needs to learn it's a limit not a target to beat... guess his spendies for the month have been spent!!!