DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 9

Monkeyballs

Growurown wrote: »

Sounds like a plan MB and you aren't reducing your payment by much. Not sure it is within the rules of SC though, and reducing your payment upsets the creditors, which means doing a little work to get them back on board.

I'm thinking that in theory I'm just not giving SC what they would normally pay to Wonga but paying it to them myself with more on top?

In theory nobody is losing out although I appreciate that it is essentially favouring one creditor over others...

MB

Puzzcat

Mb, you say you ran this past sc, what did they say about it?

Monkeyballs

Puzzcat wrote: »

Mb, you say you ran this past sc, what did they say about it?

Hi Puzz,

Sorry at the moment this is purely hypothetical as I know this is not how a DMP should be run.

I will of course run this past SC to get their ok before I take any action which might jepordise the agreement I have with them first

MB

Sazzie23

Monkeyballs wrote: »

Hi Puzz,

Sorry at the moment this is purely hypothetical as I know this is not how a DMP should be run.

I will of course run this past SC to get their ok before I take any action which might jepordise the agreement I have with them first

MB

Hi Mb, I might be being a bit thick here, but how long did you want to reduce payments for? And wouldn't Wonga be a bit naffed off you had stopped paying?

I'm assuming Wonga aren't charging interest at the moment, I think the offer of £250 is a good one though so be a shame if you can't take it up.

Welcome to BB

And yes that is how the story starts, but it ends with ...and now I'm debt free (I hope to be in 4 more years). But I know just what you mean about loan to credit cards...been there done that too:mad:

Hi to Rasp, Rebelred & Bertman, glad is getting under control albeit a slow start for some.

A big warm hello to all the lurkers who read the thread, feel free to pop in and say hi some time.

Have a good Sunday. Oops better get ready for work.

Monkeyballs

Sazzie23 wrote: »

Hi Mb, I might be being a bit thick here, but how long did you want to reduce payments for? And wouldn't Wonga be a bit naffed off you had stopped paying?

I'm assuming Wonga aren't charging interest at the moment, I think the offer of £250 is a good one though so be a shame if you can't take it up.

Hi Sazzie,

It's purely theoretical and would need to get the nod from SC anyway before I do anything because I don't want to jeopardise my DMP with them by going off plan...

I wouldn't be stopping paying them at all it would be a combination of what I would normally pay them with a top up to take up their F&F offer so the following month they wouldn't get anything anyway and normal payments pf £500 to SC would resume the following month anyway

Having had a night to think it over I think I will hang fire for the moment until I take the plunge to go self managed when I have a bit more freedom and possibly a bit more change in my back pocket so to speak...

I know that this is not the way a DMP should be managed though and would rather continue to cooperate with SC on my DMP for the time being because I do not want the stress of them potentially cancelling my plan!

MB

Time_to_face_the_music

MB - just to throw one more thing in for you to think about. When we moved from Stepchange to self managed, we get paid on the 21st and 25th of the month, Stepchange take the payment on the 1st but don't distribute it until the 25th, so effectively we made 2 payments in one month and it immediately took a month off our DFD

blisteringblue

If been a little anal with my spreadsheets since deciding to start a DMP.

Our main reason is we are down to my wage and OH has some paid teaching while she is in final year at Uni, but only around 3-5 hours a week. Hopefully after Sept we will be back to a much better second income.

Luckily I have a good wage and to be honest we were not far away from meeting the minimum payments. There was a little creeping up on the cards but we had no chance of paying it off any time soon. I was trying to snowball but that was creeping to 6 years, and if I'm being honest it was actually going up slightly each month. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Went to the Stepchange site and put the figures in and it then pops up in black and white 4 Years 7 Months (assuming interest is frozen).

So I'm thinking why go round and round in circles for 6 years, when chances are we won't have paid it off, and paying all the interest.

My only concern though is we've actually a surplus over £1k a month, so when I got the spreadsheets out and worked out % of total debt and the amounts they are getting, they are not drastically short of the actual minimum payments? I think the worst of our 8 debts was 25% less, and the best only around 13% less.

Is this likely to count against me? I realise the key factor is I need the interest frozen to make any headway into this debt. I'm not worried about the hit on my credit rating, in fact I see it as a bonus to making me realise the value of things again. I'm just worried they will see us as looking for an easy way out and I will struggle to get the interest frozen.

What are others experience in this? I've still started the ball rolling with a few token payments and 28 day hold letters in the post now, as well as all my forms for Stepchange, so no going back, but just starting to get nagging doubts that we're not in debt enough, if that is strange. Even though the total is a few hundred over 60k in total.

Monkeyballs

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

MB - just to throw one more thing in for you to think about. When we moved from Stepchange to self managed, we get paid on the 21st and 25th of the month, Stepchange take the payment on the 1st but don't distribute it until the 25th, so effectively we made 2 payments in one month and it immediately took a month off our DFD

Hi TtFtM,

Yeah, that's been playing on my mind a bit too...

I get paid on the 27th of each month and to avoid temptation I transfer the money to them straight away only for them to sit on it for a month.

I can understand that this is probably to keep their costs to a minimum and to get a bit of interest from my payment too so I don't mind but it's a little frustrating that it doesn't come straight off my debts instead.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all of their help and I honestly don't think that I would have been able to set my own DMP up at the time as I was still struggling with and getting counselling for a gambling problem so I would never fail to recommend them plus the advice they gave me helped me through the stresses of approaching my creditors too!

I'm really i a bit of a quandary and think I need to read more into self managed DMP's first before I do anything drastic

Thanks again

MB

Puzzcat

blisteringblue wrote: »

If been a little anal with my spreadsheets since deciding to start a DMP.

Our main reason is we are down to my wage and OH has some paid teaching while she is in final year at Uni, but only around 3-5 hours a week. Hopefully after Sept we will be back to a much better second income.

Luckily I have a good wage and to be honest we were not far away from meeting the minimum payments. There was a little creeping up on the cards but we had no chance of paying it off any time soon. I was trying to snowball but that was creeping to 6 years, and if I'm being honest it was actually going up slightly each month. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Went to the Stepchange site and put the figures in and it then pops up in black and white 4 Years 7 Months (assuming interest is frozen).

So I'm thinking why go round and round in circles for 6 years, when chances are we won't have paid it off, and paying all the interest.

My only concern though is we've actually a surplus over £1k a month, so when I got the spreadsheets out and worked out % of total debt and the amounts they are getting, they are not drastically short of the actual minimum payments? I think the worst of our 8 debts was 25% less, and the best only around 13% less.

Is this likely to count against me? I realise the key factor is I need the interest frozen to make any headway into this debt. I'm not worried about the hit on my credit rating, in fact I see it as a bonus to making me realise the value of things again. I'm just worried they will see us as looking for an easy way out and I will struggle to get the interest frozen.

What are others experience in this? I've still started the ball rolling with a few token payments and 28 day hold letters in the post now, as well as all my forms for Stepchange, so no going back, but just starting to get nagging doubts that we're not in debt enough, if that is strange. Even though the total is a few hundred over 60k in total.

Hi BB and welcome..


I'm a little confused by what you mean surplus? With the SC online debt remedy, which is how I set up my dmp you input all your budget and the surplus becomes your debt payment? Is the surplus your talking about your actual budget?
As for how the creditors will play, that is a how long is a piece of string question, they don't seem to have any set rules in place!!!


Although like you, I would think if I am paying near enough what I was paying then they will think i'm not in hardship and continue the interest. I guess you won't know until its set up. I unfortunately am nowhere near my minimum payments that were, and also owe 60k.. well 59k now....:D

blisteringblue

Thanks Puzzcat, Spookily was just reading your diary hope that is not too stalkerish I'd noticed earlier you owed a similar amount to me so was reading your experiences.

By surplus I mean the amount I will be paying to Stepchange to disperse to my debts.

There is no real surplus, at the moment making minimum payments our debts have gone up another 10k since this time last year. Classic case of shifting around debts to free up an interest free period on a card, only to then run up that card too. Been doing it for years. Its the reason we are in debt.

I just think it is the not knowing? Stepchange says we should do a DMP so a DMP we are doing. Will just see what happens as the token payments hit this week.