Sons' debts and DMP.

Pilgrim10

I all , first time post. Its going to be long winded but I make no appologies.

My son is 28 and still lives at home, he has always had no regard for his financial welfare, wasting any money he has on betting, gambling etc. He works and gets a reasonable wage, so living at home he has no outgoings apart from paying rent to us. Needless to say we have not received any rent for months so when confronted he admitted owing about £4k to payday loan companies.

To his credit (?) he started a DMP through a DMP company to pay of his debts etc. The first two payments to the DMP company went to setting up the account and admin and out of the money he pays them they charge 17.5 pc admin fee per month. The money he has paid them in fees etc could have gone direct to his creditors had I been made aware of his situation earlier.

As a responsible parent my beef is I feel helpless in all of this, no one will talk to me as it appears to be none of my business. I refuse to pay any of his debts as I have helped him so many times before. Needless to say I am very angry.

I have done a lot of research into paydays loans and DMPs etc.
Should I tell him to ditch his current DMP and switch to a freebie one but how will such a move go down with his creditors etc.

Any advice please or comments by anyone in my situation will be appreciated.

[Deleted User]

i give him a final demand for the rent he owes you,tough love i know but at 28 he needs to grow up
and good on you for not stepping in to pay his debts off

Deep_In_Debt

Hi

Can you ask him to ditch his dmp company and go for a non fee charging company such as Stepchange, Payplan or CAB. All the money he is paying will then go towards paying his debts making him debt free sooner and not lining the pockets of sharks who are only out to make money out him by keeping him in debt for longer.

The creditors will probably welcome the move from a fee charging company as they will know that they are getting what he can afford and not lining the pockets of sharks with fees and more likely to accept a dmp. Dmp's are not legally binding from either party so he can cancel at any time.

Good luck to you and your son.

honeyrose1987

The best thing to do would probably get away from any debt management companies. They take too much in fees, which, as you quite rightly said, could be going towards clearing the debts. They best thing to do would be to contact each company individually any try to arrange a repayment plan. Your son can either do this via the telephone or in writing. In my own personal experience I have found that writing to them is easier and have been able to come to mutually suitable arrangements much easier than over the phone, plus you can help him with writing the letters more than you can help if he rang them because they will not speak to you because of data protection.
I suppose you can assist him as much as you like but he has got to get his head around the fact that he has debts to pay back and the way he is carrying on, when he decides to move out and rent or buy a place of his own he will struggle because of the bad credit and maybe even defaults on his credit profile.
I can understand how frustrating it is, I was in the a similar position as your son, though I lived on my own, and would just rack up debts and not even consider paying them back and just basically buried my head in the sand which has cost me dearly now, because I let it go on so long (over 5 years) and because I didn't want to face up to it I am now struggling to buy a house with my fiancee. I have no one to blame but myself cause its my own fault.
Tell him to get his act together and start clearing those debts!
Hope this has helped.