DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 10

cydney11

dazla wrote: »

Barclaycard have only reduced my interest to 12 % !! They refuse to budge on it.

I had 1 Barclay C on 12%, and 1 on 6.9%. Both now 6.9%. They are the only creditors still charging interest. I am not about to £1 them 3 years in, as I don't want another D now. I am planning to throw any extra earnings to them first, which is unfair but practical. I might have gone self managed back at the start if I'd know about it. I will stay with SC now and try to speed things up with settlements when possible. Good luck to anyone challenging BC.

moneyworrier89

Thanks everyone for all your support and help. am I best letting my creditors know once I send my dmp application off which I will be doing this week or before I send the form off. Thankyou.

tiller_girl

Hello all,

I'm a newbie to this thread. DH and I had an appointment with our bank this morning, to see if we could remortgage and consolidate our debts. We've very much had our heads in the sand, and thought we were £25,000 in debt. It's actually £51,848. :eek:

The advisor was lovely, and once we were declined for a mortgage she advised us to look at StepChange for an IVA. I completed the SC online form this afternoon and they recommend a DMP.

I've read through lots (but not all!) of this wonderful thread, and have an action plan.

I have a (possibly daft) question. According to SC, we should be paying £586 per month. We have 3 children - I can't bear the thought of not getting them birthday presents, or taking them on holiday. Is it possible to pay slightly less than they recommend? 6 years with no caravan holiday seems so bleak! Although I realise that kind of thinking helped get us into this mess in the first place.....:(

Puzzcat

tiller_girl wrote: »

Hello all,

I'm a newbie to this thread. DH and I had an appointment with our bank this morning, to see if we could remortgage and consolidate our debts. We've very much had our heads in the sand, and thought we were £25,000 in debt. It's actually £51,848. :eek:

The advisor was lovely, and once we were declined for a mortgage she advised us to look at StepChange for an IVA. I completed the SC online form this afternoon and they recommend a DMP.

I've read through lots (but not all!) of this wonderful thread, and have an action plan.

I have a (possibly daft) question. According to SC, we should be paying £586 per month. We have 3 children - I can't bear the thought of not getting them birthday presents, or taking them on holiday. Is it possible to pay slightly less than they recommend? 6 years with no caravan holiday seems so bleak! Although I realise that kind of thinking helped get us into this mess in the first place.....:(

Hi and welcome, Make sure you include items such as dry cleaning, smoking, pets, lunches at work etc to the debt remedy tool to allow you a small buffer. Yes your debts will get paid off slower but hey we all have to live as well!
Puzz.x

Puzzcat

moneyworrier89 wrote: »

Thanks everyone for all your support and help. am I best letting my creditors know once I send my dmp application off which I will be doing this week or before I send the form off. Thankyou.

Hi and welcome,
As long as your money is safe from any creditors in your proposed dmp then yes you can write to them with a token payment just quoting your dmp reference number. A template is around on this thread, shout if you need help!
Puzz.x

tiller_girl

Puzzcat wrote: »

Hi and welcome, Make sure you include items such as dry cleaning, smoking, pets, lunches at work etc to the debt remedy tool to allow you a small buffer. Yes your debts will get paid off slower but hey we all have to live as well!
Puzz.x

Oh yes good idea! Thank you xx

Busy day tomorrow - DH will do his tax return (slightly concerned about this), we'll cancel the CC direct debits, I'll write letters to them, we'll apply for basic bank accounts, and I'll fill in the SC application pack.

I think it's safe to say we've finally had our LBM.

Growurown

Hi tiller girl, as Puzzcat said claim for everything you can. I very quickly became a smoker who dry cleaned all my clothes and ate lunches at work:rotfl:

I know some people live very frugally and throw everything at their debt but I knew that wouldn't work for us. You will have to be disciplined though and put that money away, otherwise it will get frittered away on stuff, and you won't have anything to show for it.

Time_to_face_the_music

Welcome to all the new DMPers and hello to everyone

Middle ground for us, we weren't prepared to give up everything because our daughter and granddaughter needed additional support that we could not budget for as they didn't live with us but I couldn't have spent money on holidays while we were still massively in debt. Limit for me would be very cheap camping trips or saving vouchers from doing surveys etc for free hotel breaks.

Holiday booked for this Summer is looked forward more than any we have ever been on! :j

We all need to set our own limits but if doing something made a significant difference to our DFD, I would rather do without or find another way of paying for it.

TTFTM x

minkeymootoyou

Sazzie23 wrote: »

It's Ok Minkeymoo I can feel the panic and hurt in your post, I think many of us have felt like this at one time. Take a deep breath, it's going to be All right.

Did anyone tell you about making token payments while the DMP gets under way? This means you only need to pay £1 to each creditor each month until the DMP gets underway. Some people even choose to defer the start of the DMP for a couple of months to get themselves an 'emergency fund'. An emergency fund is a bit of back up in case anything unexpected happens like a big car repair or your boiler breaks down etc.

Have you got enough to pay your essentials like rent/electric this month? What are you going to do for food/fuel? Let us know, we'll try to come up with suggestions how to survive this month.

Ok now the taking action bit:

1. Cancel any direct debits or CPA that will be included in the DMP now. You don't need them anymore now you are going on the DMP.
Does this leave you enough to get through til payday? If you have online banking, you might be able to do this without talking to anyone.

2. Next important thing, do you have any debts with the same or linked lender where your bank accounts are? If you do, and this one is VERY IMPORTANT; open a new basic bank account with a non-related lender, if you need help with this come back here for tips.

3. If you have any debts where you bank, take out all your money left in the bank now to stop it being taken in 'offsetting'.
Your essential bills will need paying in cash, but you can just tell them you are changing bank accounts, and ask for a cash banking form.

4. Consider telling SC you want to delay your DMP an extra month or 2 while you recover from making the January payments.

5. This is for the future - worry about 1-3 first. Account interest/charges. Creditors are supposed to give you a 30 day freeze on your account to sort out DMP etc. most will give you more than 30 days if you let them know the DMP is in the process of being set up.
After that some will contact you and tell you they have frozen interest, reduced interest, some will tell you they have accepted the DMP, some won't tell you anything but just change your payment schedule to the DMP. Some creditors will tell you they have rejected the DMP - that's just tough luck for them, SC will tell you to keep paying through SC I and ignore the rejected letters so don't panic over it.
Sometimes you only find out wht they are charging from your statement. DON'T rely on SC for your balances, their balances assume no interest and just take the payment amount off the total. Check each of your accounts each month and record the totals somewhere.


Let us know who your creditors are and we'll try to give you an idea of who charges what and what to do.

You are taking control - well done, thanks for posting and let us help you get through this. Sure some of the others will give you some advice and support here too so stay tuned

Sazzie

Thanks for the advice, no one said anything about token payments, so i've paid half of them for this month. I only have 4 debts equaling around £4500, with Natwest, Aqua Card, QuickQuid, and Very.co.uk.

The debt that made everything worse was quickquid, not because of the interest, but the payment dates, there were often 2 in each month of £60ish, once a month and i would have been ok. Then the spiral happened, i used credit card to live off, put all my xmas presents on a cataloge. The loan was to pay off an overdraft i'd been in since i was at university, paying off debt with other debt was a huge mistake, even if the payments seemed lower.

The dmp took forever to set up, and so did my nationwide basic bank account, so ive not transfered my money out yet, i had to quickly cancel my direct debit for my natwest loan to stop the payment, and as i was at work all day when the phone lines are open, i cant even sort this out til monday or later !

I don't have much money for the month, but i walk to work, bring lunch, and have a freezer full of food, i have enough money for rent, water, electric, and ive paid my council tax, other bills such as my mobile bill will have to be paid late.

talking all this through is helping, step change take ages to reply to emails and i work pretty much all day so cant phone them.

Feels like i've just ranted to everyone, you must get this all the time haha

racht

minkeymootoyou wrote: »

Thanks for the advice, no one said anything about token payments, so i've paid half of them for this month. I only have 4 debts equaling around £4500, with Natwest, Aqua Card, QuickQuid, and Very.co.uk.

The debt that made everything worse was quickquid, not because of the interest, but the payment dates, there were often 2 in each month of £60ish, once a month and i would have been ok. Then the spiral happened, i used credit card to live off, put all my xmas presents on a cataloge. The loan was to pay off an overdraft i'd been in since i was at university, paying off debt with other debt was a huge mistake, even if the payments seemed lower.

The dmp took forever to set up, and so did my nationwide basic bank account, so ive not transfered my money out yet, i had to quickly cancel my direct debit for my natwest loan to stop the payment, and as i was at work all day when the phone lines are open, i cant even sort this out til monday or later !

I don't have much money for the month, but i walk to work, bring lunch, and have a freezer full of food, i have enough money for rent, water, electric, and ive paid my council tax, other bills such as my mobile bill will have to be paid late.

talking all this through is helping, step change take ages to reply to emails and i work pretty much all day so cant phone them.

Feels like i've just ranted to everyone, you must get this all the time haha

Hi
I would just say with Very- change your phone number on your account to a false one (it wont let you leave it blank) I had to do this as was getting endless calls from them using lots of different numbers. I never answered them (googled numbers after) as I had read somewhere that they charge you for these calls- not sure if true but better to be safe. Also if you have put anything on BNPL recently- see if this can be cancelled before the DMP is mentioned as although they have frozen interest on my account- the BNPL interest will be added after the year etc if not paid off by the date.
Very was the only one that I had a few problems with at the start- more with the payment not being received from Stepchange but once sorted its all running ok