DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 10

Sazzie23

Jon81 wrote: »

Today's the day I have to tell my OH about the mess I'm in and I'm dreading it.

It's never an easy conversation, I hope it goes well for you. Maybe you'll feel better when it's out in the open, and perhaps OH will have some ideas for dealing with the problem. Xx

Sazzie23

timetosayenough wrote: »

Hi everyone,


Have had a traumatic morning this morning. Keep getting missed calls from loan company whose payment I cancelled. They always rang when I was busy with Dad. I've tried ringing them back but can't seem to get through. I've emailed them again explaining all this and saying it's stressing me out (which it is). They should have had letter by now. It's really worrying me because they obviously need to speak to me and for me to tell them what's going on. I'll keep trying, Dad always has snooze in the afternoon, so will keep trying then.

Hi Time, did you manage to get through eventually?
As another Op suggested, it might just be automated calls rather than a genuine someone calling. Do they leave a number to call back to? If you still want to talk, or still get the calls, try calling your usual customer services number, and say, 'I'm having financial problems, I'm trying to sort it out through Stepchange - this is my reference number, please stop calling me'.

Usually easier to get through in the afternoons, although weekends maybe a bit different.

blisteringblue

kb_soma wrote: »

I wish I'd hounded my creditors to ask them to freeze the interest, then took it to complaints to the fos. I got letters back saying no, and didn't continue to chase them. Sounds like I could have been successful with that.

Morning All, up early as the boiler has broken so no hot water, but it's covered so no big bill there

I totally agree with KB_Soma, hassle any creditors who will not stop interest every month if needs be. It only costs a stamp. Really hassle them as much as they can hassle us. Some simply try it on.

Stepchange while great at not good at forcing companies to stop interest, their system is too regimented. You pay an amount and it is evenly split to creditors.

There really is no problem you doing what stepchange do yourself. You get the same response re the debts but you are free to pay them as little as you want. You will be amazed what a few months of £1 payments can do.

We are well on the way to our Barclaycard defaults using this method. They are not bothered and actually said on the phone while they cannot tell us to do this, it's the only way to get away from their stupid sliding scale, payment & interest DMP plans.

Just got 2 months interest back from them too which was nice and wasn't expecting it, just kept badgering away. Always by letter, only spoken to them on the phone once in 14 months of DMP.

If you don't ask you don't get. There is nothing scary dealing with credit companies, those new to DMPs will soon learn this.

So sleep soundly folks, you can get it sorted.

KrazyKel

Morning everyone! Hope you are all having a nice weekend!

Im not in a DMP yet, as ive been trying to decide if its right for me or not. (Even though I know from the level of my debt I think its the best route to get it paid off, not sure im ready for it yet, if that makes sense)

Still going to ring my Lloyds bank monday and ask for a new card and cheque book anyway - get things in place for if/when I decide to do the DMP route
Think I may start to use it as my main account anyway as one of my biggest debts is my HSBC overdraft and think i tend to use it because its there/available, Made a good start to clear it this year by almost £1000 then one thing and another got use again, car repairs, other bills, not budgeting enough
I don't spend or use any of my credit cards, Don't even know the PIN or have cards for some which is good, so wont be increasing my debt that way!

I checked my Noddle today (Need to check again later as its updated today for me) and I have £1000 available on Virgin CC, I did get a text about a 0% offer on that account, - need to re-register for their online banking to see the details as not done that since they went from MBNA to Virgin Money or something.

I do have some spare money this month, thanks to not spending much and ebaying, It usually just goes in my bank (well gets my overdraft down a bit) but I tend to use my overdraft too much as 'its there'
Might look at using extra, paying it towards my virgin CC, will then have a bigger amount to do the 0% transfer to clear/reduce another CC....

Will look at the snowball calculator and stuff this week too!

KID77

blisteringblue wrote: »

Morning All, up early as the boiler has broken so no hot water, but it's covered so no big bill there

I totally agree with KB_Soma, hassle any creditors who will not stop interest every month if needs be. It only costs a stamp. Really hassle them as much as they can hassle us. Some simply try it on.

Stepchange while great at not good at forcing companies to stop interest, their system is too regimented. You pay an amount and it is evenly split to creditors.

There really is no problem you doing what stepchange do yourself. You get the same response re the debts but you are free to pay them as little as you want. You will be amazed what a few months of £1 payments can do.

We are well on the way to our Barclaycard defaults using this method. They are not bothered and actually said on the phone while they cannot tell us to do this, it's the only way to get away from their stupid sliding scale, payment & interest DMP plans.

Just got 2 months interest back from them too which was nice and wasn't expecting it, just kept badgering away. Always by letter, only spoken to them on the phone once in 14 months of DMP.

If you don't ask you don't get. There is nothing scary dealing with credit companies, those new to DMPs will soon learn this.

So sleep soundly folks, you can get it sorted.

Hi BB!

Have BC said they are going to default you? Will they back date your default or do it from now? I emailed them the other day to check they had heard from SC and all ok, they came back to say they have written to SC but wouldn't tell me what their response was, hopefully I will find that out this week.

With regards to self managed, I feel confident in doing it all myself as I will continue to deal directly with creditors where I need to (i am learning that SC are obviously very busy) but I like being with SC for starting up as feel that if they have approved my budget then creditors less likely to question it and reject it.

2 creditors have been amazing, freezing interest for duration and advising they will default, in terms of being on a DMP, you just can't ask for more!

I will wait to see how things go over the next few months with BC and if not going as planned then I may seek some advice from you on starting to go self managed :-)

K
xx

patch22

Hi all, hope everyone has had a nice weekend. Had an afternoon full of pouring rain but now it's lovely out there.

Timetosayenough - Sorry to hear about your horrible day. Hope you managed to get a reply from someone. It's possibly an automated call (with a computer generated message rather than an actual person on the other end) to say that a payment has been missed. Hope you're ok.

Growurown - Thank you I do have a problem with worrying about things (fuelled by my horrible habit of Googling everything!). Like you say, we're going to get the DMP going, see what happens and deal with problems as and when they arise.

Blisteringblue - Hope your boiler is sorted soon. Thanks for the advice about trying to get interest stopped. I think our initial payments to Barclaycard will fall quite a bit below what we normally pay so will see what they do.

Krazykel - Good luck with whatever you decide to do

Feeling better about things today and actually had a full night's sleep last night for the first time in ages. We're all ready to go with getting the important things back to SC and should be starting the DMP on 1st August. Have a few questions to ask them so will ring tomorrow morning to sort that out then email all the info across afterwards. We've been searching the house for things that we don't use to sell so that we can build up the emergency fund a bit.

I'll possibly need to call Sainsburys tomorrow as well to tell them. I'm due a bill in the next week or so, so am hoping that they'll freeze the account now to save the interest going on (wishful thinking?!). Do people advise sending letters now to all creditors to say that we're starting with SC? We'll have to with Barclaycard and Sainsurys as token payments will need to be paid before the plan starts, but not sure about the others.

I was saying to my husband a few weeks ago that we seem to get hardly any post these days. Think that may be about to change!

Sazzie23

Hi Patch

Actually I get much less post than I used to, as many of the creditors are now on sort of surveillance rather than standard billing, I don't even get many bills.

Pre DMP I often didn't open my mail, these days it worries me less and I have a pact with myself to open it all. Its generally lesss scary to read what is inside than what I think might be?

Have a good day/week eveyone

Sazzie23

Woke up early

Thankfully its a bit rare these days, but thought I'd try to catch up on a few things I've let slide, like my beloved spreadsheets.

Anyway, after a noddle search, I'm found now less than £70k owed, (including mortgage and secured loan) ...yippee especially as next door have just sold their house for around £90K so if I sold up, I could be debt free...though I'm not planning to, its just the idea that appeals :-)

blisteringblue

KID77 wrote: »

Have BC said they are going to default you? Will they back date your default or do it from now? I emailed them the other day to check they had heard from SC and all ok, they came back to say they have written to SC but wouldn't tell me what their response was, hopefully I will find that out this week.

Hi Kid,

Please don't take this the wrong way but I still read your posts as being totally fixated about getting all your defaults in early. While in an ideal world this would be nice it really shouldn't be the defining aspect of your DMP.

The DMP is about clearing a debt that is out of control. The only reason a default is going to help is to eventually get more debt at the end of this process.

My Barclaycard process is simply not about the default, it is about getting them to stop interest so I pay my DMP as early as possible. Getting the default is the only way they will stop this interest which is why I am trying to force that.

My biggest creditor MBNA have already said they will NOT default me, but will be interest free for up to 5 years as long as I clear the debt by then. So they will be on my file for the 3 more years of the DMP plus the 6 to then drop off, but so be it. This does not concern me.

In answer to your question though, BC will not back date it, they have only issued a first notice of default, it will still be about 3 more months before it becomes official. This is just my BC though, Mrs BBs is probably about a month behind mine.

citycentremj

kb_soma wrote: »

Hi, and welcome to the thread. My DMP was originally supposed to be cleared in 3 years (estimated Debt Free date was 2014), this is calculated with the assumption that creditors freeze interest.

At some point when I redid my budget it changed to 2016, but by paying extra off my DMP my actual debt free date was June 2015.

I think in order to do the best that you can to reach your DFD is ask your creditors to freeze interest.

It is doable, but everybody is different, as you say you are on a good wage, which means that you can pay more than maybe others, or others may have higher debt.

Good luck on your journey.

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I'm assuming it might become a longer period once the creditors have decided on what action they want to take. Is a relief to finally feel like this might now be in hand and out of the way in the near future.