Help needed on credit card debt

TedBear78

In the year 2000 i lost my business and therefore my job and not worked since so paid the minimum payments on my credit cards. This year i left my wife and am living in a friends house ,To get by is difficult so i rang the last people i have a direct debit with asking how much i owe on my card (which i havn't used since 2000) they said £700+ still ...The debt was around £1500 in 2000 .So for 15 years i have been paying the minimum and it has halved ,The lady on the phone said it will take approx another 20 years to pay it off !!!. So i stopped the direct debit and now i got a letter from some debt collection agency , what can i do as i cannot afford to pay ? This card is a Marks and Spencers store card.

InsideInsurance

Probably best to speak to a debt charity like Step Change http://www.stepchange.org/

If your total debts are £700 then theres not much you can do if you have no assets to liquidate/ friends to borrow off but allow them to go through the courts and get to repay them at some minimal amount but the charity will be able to give you more professional advice

DalePie

This is the problem with the 30% plus cards. The minimum fee hardly pays anything off the debt which means you'll be paying the minimum off for years.

It seems like the account is probably in default (Did you receive a default Notice) which means you won't likely qualify for a 0% deal.

Btw what's happened since 2000? Have you managed to sort yourself out? That's quite a long time.

stator

Your first step would be to negotiate with the CC company.You should offer to continue making the minimum payment if they agree to freeze the interest. If that doesn't work you should get some independent advice from one of the debt charities.

TedBear78

DalePie wrote: »

This is the problem with the 30% plus cards. The minimum fee hardly pays anything off the debt which means you'll be paying the minimum off for years.

It seems like the account is probably in default (Did you receive a default Notice) which means you won't likely qualify for a 0% deal.

Btw what's happened since 2000? Have you managed to sort yourself out? That's quite a long time.

Hi, Thank you for the advise i will look into a charity for help. It is a long time and been struggling all that time , I tried to get jobs but to no avail and now at the age of 63 not much chance .Living on benefits is crap but thats by the way . Again i thank you for your help and time