Hello Everyone - MY SOA and Debt Dairy

RAS

Well done.

Amazing what you can do. Ready to hit the next high rate CC?

Keep at it.

pandapaws

:j :j :j
Hooray!

And now the next one can get paid off twice as fast, and so on, and so on!!!

Keep going at this rate and you'll be debt-free by Christmas

pandapaws

I'm sure that you'll do it - you're doing grand so far.

Have you had a go on Quidco? I think someone mentioned it before, but not sure if you took them up on it or not. I made over £450 last month which I'm keeping in their account for now to save for Xmas, from (I think) an £80 investment (in £5s and £10s). Go for the bingo and gambling (so long you are able to walk away as soon as you've joined and got the cashback!) as a lot of them offer £20-30 free cash for making a £10 deposit, and MBNA (your best friends!) have a few credit cards offering £8.50 just for applying - you know what they'll say, but it's £8.50 free for 5 mins filling a form - obviously not suitable for everyone as it affects credit rating, but if you've got missed payments and arrears, then I doubt a couple of searches would do much more damage so maybe worth a go.

You can also do things through Quidco like change your gas/elec even if you don't particularly need to - I got £35 for that as well as slightly cheaper deal, and you can do it again every few months if you like. There are also the daily clicks for tiny amounts like 5p/10p each that all add up. If you've got a partner you can open a quidco account each and double the benefits. If you can stand half an hour of someone trying to sell you blinds, you get £20 from Hillary's just for taking the appointment (I did, and he didn't even bother measuring up as I told him we wanted Velux blinds but cheaper than Velux, and he said he wouldn't bother wasting my or his time as they can't compete - double bargain!).

Maybe some of it is not of much interest to you, but if you could make £400 it would pretty much put that other bad card to death as well. Take a look at quidco.com - it costs nowt (they only charge £5 a year which they take out of your earnings, so nothing gained, nothing lost!). There are other sites with similar offers and possibilities but I personally like Quidco best.

Hope that helps. I'm off to try and get my head around matched betting for the 4th time this week - I'm sure it's easy, but... !

Spirit_2

Well done. You have given up some goods but hopefully you are gaining peace of mind. I feel like I am seizing back control and that in itself is rewarding. Good luck.

pandapaws

I would say that's harassment and I don't think they're allowed to do that, but I suppose stopping them is another matter.

If it was me, I think that for the peace of mind I'd probably try and get the MBNA account back in order and then make an arrangement with them to pay a regular amount each month. You're probably being charged more by them in overlimit charges, fees and extra interest than you are on the high APR card that's paid up to date.

If you can, (and I might not be giving the best advice, only what I'd do myself) I'd go back to minimum payments on the high APR card and sort out MBNA first, then when you're back to making min payments to MBNA go back to concentrating on the high card.

And I'd definitely apply for each one of their cards on Quidco for £8.50 cashback each, just for a laugh!!!

pandapaws

And I'd also tell them that you're seeking advice from Citizens Advice about the harassment - phoning at 1am is definitely harassment, and I'm sure it can't be legal.

chevalier

stevenc75 wrote: »

Hi clairel, I'm determined not to use a debt management company. I'm confident (so far) that I can find a way out of this. The two really high APR cards will be the first to go. Maybe I'm being naive but the way I see it is that every debt I pay off will release funds to tackle the other debts. It might take a while but I think it is possible.

If, a year down the line, I'm making no headway then I might consider a debt management company, but I got myself into this and I'd like to get myself out of it. I hope that this time next week I'll be transferring the funds to clear the first card. We'll see.

Sorry but I don't understand this comment. If you use a debt management company like CCCS or Payplan to set up a debt management plan (DMP), then you will still pay back all that you owe, BUT CRUCIALLY it is at a rate that YOU CAN AFFORD and very often your creditors WILL FREEZE THE INTEREST AND STOP ADDING CHARGES. So the payment you make them starts eating into the debt and isn't eaten up by charges.

In the light of the hassle you are getting from MBNA why would you pay extra in charges and interest for another year, when you can start paying off your actual debt in a few months (it takes a while for all creditors to come on board). They tend to deal better with companies than they do with people. And CCCS and Payplan don't charge fees.

Also ref your low pay, are you eligible for working tax credit? Or council tax benefit? Is this pay only for you?

best of luck
chev

pandapaws

Well done for tackling them - what a horrible phone call to make, bet you sat looking at the phone for ages trying to decide what to say, I know I would!

I don't know whether it's a reasonable amount or not - I suppose if you look at it from MBNA's point of view, they're going to try and get the absolute maximum from you that they can. Mentioning the secured loan should bring it down a bit, but from their point of view, why should Barclaycard or Vanquis or whoever else you are paying the full amount to get their cash, when MBNA don't?

Are the amounts that you're paying to all the other cards/finance covering the minimum required payments? I just had a look back at your SOA and saw that you had initially put MBNA down as a £40 a month outgoing which must not have been enough to cover the minimum.

In my untrained opinion (and look at my signature - who am I to advise on debt?!) I would say that if you're able to make ALL of the minimum repayments to everyone each month as well as having enough to live on and pay all your bills then stick with it and do that, then try to get any extra you can to put towards clearing the debt faster.

But if you're really struggling to find enough just to make the minimum payments, then you really might be better with CCCS/Payplan or something similar (as someone said above, avoid them on the TV like the plague!) As mentioned by a couple of people, these guys still pay off the debt for you, and you can pay as much extra towards it as you want, but they manage it all properly for you and deal with all the companies on your behalf. I looked into it in the past, but decided that as we are able to pay everything it wasn't worth doing as it would damage our credit, but to be honest, from what you say I think that you might well be doing more damage to your credit with late payments etc that being on a structured payment agreement would do.

Effectively, what you've done today with MBNA is set up your own mini-DMP, but instead of it including everyone it only includes one creditor. CCCS would do the same thing, but sort the lot of them out at once (and creditors are more likely to listen to them than you personally).

I know you said you'd rather try and sort it out but I think Chevalier has got a point, that if things are a bit ropey it might be better to at least speak to someone - you said you might give CCCS a ring, and I think you can do this anonymously so you could at least get some advice and you'd have all the proper info to consider rather than listening to me waffling on about it!!!

Well done anyway for at least getting that agreement out of MBNA - it's a lot better than the £230 they wanted, and hopefully they won't phone you at 1am tonight!!!

(my new motto: why use 10 words when 1000 can do the job just as well?!!! I'd add it to my signature, but I'm out of characters!)

pandapaws

That's great that they've agreed to take a little bit less, and at least the £49 will actually be going straight towards the debt rather than just interest and charges. If you do manage to earn more, then it would probably be best (check that I'm not saying something illegal here!) not to tell MBNA, just to keep going with the £49 for as long as they're happy and to pay off everything else first. So long as they don't change their mind at any stage, you've effectively got a 0% life of balance debt there - great result!!! They might review it from time to time, so it might be worth setting up a standing order for the £49 just to make sure it never gets overlooked as you don't want to risk breaching that agreement and losing the deal they've agreed to.

Even when you've paid everything else off except MBNA, you might just want to save up the money somewhere and pay it to them in a lump sum when you've saved enough. I've heard that when debts are on long-term plans like that companies will often settle for a lump sum less than the amount still owed just to clear the debt from their books, (so e.g. if you still owe them £2000, offer then £1200 as full and final settlement - you don't need to tell them where the money's coming from) so that might be worth a try in the future. My sis-in-law oewd £10k to a company and got they accepted £6.5k just to get rid!

Very best of luck with the job hunt - I think there's a board on here somewhere with advice, and if the people there are as helpful as those here have been to me then you're guaranteed success!

pandapaws

Thanks for the Thankses!!!

Keep on hammering!