Newbie - desperate need of some advice

kyronsmummy

Hi everyone, I have been lurking on here for a while now but never posted.

I will put on my SOA tonight when I get home from work cos I haven't got the time at the moment ( I am on my lunch break!)

Long and short of it is that between my husband and I we owe £42k on credit cards, loans and overdraftes, not to mention £10k on 2 cars and £87k on our mortgage and secured loan. I should mention that our mortgage, secured loan, and both HPI agreements are up to date with no arrears.

For the unsecured debt we have a payment plan with a company called Spectrum whereby we pay £25.63 per month and of that £8 is split between 8 creditors ie £1 each and Spectrum keep £17.63 for "fees".

None of our creditors are happy with this arrangement and despite the fact that we have been doing this since January they are all still adding interest and referring to debt recovery etc, with the exception of Halifax (£11k cc) who have stopped interest. One of the creditors have just been successful in having a charging order placed on our house which takes us into negative equity so there is no chance of selling it.

What I want to know is can I stop paying Spectrum and set up my own payment plan with my creditors? Do I have to use a company?? I have tried CCCS and they say that I need to increase our income which I have by returning to work full time, but they still say that there is no disposable income to work with!! They are taking our outgoings as they should be if we were paying the proper repayments rather than how they are at the moment (ie £1 each).

Can anyone help??

jo1972

Hi there :wave:

Welcome to MSE and well done for posting

I don't know much about payment plans but I'm sure there will be others along soon to help. There is a DMP mutual support thread on this board so you'll probably get loads of tips and support on there too. I hope there is a way to get out of the current plan you are in though because you shouldn't be paying someone to do this for you.

Definately post your SOA later and you'll be given tons of tips on how to reduce your outgoings.

Speak soon

Jo.x

rog2

£17.63 a month for fees, when only £8.00 is going to creditors. :eek: :eek:
You need to ditch Spectrum without delay.
Of course you can set up a DMP on your own, but the general consensus (with a few notable exceptions) is that creditors are more likely to co-operate with a known Debt Management intermediary.
I am a bit surprised at the reaction from CCCS - perhaps you should speal with them again?
There are other Debt Counselling Charities - including Payplan, the CAB and many others, ALL of whom will do at least the same job as Spectrum and it won't cost you a penny in fees.

floss2

If you set up a debt plan with a.n.other organisation, you could be paying £3.20 each to the creditors and still have 3p left to spend!

I would look at the other organisations & check out the DMP Support thread too.

CLAPTON

Best to post your SOA and we can comment.

But in truth if you really only have £25 per month for debts of 42k then all you can do is to pay your £1 or so, as there is currently no timescale that you can actually pay the debts back.
This is why CCCS can't really help set up a DMP because at the current rate it would take more than 100 years to repay the debts.
The other possibility is bankruptcy but lets see the full details before leaping to any further conclusions.

chevalier

Hi there
welcome
I am sure we can sort your budget so that you have more disposable income. Will look out for your SOA later.
Southernscousers sticky at the top of the forum is a good guide to what to put in it
chev