About to embark on becoming Debt free - where to start?

smelliesocks7

Hi there,

Am completely new to this site. After making many financial mistakes in my early 20s (living beyond my means) and burying my head in the sand for many years after it, I am now wanting to face my debts head on, and pay them off with the view of potentially getting onto the property ladder by 40. (giving myself a 6 year time scale goal to pay off and improve credit score). So far, I have accessed my credit report with Experian. This doesn't show all my debts, so I don't actually know how much I owe. How can I find this out? An educated guess is approx 15K. I finally now earn a fairly reasonable monthly salary and have also joined an agency to work extra shifts which will bump up my monthly income, and plan was to use this to help pay off debts. But first things first I need to work out how much I actually owe, and whom to, but I don't know who to contact to do this. Any advice would be much appreciated.

National_Debtline

Hi

Welcome to the forum.

A simple way to find out who you owe money to and how much is to check your credit reference files.

There are three main credit reference agencies in the UK and some debts are only shown on one of them so it's worth checking all three. The three agencies are Experian, Equifax and Call Credit.

As well as Experian which you've already checked, you can search www.equifax.com for free using their free 1 month trial if you cancel in time. You can always check Call Credit's information for free on www.noddle.co.uk


James
@natdebtline