DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 11

sourcrates

January2015 wrote: »

New bank account opened for self-managed DMP (gave up with HSBC because Yorkshire Bank do a basic account I can open online with an instant decision....and it was YES:j)

So I am printing off letter to SC to tell them we are moving to self-managed.

One question to anyone who have moved from managed to self-managed already. We would like to do token payments for 1 or 2 months to build back up our much depleted emergency fund. Do you think there will be a problem with this? If you did this, what did you say/what reason did you give?

Thanks for any help and advice.

I am quite excited at only paying BC £1 per month until defaulted....it's sad what's makes me smile these days

Hi January,

Going self managed is all about taking back control.

In the same vane, you tell the creditors what you are going to do.

You don't ask there permission, nor do you seek there approval, you tell them how it's going to be.

Pay them £1 a month by all means, build up your savings, but don't feel you need to ask them first.

January2015

sourcrates wrote: »

Hi January,

Going self managed is all about taking back control.

In the same vane, you tell the creditors what you are going to do.

You don't ask there permission, nor do you seek there approval, you tell them how it's going to be.

Pay them £1 a month by all means, build up your savings, but don't feel you need to ask them first.

Thanks Sourcrates

I've written the letters based on NEDCAB documents and said £1 per month for Feb and March. I've made them all aware the January payment will come from SC and be the current level of payment.

I am holding off writing to MBNA pending their CCA response.

Lots of lovely letters going via recorded delivery tomorrow :j

BC are being told £1 per month regardless until interest stopped/account defaulted.

January2015

Just realised from checking our SC online account that our Hellifax OD is now with Lloyds Bank plc. I don't have an address for this debt - they updated SC with the change of who to pay - it didn't go through me.

There are loads of addresses for Lloyds Bank - so in writing to SC I have asked for address and this letter will have to wait a while.

sourcrates

January2015 wrote: »

Just realised from checking our SC online account that our Hellifax OD is now with Lloyds Bank plc. I don't have an address for this debt - they updated SC with the change of who to pay - it didn't go through me.

There are loads of addresses for Lloyds Bank - so in writing to SC I have asked for address and this letter will have to wait a while.

Lloyds and Halifax are now part of the same banking group.

Brogden

sourcrates wrote: »

Hi January,

Going self managed is all about taking back control.

In the same vane, you tell the creditors what you are going to do.

You don't ask there permission, nor do you seek there approval, you tell them how it's going to be.

Pay them £1 a month by all means, build up your savings, but don't feel you need to ask them first.

Whilst I developed a fairly bolshy attitude in my self-managed DMP, I don't completely agree with what you have said here.

Although we should stand up for ourselves, we MUST seek agreement from predators of our payment proposals. This is easily obtained through the use of carefully constructed I&E's so providing the I&E backs up our offer to pay £1 per month there would not normally be any problem.

The only reason I am jumping in here is........if we do not have approval and a confirmed payment arrangement with a predator then we leave ourselves wide open to the worst nightmares of the indebted :eek:. We will receive a barrage of nasty mail, the phone will never stop ringing and the possibility of court action can become real. :eek:

Thanks for your help on my recent CCA queries Sourcrates but I just felt I need to mention this. I have staved off court action but the other two parts of the nightmare I have experienced to the full until I learned of the remedy !!

sourcrates

Brogden wrote: »

Whilst I developed a fairly bolshy attitude in my self-managed DMP, I don't completely agree with what you have said here.

Although we should stand up for ourselves, we MUST seek agreement from predators of our payment proposals. This is easily obtained through the use of carefully constructed I&E's so providing the I&E backs up our offer to pay £1 per month there would not normally be any problem.

The only reason I am jumping in here is........if we do not have approval and a confirmed payment arrangement with a predator then we leave ourselves wide open to the worst nightmares of the indebted :eek:. We will receive a barrage of nasty mail, the phone will never stop ringing and the possibility of court action can become real. :eek:

Thanks for your help on my recent CCA queries Sourcrates but I just felt I need to mention this. I have staved off court action but the other two parts of the nightmare I have experienced to the full until I learned of the remedy !!

We all have our ways of doing things, totally respect that.

I guess experience has also taught me to be no ones fool.

That's just how I'd approach it, I find if you take the "fireworm" approach, you don't get walked over,

Brogden

sourcrates wrote: »

We all have our ways of doing things, totally respect that.

I guess experience has also taught me to be no ones fool.

That's just how I'd approach it, I find if you take the "fireworm" approach, you don't get walked over,

Whilst I may be appearing to be a 'lily-livered wimp' in requesting permission from a creditor to pay an amount I can afford, that isn't really the case !!

Everything we do in the civilised world we do with agreement between the parties concerned and this (assuming CCA watertight ) can be no different.

If I was in the Co-op and took a tin of beans priced at 50p to the counter, was a 'fireworm' and advised the assistant they were worth only 20p, then slapped a 20p on the counter and walked out of the shop with my lunch, we can imagine I may be heading for a few problems in life !!

I wholly agree Sourcrates that there are different ways to skin a cat !! The bank has it's 'risk based approach.' It knows it will have defaulters and it tries to estimate the proportion of accounts which will end in default and price accordingly. OK,,,,,,we know where we stand in that.

Having defaulted there are then in the collections department two groups of customers. The first group have agreed confirmed payment arrangements and they are left in peace and no dark shadows are hanging. The second group do not deal, they go missing, they do not correspond, they do not co-operate with anything, they refuse to produce I&E's etc etc. Their lives are not peaceful and many suffer enormous stress. It is members of this group who end up with CCJ's and charging orders. Simply.....they are just not up to 'self-managing.'

It is up to us to choose which group we want to be in .

Sourcrates, I have read and appreciate your posts since joining the forum and salute you as like me you support the ordinary person against the corporate foe. Long may it continue. You may be surprised if you heard me on the phone negotiating an agreed payment arrangement because it isn't a pretty sound.....not sure if it qualifies as 'fireworm' though

I would be concerned if somebody left Step Change to go self-managed, was a fireworm and ended up with all of the problems we all fear. They would wish they had stayed with Step Change. Step Change seeks agreements with our creditors and if we leave them to go self-managed then we must seek agreements for ourselves. If we don't we will fail.

Jaydee92

Hello,

Hope I do this right (new to site) I have been reading through the forum and hoping someone can give me some advice.
I will start from the beginning.. Last year we (husband and I) took out a loan with HSBC to pay off all other debts. £12,000 but paying back £20,000! I know this is a lot but I budgeted that we could afford the repayments for the 5 years we signed up for. It was an conditional loan that my husband had to take all the CC's in and they paid them and cut the cards up. Anyway. I was happy with this as I knew each month the balance would be going down. Anyway, skip to the first week of January 2016 when I had the biggest shock to open a statement off MBNA maxed out at £4,000! Seems my husband has been gambling started when his dad died in October after a very short illness! He then admitted that in 5 months he has totalled £8,500 on 4 cards (the cards that were cut up, but given back to him!! Why do they do that?? he still had the numbers to use online) ... Anyway I budget every month and we are always tight but if we have money for rent, council tax, food, kids stuff etc I never felt we were hard up.. But I spent days crying because there was just no way I could not figure this out. So we rang stepchange and they are setting us up on a DMP to start next month. We went through our budget (pretty much the same each month) and were told we do not spend enough on shopping so they put that up to £300 a month. They said the only things we were over the recommendation were sky (we have cancelled to just having broadband with them saving £42 a month) and our mobile bills (contracts end in March, so going for sim only) they have also given us clothing allowance etc which mean we have disposable income of £270. But I am so worried - our loan with HSBC was £330 a month and now £270 has to go around 5 creditors! I suppose I'm just worried that no one is going to except it and hound us. Stepchange said it will take up 8 years 8 months to pay (but what if no one stops interest or fees?) I know this is our only way, we can't do this on our own. Any advice at all will be greatly appreciated on how to deal with creditors etc. Thank you x

sourcrates

Jaydee92 wrote: »

I'm just worried that no one is going to except it and hound us. Stepchange said it will take up 8 years 8 months to pay (but what if no one stops interest or fees?) I know this is our only way, we can't do this on our own. Any advice at all will be greatly appreciated on how to deal with creditors etc. Thank you x

Hi,

Ok, first off dont panic !!

Most creditors stop interest, or reduce it, when you start a DMP, those that don't straight away, usually do eventually.

If any don't, or are unhappy with what there getting paid, they simply sell on the debt, and the new owner, normally a DCA, will accept your payment.

Creditors have been warned by the regular (FSA) to treat customers fairly, so they have to take affordability into account.

Most people don't have many problems once the arrangement is up and running, I wouldn't worry !!

lucy_w86

Hi All, floated around this site for a year and a year down the line ended up worse off. So 2016 is my year to tackle it all.

I have just had a lengthy discussion with SC and listed all my income and expenditures and got a full report based on what I can afford each month. Scary part over and wasn't as bad as I thought.

Now I would 'prefer' to self manage rather than work with SC but don't know how to go about it. In previous months my Nationwide overdraft have refused to stop interest. Is it possible to get them to stop interest going alone or should I really work with SC to get this done?

Sorry if I sound a bit silly. Just determined to get mine and my families life back on track, for the better!!