DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 11

butterflyballoon

Delighted to find this thread with all you lovely knowledgeable people/people in the same boat/both! - we're on a DMP through Step Change and have two outstanding BC amounts that are still charging interest (at a 'reduced' amount of 12.9%). I've been extremely ill with anxiety through worrying about debt for the last I don't know how long (a decade and a half, really, I guess). With that in mind, I'm not sure that moving to a self managed DMP is sensible; how easy is it? How much admin is involved? I like the reassurance of being able to ring the lovely people at SC, and I'm not sure how much more quickly we'd be debt-free if we went to a self-managed plan - our BC amounts are among the lowest outstanding amounts (though no way could we eg afford to pay them off outright).

sourcrates

butterflyballoon wrote: »

I've been extremely ill with anxiety through worrying about debt for the last I don't know how long (a decade and a half, really, I guess).

Are all your accounts that old ?


If so, CCA request to each should be the way to go, if they are cards or loans etc, as I doubt very much if they would be able to comply after 15 years.

butterflyballoon

sourcrates wrote: »

butterflyballoon wrote: »

I've been extremely ill with anxiety through worrying about debt for the last I don't know how long (a decade and a half, really, I guess).

Are all your accounts that old ?

If so, CCA request to each should be the way to go, if they are cards or loans etc, as I doubt very much if they would be able to comply after 15 years.

What's a CCA request, please? No, our debts aren't that old - we got into a mess of using 0% cards to pay off other cards, getting a loan to pay off credit cards, etc - it spiralled rather and I didn't speak to anybody about it, just tried to sort it all out by myself and felt guilty/useless for not being able to. Then discovered Step Change just before Christmas last year and have been on a DMP since January. Having a bank account that stays (marginally!) in credit all month has been a revelation!

Debts are:

HSBC loan (don't know re interest rate, thinking about it - they're just accepting the reduced payment with the same outstanding amount left, but had all the interest we'd paid on it so far paid back to us at Christmas because of a mistake in the way it was sold to us - completely out of the blue and much appreciated (was about £1.5k)).
Halifax credit card - now at zero interest and had charges paid back for last couple of months last month
Nationwide credit card - at zero interest since Christmas
Car loan (with Santander - had one charge of £35 on it and not sure whether interest-bearing now - they're accepting the reduced payment we've offered through SC)
Two Barclaycards (at 12.9% interest)
Two overdrafts (Nationwide and HSBC - both zero interest now).

sourcrates

Ok,
doesn't matter then, I thought your accounts may be all 15 years old.


CCA request is a request for a copy of your original agreement, without it, an account may be rendered unenforceable, but would only now apply to accounts where a paper agreement was signed, normally prior to 2007.

Would of been another string to your bow, but it wont be relevant now.

butterflyballoon

No, nothing is that old (I guess the HSBC overdraft is older, but it's the smallest amount (£724) and it's not the same as a loan with a series of payments, I guess?).

blisteringblue

Sazzie23 wrote: »

I think sometimes DMPers feel guilty about forcing the companies to go 0%. But what about all their 'good' customers who are on 0% they don't feel guilty about us paying interest for them.

It's been a very long time since I ever felt guilty about credit and creditors. I just wish I'd stopped the debt merry-go-round years ago and started my DMP rather than, and I'm almost too ashamed to write this Draw down funds on my flexible mortgage to clear my debts, only to run them back over 50K about 4 years after that. So not only am I clearing the credit cards, my mortgage is 40K higher than it needs to be.

So believe me I feel no guilt to those blood sucking parasites. Base Rate went to a record low for how long now, and the credit card companies did nothing but rate jack us all to astronomical levels. What they did should have been outlawed but they managed to get away with it. So feel no guilt people !

So that leaves me personally 3 years to sort the DMP and then 5 years to pay off the mortgage.

I think the phrase is ON A MISSION

NewcastlePaul

Evening all.
having a drink tonight to celebrate.

I have now either paid on my DMP or negotiated away 100k of debt !!

A year past January I took a day off work and rang all my creditors and enquired about PPI. Ove the next month I received £25k in cheques (despite still owing the majority of them)

I have used this money to make full and final settlements worth over 41k to get rid of all but 1 of my creditors. A. Finally I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Seems a lifetime ago that I rang Stepchange
(10 years in December)

Before i started my PPI journey I thought I had 9 years left
Thanks to F&F settlements it is now 15 months.

:beer: :T :j

Sazzie23

NewcastlePaul wrote: »

Evening all.
having a drink tonight to celebrate.

I have now either paid on my DMP or negotiated away 100k of debt !!

A year past January I took a day off work and rang all my creditors and enquired about PPI. Ove the next month I received £25k in cheques (despite still owing the majority of them)

I have used this money to make full and final settlements worth over 41k to get rid of all but 1 of my creditors. A. Finally I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Seems a lifetime ago that I rang Stepchange
(10 years in December)

Before i started my PPI journey I thought I had 9 years left
Thanks to F&F settlements it is now 15 months.

:beer: :T :j

Cheers Paul, a well earned drink:beer:
Good inspiration to others. :T

KID77

Well done Paul, that is amazing :-) xx

patch22

Paul, that is amazing! Well done, love hearing stories like yours. We're just starting out and it's so nice to see people reaching their goals.

We've finally made the first payment to SC. After all the worry and uncertainty of the last few months it feels good to be on our way. Our friends at Barclays/Barclaycard have been their usual awkward selves, but thanks to you lovely people on here sharing your experiences, we've been expecting it. BC have the account on hold at the moment. They wrote to OH to say they note that SC are dealing with the account and that an informal dmp will be put in place but as the first payment isn't due until the end of the month (it's actually already gone out) they need acknowledgement of it from SC nearer the time. They'll then write back to SC advising the full terms of the agreement. In the same letter they say that SC have been in touch with them and have quoted the payment amount! Why do they have to complicate it so much?! Barclays are still adding account fees and interest on to our overdrafts, so we'll be writing to them soon. Sainsburys seem to have stopped all interest/charges which is good. The man I spoke to last month said it will probably be defaulted quite early on. The other two accounts are already with DCAs and haven't heard from them at all yet. One is getting a reduced payment from what we were paying them before so think they may be in touch at some point. So all in all it's been fairly quiet - for now! We did get another letter from BC offering interest free balance transfers til February 2016 though. Don't think we'll be getting many more of them somehow!

Just want to say thank you so much to everyone who contributes to the thread. We've avoided thinking about our debt for so long and facing up to it has been a huge wake up call. Reading through this thread and the ones before it has been a huge help.