DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 11

[Deleted User]

Thanks so much Puzz and January:T. The experiences and example of you two have been very influential in helping me to bite the bullet myself:A


Puzz, please could you explain why you opt for SO payments to creditors rather than DD? I expect you already mentioned it somewhere but I can't recall what it was:o. I assume it's to do with being easier to alter payments when you need to. I haven't used a SO for years so have forgotten about their usefulness. I seem to have been reading and dealing with so much financial info just lately my brain aches:(. I shall certainly be revisiting your diary. Apart from a mine of useful financial info it's a really fun place to be:dance:


January, thanks very much for the advice about NEDCAB:T. A lot of posters on here swear by it so I intended to use it anyway. Still not sure whether to let the Dec SC payment go through and then have January as a non-payment month. I only intend to do it once (famous last words;)) as time is of the essence with getting this horrible debt well and truly slayed. Might be more sensible to do it in December though as that should give me enough time to get things up and running for a January payment. Thanks for the suggestion:T

January2015

carbootcrazy wrote: »

Thanks so much Puzz and January:T. The experiences and example of you two have been very influential in helping me to bite the bullet myself:A


Puzz, please could you explain why you opt for SO payments to creditors rather than DD? I expect you already mentioned it somewhere but I can't recall what it was:o. I assume it's to do with being easier to alter payments when you need to. I haven't used a SO for years so have forgotten about their usefulness. I seem to have been reading and dealing with so much financial info just lately my brain aches:(. I shall certainly be revisiting your diary. Apart from a mine of useful financial info it's a really fun place to be:dance:


January, thanks very much for the advice about NEDCAB:T. A lot of posters on here swear by it so I intended to use it anyway. Still not sure whether to let the Dec SC payment go through and then have January as a non-payment month. I only intend to do it once (famous last words;)) as time is of the essence with getting this horrible debt well and truly slayed. Might be more sensible to do it in December though as that should give me enough time to get things up and running for a January payment. Thanks for the suggestion:T

Hi again

Just like Puzz, I also pay creditors via SO rather than DD. I feel I have more control over the amount(s) and dates. For example we have recently gone back to token payments. I didn't worry that creditors may not have changed the amount to be collected by DD, I just changed the amount to be paid via SO.

I wouldn't want to give creditors direct access to my bank account. I know that if they take the wrong amount etc. I can challenge and the bank would have to repay me under the DD guarantee scheme - I'm just not going there with creditors and especially not DCAs.

Puzzcat

^^^^ For this reason cbc...^^^^

[Deleted User]

Thanks very much January and Puzz:T

Very sensible advice, point well and truly taken;)

braveheart6612

Hi Everyone

quick question I've been with stepchange since March 2016 , but like alot of posts they are very strict about payemts etc. My only concern about going self managed would be do creditors treat u differently and is it common to reintroduce interest and charges.??? SC is a safety blanket to sum extent. I have 19 creditors all have stopped interest and 3 defaulted. Am I just being too cautious and should I justv dive in and go self managed ??

sourcrates

braveheart6612 wrote: »

Hi Everyone

quick question I've been with stepchange since March 2016 , but like alot of posts they are very strict about payemts etc. My only concern about going self managed would be do creditors treat u differently and is it common to reintroduce interest and charges.??? SC is a safety blanket to sum extent. I have 19 creditors all have stopped interest and 3 defaulted. Am I just being too cautious and should I justv dive in and go self managed ??

Hi,

Creditors are obliged to treat you fairly, there is no reason to doubt you will receive treatment any different by going self managed than you would by being represented by stepchange.

January2015

braveheart6612 wrote: »

Hi Everyone

quick question I've been with stepchange since March 2016 , but like alot of posts they are very strict about payemts etc. My only concern about going self managed would be do creditors treat u differently and is it common to reintroduce interest and charges.??? SC is a safety blanket to sum extent. I have 19 creditors all have stopped interest and 3 defaulted. Am I just being too cautious and should I justv dive in and go self managed ??

Hi

The Lending Code section 212 states:

"Personal customers may choose a self-help approach to negotiating debt repayment. Subscribers should ensure that such proposals are given equal consideration as those presented through a debt adviser."

Creditors have to treat you the same as if you were with a debt counselling organisation, such as SC.

I started my DMP with SC in Jan2015 and owed almost £95k. One year later we went self-managed and dropped the DMP payments by 40%. We had 11 creditors at that point. All but one accepted without question the revised proposals for repayment and not one indicated that interest or charges would be re-introduced. The one creditor that did complain about the monthly payment changing was only getting under a tenner each month anyway so we just left it as it was.

It's important to note that all the way through our time with SC Barclaycard did not stop interest as we were paying over 1% each month. When we went onto self managed we dropped to £1 per month for BC. We challenged them lots, complained lots and got back all interest and charges to the start date of our DMP. We still only pay them £1 though.

All 11 of our debts are now defaulted

CP2016

Hi

I was an active member here a few years ago - in 2011 when my lightbulb was flickering because it looked as if I'd be made redundant and following a break up I was on my own with a load of debt a lot of which I paid off during 2011 but when I was made redundant I couldn't continue to pay my debts so I had my LBM in December 2011 and started my DMP with CCCS (now StepChange) with the first payment going out in February 2012. I paid in full in December then tokens in January. During all this I managed to get a new job - at half the pay I previously earned so I needed to buy some time to think about what I needed to do - there was more than enough equity in my house to clear debts if I sold up or I could get back into the same career area I was in before and go back to paying in full, although living in a rural area meant that wouldn't be easy - when I was reading old posts on this thread someone mentioned that well paid jobs in rural areas are like rocking horse poo - they are so right! I started my DMP with 35k debt and a DFD of 2030 and I felt that wasn't sustainable. Fast forward almost 5 years and I've got the debt down to 25k and with a couple of promotions I've managed to get the DFD day down to mid 2020. Because I started with such low payments I got defaulted by all but one of my creditors within 12 months and all except the same one stopped charges straight away. This one (Next) continued to apply charges (seemingly intermittently) and didn't default me until September this year. I'll be writing to them about both those things - I want the default backdated at least a year which will mean that when the debts are finally paid (on the current timetable) I'll have a clear slate - not that I intend to do anything more than use the DMP amount to overpay my mortgage but it will be good to have it all out of the way. The Next thing is my own fault, I didn't manage my DMP - just let it run and I didn't check or anything, it was only the recent promotion and much reduced DFD that gave me a nudge to my second LBM and now I feel in a much better space to actually face this and manage it. I've even been and looked at my credit record ... I always did like red. :rotfl:

Based on my experience I would say
1) Don't use redundancy pay to make your regular payments if you think that you're going to need a DMP, schoolboy error from me there - it was a ready made emergency fund.
2) Give yourself some breathing space to get that emergency fund saved up and also to give your creditors a jolt - 4 of my debts were defaulted within 6 months.
3) Make sure your budget has some wiggle room in it. I cut mine to the bone because I was worried the creditors wouldn't accept such low payments and the first 18 months were utterly miserable - I had to use loads of my leave just before pay days just because I didn't have petrol money and I didn't heat the house properly either because I couldn't afford to pay for heating oil. Having said that a couple of smallish pay rises were enough to give me the wiggle room I didn't have at the start even so, I was still flying by the seat of my pants until I got a decent promotion earlier this year - finally, I got some money to save for an emergency fund and since my car is now 11 years old with 123k miles on the clock I probably will need that between now and the end of the DMP. Although, to be fair to my little car it's been fantastic (busy touching wood now).
4) Try not to worry too much, easier said than done I know but worrying doesn't actually achieve anything, apart from some wobbles at the start I've managed to follow my own advice.

I'm amazed to see you all busily going self managed - I didn't have the mental strength to do that starting out and there's no need for me to do it now with defaults across the board and no interest being charged. Maybe when the defaults are beginning to drop off I'll think about F&Fs but for now I'm ok just to keep on paying. In the mean time I'll probably lurk more than I post but thanks to all you regular posters - I've read thread 11 over the last week and it contained the answers for the questions I had about Next so I don't even need to pester you all with anything.

blisteringblue

Got to love our Preditors. Letters will have landed about my 4 month debt sabatical, which a bold underlined section (king of dramatic licence) clearly states, no telephone calls blah blah blah harrassment blah blah blah. Well the first letter we get back has one line.

"We would like to discuss this with you, please call 0808 ARE YOU KIDDING ME"

Made me smile anyway. Not even going to give them the courtesy of a reply as it is a waste of a stamp.

Billy12345

Hope someone can help. I took out a mortgage in december last year. All going fine until june this year when i realised my credit cards and loans were getting too much, so took out a dmp for these debts and all going well. My question is that can halifax who my mortgage is with enforce a sale of my property as i am in a dmp. States in their t&cs that if i enter into a voluntary agreement the mortgage becomes immediately repayable. If thats not the case my mortgage is on a two year fixed rate which, when it expires, will they do another credit check, as if they do ill fail so what happens to the mortgage then. Stepchange said to contact halifax but i dont want them to note my dmp and enforce a sale if they can. HELP