DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 11

Daisypop

Hi all
Haven't posted for a while need some advice please. Well into my DMP now 3.5 years and paid lots off with no problems. Boiler packed up last month after trying to keep it going for a while. Spoke to stepchange to reduce my payments for a couple of months so I could save some money to pay for new one which has cost £1800. I need to pay reduced payments for another 3 months I borrowed the rest to pay for the boiler off an elderly relative but have to pay that back in the next 3 months as its money for her new boiler which she wants in April. Had anyone reduced their payments temporarily? I can be back up to full in April I'm just stuck do t wanna rock the boat but couldn't cope without heating and hot water any longer. Thanks

Ellieseleven

Hello TTFTM and a Merry Christmas,

Great to hear from you and I echo everything you say;)

We are entering our final year of DMP and the finish line is coming into view after 5 1/2 years. From the early days of being panic stricken and living under constant stress and the everyday pressure of robbing Peter to pay many Pauls, to now...we live within a budget, save (or try to) for the things we need, keep our fingers crossed that the car passes another MOT and survives a while longer. I too, have been made redundant twice along the way (once where the company didn't pay us:eek:) but we're here and with a brighter future to look forward to.

I dreaded going on a DMP in the beginning but now, I can honestly say, for us it has been our saviour...as Puzzcat said somewhere: I love my DMP but I won't miss it when it's gone:cool:

Take care all

Ellie xx

Karen777

Hi Daisypop - yes I have been in a similar situation and paid reduced amounts - explain it to them - boilers are essential!

fermi

New DMP'er --> New DMP and Sense of Relief

January2015

Hello everyone

Not a good day in the January household - I was notified today my job is a risk of redundancy from April In my employer's speak that is a pretty dead cert for 'your gone'

Being positive (which is hard today) I have looked at what I need to earn should I have to find a new job. My worry is that if I have to take a significant pay drop how would SC and creditors view a significantly extended DMP timeframe?

At the moment we are looking at end of 2023 (8 years) on our current DMP. My salary is what allows us to put so much into our DMP payments each month.

Looking at worst case scenario if my income dropped and we could only pay one third of what we do now to our DMP then we would be looking at 24 more years on DMP which means 2039 and pushing 80 years old:eek:
It wouldn't be quite that bad because we would have completed our mortgage in the next 10 years and could throw lump sum pension payments at the debts etc.

However, are SC and creditors likely to accept such a long timeframe for the DMP?

Of course, I say worst case scenario is a drop in my income - it isn't really the worst case scenario - that would be no income at all aka can't find another job. If I don't find a job DH's income just covers mortgage, secured loan, council tax, utilities, house and life insurances and DH's fuel for work. No money left for food, clothes aka living costs, let alone DMP.

My emotions have been all over the place today and I've had a few tears as I've sat wrapping presents tonight, but I am trying to be positive. I've talked through with DH and we thought perhaps we may need to sell our house but paying off the mortgage and secured loan wouldn't leave enough to buy anything else let alone clear the debts. We would also possibily have the difficulty of renting whilst having the naffest credit records going. Also have a payment free roof over our heads in retirement is something we both want to aim for so that no matter if we still have debts to clear from our pension pots we will eventually feel secure in our retirement. Joint decision is last resort would be to sell the house.

Again, being positive, we are in a much better position to face this now than we would have been a year ago. Then we didn't know what we owed and didn't have any plans on how to deal with it - imagine throwing redundancy into that mix:( The other thing is DH and I are working together as team to get through this and that is so important to me.

Another positive - Christmas 2015 is sorted, paid for and no further increase to the debt. Bits of life are still good;)

sourcrates

Hi January,

That's tough news, especially at this time of year.

I don't think another 24 years on a DMP is feasible myself, if you declared yourself bankrupt, that may solve all your problems, hard choice to make I know, but you need to look at your realistic choices, of course you may find a new job that pays as much (or more than) your current salary, or you may not, it pays to have a plan B though !!

January2015

sourcrates wrote: »

Hi January,

That's tough news, especially at this time of year.

I don't think another 24 years on a DMP is feasible myself, if you declared yourself bankrupt, that may solve all your problems, hard choice to make I know, but you need to look at your realistic choices, of course you may find a new job that pays as much (or more than) your current salary, or you may not, it pays to have a plan B though !!

How does bankruptcy affect our home though. We have equity - probably close to our debt figure (maybe a bit less when sale/legal fees are deducted). Edited: I've looked it up and bankruptcy/IVA will be our last resort, but if we have to, so be it

I am trying to be positive and am already looking for alternative employment (not much around this week strangely enough;)).

We are going into this in planning mode - we are not going to sit and wait for stuff to hit any fans come April. I will either be fine and still employed (in existing or new job) at same/similar salary or will have a plan being implemented.

We have a pension we can cash in soon - we were going to cash it in anyway as it is a small pension completely separate from our work pensions. We think that and redundancy pay will bring in about £15 to £18k. That could buy us time to find another job if we allocated monthly income from it, or (probably better) if we could negotiate F&F with some of our larger creditors. The four largest debts are now all with DCAs - but only very recently moved there.

It's not the end of the world - we have each other, our family and our health. We'll get through this. I'm really grateful to have the sounding board of my virtual friends on DFW:beer:

sourcrates

January2015 wrote: »

How does bankruptcy affect our home though. We have equity - probably close to our debt figure (maybe a bit less when sale/legal fees are deducted). Edited: I've looked it up and bankruptcy/IVA will be our last resort, but if we have to, so be it

I am trying to be positive and am already looking for alternative employment (not much around this week strangely enough;)).

We are going into this in planning mode - we are not going to sit and wait for stuff to hit any fans come April. I will either be fine and still employed (in existing or new job) at same/similar salary or will have a plan being implemented.

We have a pension we can cash in soon - we were going to cash it in anyway as it is a small pension completely separate from our work pensions. We think that and redundancy pay will bring in about £15 to £18k. That could buy us time to find another job if we allocated monthly income from it, or (probably better) if we could negotiate F&F with some of our larger creditors. The four largest debts are now all with DCAs - but only very recently moved there.

It's not the end of the world - we have each other, our family and our health. We'll get through this. I'm really grateful to have the sounding board of my virtual friends on DFW:beer:

Good plan to attempt full and finals, I'm sure you will come through this ok, planning mode is good, pays to be proactive.

Have you done CCA requests to all your debts ?

When the ship starts to sink, it's good to have a few corks handy !!!

January2015

sourcrates wrote: »

Good plan to attempt full and finals, I'm sure you will come through this ok, planning mode is good, pays to be proactive.

Have you done CCA requests to all your debts ?

When the ship starts to sink, it's good to have a few corks handy !!!

We have only CCA'd one debt - it's about £12k of our debt balance. It was pre-2000 credit card with Abbey which transferred was automatically transferred to MBNA in October 2003. We're waiting, very hopefully, for the response.

We have one CC account opened in 2008. The rest of the debts are 2012 plus (balance transfers/closing accounts etc). I wish now we had left the balances where they were on those long standing CC accounts.

sarriep

Hi,
Advice welcomed here!
I've been on a DMP for a few years now and am due to finish next October. One of our debts is an ex Egg account now with Barclaycard. There is no record of it on either mine or my husbands credit report and we haven't had any correspondance about it for years. I therefore am not sure of the balance. I am tempted to have it removed from my DMP. There is about £900 left from a total of just over £10,000. A significant proportion of our DMP payment goes towards this each month.
I'd really appreciate any advice about this!
Thanks