I just want to live

beckstar1975

We had combined debt of near on double yours and entered into a DMP 5 years ago - at first only paying about £300 a month but now well over £1K and as you can see below on track to be debt free in under 2 years.

Through that we've had 2 redundancies and things have worked out OK for now. It made a massive difference in having the interest frozen, it meant that we could see our debts going down straight away - it was the interest too that was killing us.

by the time we've paid these off the defaults should have dropped off our credit file and we can start again (much more sensibly this time).

Just wanted to give you hope that it can be done, for you much quicker as you can pay off much more initially.

Good luck

crazycamper

Hi Mary,
I have just read your post but I have not read all of the replies, so please forgive me if this has already been mentioned.
Firstly, I can totally understand that this is making you feel depressed as I owed a similar amount a few years ago when I split with my husband.
I did not want Bankrupcy for various reasons , one being that I wanted to keep the roof over my kids heads. However, like me all of your debts are unsecured...which is good...this is what I did and it worked for me. I contacted Step Change to make an appointment. They will take a few details & then arrange for you to speak to someone who can help. They will want to know your income & expenditure but you have already done all that, so halfway there. Then they will send you a pack out in the post with everything in writing & more advice and options available to you. Then once I had spoken to them and got a reference number, I contacted every bank, credit card, loan company, catalogue that I had a debt with and said "help me ". Every single one of them did help me. Basically, they froze all my accounts so that the interest stopped, went through an income & expenditure and agreed an amount to pay monthly. I told them that I had a reference from Step Change & most of them were happy to take the reference and arrange everything directly with me. I had about 8 different companies that I owed money too & most were happy with a £5 or £10 a month payment. I set up direct debits with them and they got in touch once a year to see if the situation had changed & to update their records. I was paying around £500 a month for all my debts and I got it dropped to £50. Step change will offer to do all this for you but I was happy to do it myself. I hope this helps & if you want any more help, let me know. Good Luck. (And change your name from Sad Mary to Im going to sort this Mary )
PS I did not want a DMP because I would have paid more monthly than I had arranged & 3 of the credit card companies eventually contacted me & accepted a much lower amount than I actually owed, so most of my debt is gone now anyway.

DawnW

Good luck with your upcoming discussion with one of the debt charities. I am sure you will feel a lot more positive about your situation when you have spoken to them.

Take care xx

Movingon5464

Looking at your revised soa i was surprised to see both electric and water at £10 a month. I pay £80pm for elecric (no gas so everything is electric) and i £30 for water. Also i think £15 for entertainment could be bumped up a bit too. I know you owe money but do think you should be able to have a bit of a life even while on a dmp.
Something you should know about starting a dmp is that most if not all of your creditors will issue default notices. The sooner they do this the better as the record of the debt will fall off your credit file 6 years from the default date. Personally i would make payments of £1 per month to them all until they have all issued default notices and then start the dmp. If you go straight into a dmp a creditor might wait a couple of years before defaulting you and then you have your 6 year countdown starting later. Or, they might never default you and just add arrangement to pay markers or dmp markers instead which remain on your credit file for 6 years after the account is settled which will then cause you problems 10 years supposing you had a 4 year dmp. I have just put complaints in to 2 companies - one who defaulted me 5 years into my dmp who have now agreed to backdate the default to 3 months after my dmp started which will have the effect of removing the record from my credit file, and another who didn't default me at all but instead marked my file as in arrangement to pay and have now also agreed to remove the record from my file. Not everyone has this result though when they complain and i have read about many people stuck with negative data showing for far more than 6 years so something to think about i suggest.

Zoology_Dragon

I think maybe your "ideal" SOA is confusing people, could you redo it with actual amounts spent?

dancingfairy

Some people seem to think you can live on bread and water, and while that's true I think it's unrealistic for most people. Yes, you've messed up and got yourself into a whole heap of debt but should that be hanging over you for the rest of your life?
Based on your SOA, it appears to me that you can't increase your income easily (in fact it may decrease), you can't decrease your expenses by much (and, again they may go up) so realistically you are looking at a debt solution of some type.
I would suggest you look at a dmp or bankruptcy. Both could work for you, depending on a few other factors (such as what industry you are in etc).
What I would say, when drawing up a budget for a dmp (or bankruptcy) is to be realistic, remember you have to be able to live off this budget without taking more credit (rather than exist). Obviously you can go back later and get it changed (certainly in a dmp) but it's best to be a little over cautious (and have a little left for the occasional treat or to add to the emergency fund) rather than the other way around.
Have a chat to the debt charities and see what they suggest.
df

theoretica

In addition to all the suggestions above, have a serious think about your career, maybe a chat with someone you get on with? If you could use the experience you now have to get a higher salary, maybe with a sideways move to a slightly different field which isn't under such pressure, it would obviously be a great help.

DebtSlave

Hi Mary, just wanted to say I was in a very similar position as you are when I was your age. I was in less debt but also earned a lot less so would say it was equivalent. I entered a DMP and am now six months away from finishing it. It has taken seven years but by the time it finishes my defaults have dropped off my credit file and I actually have quite a good credit rating through phone contract etc. I will be debt free at 34, which in the scheme of things these days is pretty good going IMO- I've learned my lesson now and am young enough to crack on with my life.

It has been a struggle, I've got really down about being so skint for so long but at the end of the day I spent the money in the first place and so was determined to pay it back. I know how you feel, having to scrimp and scrape and not getting anywhere, but with the DMP my interest was frozen so every month I could log on to my account and see the balance had reduced. I think that is where you're struggling- you are not seeing a reduction in your debts for all your hard work. Have you looked into a DMP? Whatever you decide to do I wish you luck.