help quick please on phone..

gawebb99

ringing creditors to say we cant pay, speaking to stepchange etc

barclaycard has said we can do a payment plan of £5 per month

should i agree to this?

will it affect anything whislt we decide what to do with stepchange

probs do a dmp or iva

on phone at the moment!

asparagus1968

ask them to put it in writing and you will let them know??


can you afford £5 a month? is it your only creditor?

asparagus1968

oops, just seen what time you posted, hopefully you are not still on the phone!!

gawebb99

asparagus1968 wrote: »

oops, just seen what time you posted, hopefully you are not still on the phone!!

embarrasingly no- we have 22 creditors between us equalling to £31K - just working my way through phoning them all

in the end they have frozen my account for 30 days until we decide with stepchange which action to take.

worried about getting it all wrong!

thank you

sourcrates

Hello gawebb99,

I would wait and see what stepchange advise first before speaking to anyone.
how on earth did you get 22 creditors ?
It depends on your income/expenditure, and how much you have left at months end, as to which debt solution would work best for you, but if you could post a statement of affairs, then maybe you could get some idea of what might work best ?

http://www.stoozing.com/calculator/soa.php

gawebb99

sourcrates wrote: »

Hello gawebb99,

I would wait and see what stepchange advise first before speaking to anyone.
how on earth did you get 22 creditors ?
It depends on your income/expenditure, and how much you have left at months end, as to which debt solution would work best for you, but if you could post a statement of affairs, then maybe you could get some idea of what might work best ?

http://www.stoozing.com/calculator/soa.php

thanks we spoke to them twice last week and we have a couple of options, just need to decide which one.

some creditors are small, such as very, littlewoods, argos with £500 or less on.

stupid- we were !

sourcrates

gawebb99 wrote: »

some creditors are small, such as very, littlewoods, argos with £500 or less on.

stupid- we were !

Yea,

Been there, done that, certainly not on your own lol !!

Any help needed, just ask !!

gawebb99

thank you! i need lots of help as we are both worried sick, i have anxiety and its through the roof!

we've never missed any payments on anything and always been up to date etc, its just got to the point where we are £1000 overdrawn every month and last month we couldnt afford food which was my 'lightbulb' moment to seek help.

we spoke to stepchange initially who went through our budget etc, left us with £292 per month although i am going to ask them to re do it as i want to up some of the things ie food shopping and fuel and add on school dinner money. not sure if there's a maximum figure for anything which is allowed?

we will probably do a dmp although they said it would take 9 years. I have considered an IVA also. OR i could maybe do a DRO in my debts only, and my husband do something else with the debts in his name such as the dmp or iva. its all very confusing and struggling to get our heads around it.

we've opened a basic account with nationwide which will be up and running in about a week or so just waiting for cards to arrive in the post.

will phone stepchange on monday to adjust the budget and decide which way to go forwards.

we dont own our home or have any assets apart from a car worth about £500.

two young children and we both work full time.

we've cancelled all direct debits to creditors from our account.

will transfer wages into new bank once its up and running.

what should we do now? havent spoken to all creditors yet- will continue that next week.

thanks very much, appreciate all the help we can get as want to get this right and move forwards with our lives.

Money_maker

Good luck with it. Takes a lot of guts to pull your head out of the sand and deal with it. Hope you're feeling a bit better as you take control.

sourcrates

Well you seem to be very organised as you've done exactly the right things so far, well done you !!!

I will try to allay your fears a little if I can, OK, nothing bad is going to happen if you miss payments, I have said this a thousand times, in many posts, debt collection can be a very long process, nothing happens overnight, there are set procedures creditors follow :

Missed payments - usually creditor will attempt to get you to pay for up to 6 months.

Next step is internal collections dept, anywhere up to another 6 months.

External debt collector, can be passed around different DCA's many times, 6 months to a year.

Debt is sold on, bought by a specialist collection agency, will chase up to 2 years, could go legal if ignored.

Basically your a long way off anything drastic yet.
DRO could be an option for you, do you fit the criteria ?
Make sure you budget correctly, that is imperative.

gawebb99

sourcrates wrote: »

Well you seem to be very organised as you've done exactly the right things so far, well done you !!!

I will try to allay your fears a little if I can, OK, nothing bad is going to happen if you miss payments, I have said this a thousand times, in many posts, debt collection can be a very long process, nothing happens overnight, there are set procedures creditors follow :

Missed payments - usually creditor will attempt to get you to pay for up to 6 months.

Next step is internal collections dept, anywhere up to another 6 months.

External debt collector, can be passed around different DCA's many times, 6 months to a year.

Debt is sold on, bought by a specialist collection agency, will chase up to 2 years, could go legal if ignored.

Basically your a long way off anything drastic yet.
DRO could be an option for you, do you fit the criteria ?
Make sure you budget correctly, that is imperative.

Well if we change the budget I should fit the criteria yes - so hopefully that's an option for myself . Or would it be better to do a joint IVA and forget a dro ?