On the bink, but...

Donondo

Hello to you all.
I've gathered much information and huge inspiration from many here
through reading over the past few months. I had stopped all payments,
saved up my fees, filled in the forms and got a date for BR. I was braced,
and encouraged by the supportive posts here and looking forward to sharing
experiences of the next stages. With just a few hours to go I learnt that I
may have some money coming to me in a few months. Maybe not enough to
cover everything but certainly enough to make the possibility of getting
through without BR.
Repayments have gone unpaid for a few months and the letters and phone
calls have had to be fielded but I'm now wondering how this might play out
with the bank first and then CC companies. Would I be able to convince
any of them to wait and not press for more than token payments untill the
possible funds arrive? Perhaps I should just ask?
Perhaps also I can supply a few details as I become more accustomed to not
having gone through with something that had occupied my mind so much
of late.
Has anyone been to the brink and stepped back?

Donondo

Dumb questions I expect. Looks like there are more appropriate forums - but
I may be back here, you can never tell. Just want to give huge thanks to
those that are providing time and knowledge and inspiration.

TTFN

tigerfeet2006

Sorry missed this the first time round. Can't provide you with any answers I'm afraid but I'm sure someone will come along who knows.

wherediditallgo

You can ask them to take token payments whether you go BR or not, so that's an option anyway, but I wouldn't mention the possibility of extra money coming in to them. Can you actually prove the money's definitely going to come through? Do you have a legally-binding document that confirms the money will be there, & within a specific timespan? Without something like that, I don't think the creditors are going to believe you, especially as you've already stopped payments & have therefore defaulted on the credit agreements. If you've fielded the calls, you've probably had to tell a couple of lies along the way, so that won't encourage them to believe you now. If the money comes through, you'll only be able to partially settle the debts - you'll have to make arrangements to pay the rest, or go for 'full & final' settlements, which aren't always accepted at the level you offer. If you have to make arrangements for revised repayments, the creditors will have gone without payments for months so will need you to catch up on those anyway. And what would you do if the money didn't come through as expected? The creditors may think you've lied to them about the prospect of more money coming in. Don't forget, creditors can make you BR for as little as £750 - I don't know how much you owe, but if you owe it to several people they can join together to make you BR which reduces their individual costs & puts you in a position of doing things to their time-scale rather than your own.

After being advised by CCCS to go BR, I put it off, thinking I could sort things out myself. We'd had a restructuring at work, so I was due a good lump sum of back pay plus a decent payrise within a few months - the lump sum would enable me to pay off a couple of people outright, & the increased take-home pay would mean that I could increase my monthly payments & catch up, then clear my debts completely quicker than I'd originally calculated. That was what I thought would happen. The actual reality was that the pay situation wasn't sorted out for over a year, & the lump sum wasn't anything like as much as we expected because we had to pay higher tax on it. Plus other living costs had gone up during the delay so my take-home pay wasn't going as far as I expected, & my creditors were losing patience. I ended up going BR more than six months after being told it was the best option for me, & I gained nothing from the delay because (a) I could have been almost discharged by now, but will be BR until end March unless I get an early discharge, & (b) the pay-rise has put my income at a level that now means I have an IPA for 3 years. I don't mind paying the IPA, but it's ironic that I'm paying it because I waited for extra pay to settle my debts. I spent too long in debt thinking "If I win X, I'll do Y" and "if A gives me B, I can pay C" & I'm paying for it now, literally. But at least I'm now in control of what's happening with my finances.

I can't tell you what to do especially as I haven't been in a position to expect a large enough sum of money to nearly cover my debts, but I think if I had been in that situation before going BR without any legal documents as back-up I'd either have asked the creditors to accept token payments for say six months (which would have given me a chance to know more about the expected money) or still have gone ahead with BR. After all, there's the option of having a BR annulled at a later date - you can find more info about that on the Insolvency Service site here. It costs money & time to do it, & isn't just simply ticking some boxes on a form, but without concrete legal paperwork to rely on I wouldn't have wanted to take the chance of the money not arriving.

As I said, there's nothing to stop you asking the creditors to agree to token payments. But I really wouldn't dangle the carrot of possible money in front of them, as I think that could work against you in the long run.