Does ALL of your surplus income go towards debt?

PoorGuyNextDoor

Also got a stag weekend away in March so apart from that March will be frugal too!! Good habits to get into plus gives me no excuse to use my free gym(got everything i need at home) And go running!! Done a few 5-10ks months ago felt so good for it no idea why i stopped!

abby1234519

lumpyspaceprincess wrote: »

In short, no. I contemplated having all my spare paying it off, but I knew I would 'act out' if I had no wiggle room. There's definitely a surplus each month that I could put towards DMP, but instead I use it for my mental health. Additionally it occurred to me, if I'm getting defaulted for all these cards etc, a slightly easier ride will make the default dates further away when I'm done.

Oh my glob guys

abby1234519

Sorry now that I got my geeky bit out of the way.

I was paying off my debt and not allowing myself any wiggle room. No entertainment budget etc. However I found I couldn't handle it and would put stuff on CC and tell myself its ok I would pay it off when the bill came in. I didn't and I got in a worse situation.

So now....I have quite an extensive budget. There's probably 4/500 that I have distributed across categories that I wouldn't have before. I mean putting aside £50 for Christmas is ridiculous. But at least if this all gets put away I don't have to stress and reach for the credit card. After 6 months of putting money away I can then dig deep into my metaphorical pockets and try to overpay debt and throw my bonuses at it.

sourcrates

rubyjam wrote: »

We have been in a DMP for so long now that we would have lost the will to live if we'd carried on paying every last penny to our debts. In the first 3-4 years we threw everything at it - we were literally living off thin air. It dawned on us that we had many years ahead and this (non) life just wasn't sustainable so we decided to to give ourselves a little slack and reduced our payments a little.


We still struggle to make ends meet and our DMP has at least another 10 years to go but we do have a life now. If we could do it all again I think we would have gone down the IVA route but because we have put so much into this blinkin DMP we are going to see it through to the end. Our debts have started dropping off our credit file now and we have been thinking of reducing our payments even more so that we will have spare cash to save up for full and final payments but our debt is still huge so I think we will keep payments as they are for a little while longer. Perhaps next year ..... Good luck, hope your DF day comes soon :-)

Have you not considered other options at all ?

Any solution that takes as long as you are contemplating is quite worrying.

Would posting a current SOA be helpful do you think ?

For example, and forgive me as I don't know your situation, if your debts are less than 20k and you otherwise qualify, a DRO would be done in 12 months.

If the debt is more than that an IVA would only take half the time of your current DMP.

Bankruptcy would be over within a year also, and possibly a 3 year IPA.

Just suggestions in case you've become bogged down in DMP land.