Paying off DMP fully ... advice?

swells_2

I do wish you luck.... what relief you will get afterwards eh!

pbsmiles

swells wrote: »

I do wish you luck.... what relief you will get afterwards eh!

Thank you, you can find the templates on step change and national debt line with advice on how to position it. Good luck with yours too, its horrible being in debt been fighting it for 10 years since my divorce. Finally sold house after kids reached 18. x

Keezing

This doesn't add up to me. I just can't imagine Stepchange recommending a 300k DMP. Surely not.

Why was an IVA not suitable for your circumstances swells?

swells_2

It wasn't Stepchange then it was CCCS. We didn't want to go bankrupt and we didn't want an IVA. We wanted to pay off the debt and at that time my husband had been offered a tax free job in Middle East so we could afford to pay £2k per month.... which we did for almost 4 years... but once the job finished we had to reduce the payment to what we could afford. We had hoped to continue the £2k pm for a few more years but... CCCS were very helpful to us... they suggested other things but we wanted to pay it all off.... so they let us do the DMP. We have kept paying every single month and we feel that we have gone a long way to relieving our debts.... to pay off £96k is quite good I think. Anyway... now the question is not why we did it in the first place but how we can finally get it all paid off with Full & Final settlements to all our debtors because we really feel that in the next few weeks we will have the money to do that. But... as most of the money is interest I would like to make offers to the debtors... a lot of them have already offered settlement figures over the years so I hope that they will all be willing to settle. I think we may have most trouble with NRAM but even with them I am hoping that they will accept a %. Thanks for your show of interest but I need to focus now on sorting it and not how it all came about.

Keezing

It's just such a strange situation, swells.

You say you didn't "want" an IVA due to some belief that you wanted to pay as much off as possible, but today you come here asking to for advice to make discounted offers and pay back less than you owe.

If you had taken an IVA this would have been over in 6 years. You would have paid your 2k a month for 6 years and then had nothing left to pay. You'd now be enjoying your retirement debt-free. It really beggars belief.

Anyway.

Yes of course you can make offers to your lenders. Personally at your stage of life I wouldn't bother.

swells_2

Keezing.... Maybe we were not given the best advice 9 years ago... I don't know. We were so distraught with what had happened that we were just grateful for a solution... maybe I didn't understand exactly what an IVA was. Debt solution was still a newish thing then. All I remember of the time was coming off the phone to CCCS and crying with relief feeling that a huge weight had been lifted off our shoulders!
Not sure why it is a strange situation... you make it sound that it isn't real.... I don't waste my time writing things that are untrue. It has taken a lot for me to come on here and unburden myself and ask advice....so the expression 'Beggars Belief' doesn't really sit well with me. Do you mean it BB that I was given this advice and allowed a DMP or what? The last time I was on MSE was probably 9 years ago asking for advice at that time!!
When we started this off we wanted to pay back as much as possible and we still do but we will not have the full amount of the debts... maybe half...so I wanted to ask advice from people who had experienced offering lesser amounts. Over the years I have struggled to think that some of these debts were accrued because of increasing interest rates...apart from the mortgage debt (which should never have occurred because we had a tenant lined up whose rent would have paid the mortgage and because of NRAM's tardiness we had to let it go - long story).
Now I am not at all sure what 'your time of life' means.... we are not in our dotage just yet! We want to be able to now get on with our lives and not have to have this debt hanging over us. We can't just walk away from £200k of debt and we don't want to have to keep paying £400 pm out of my husbands pension. We have avoided bankruptcy for 9 years and now we may be in a position to finally get it all sorted .... please don't make it all sound so worthless. Your tone and words have actually depressed me!

Keezing

I'm sorry, swells.

Given the age of your debts it is very likely that they are not enforceable and you will be able to get very large discounts to settle them. 90% off is not unheard of.

Have a look at the templates on the National Debtline website and send each of your creditors a letter known as a "CCA Request".

They have an obligation to provide you with the information in a prescribed format. If they can't, then they cannot enforce the debts and will often accept lower settlement offers.

Good luck!

swells_2

Apology accepted.
Mabe you could just clarify something for me - if you can ... you mention unenforceable but during the afternoon I have been reading various things from National Debt Helpline and StepChage about Statute Barred Debts. As I read it if we have been paying (even small amount) our creditors via a DMP over the past 9 years we have actually been in contact with them and them with us so the debt would probably be enforceable - or have I misread that? Do you know?

swells_2

Apology accepted.
Mabe you could just clarify something for me - if you can ... you mention unenforceable but during the afternoon I have been reading various things from National Debt Helpline and StepChage about Statute Barred Debts. As I read it if we have been paying (even small amount) our creditors via a DMP over the past 9 years we have actually been in contact with them and them with us so the debt would probably be enforceable - or have I misread that? Do you know?
And if we are currently with StepChange should we do all this through them?

swells_2

Apology accepted.
Maybe you could just clarify something for me - if you can ... you mention unenforceable but during the afternoon I have been reading various things from National Debt Helpline and StepChage about Statute Barred Debts. As I read it if we have been paying (even small amounts) to our creditors via a DMP over the past 9 years we have actually been in contact with them and them with us so the debt would probably be enforceable - or have I misread that? Do you know?
And if we are currently with StepChange should we do all this through them?