Advise please to clear debts

sunflower17

Any advice please....we have debts of £55000, currently on a Dmp with sc.

Desperate to clear these as they are having a huge detrimental effect on my mental health. I am no longer working and husband working overtime to cover everything.

We have been offered £20000 to clear our debts (family member). Our debts are with 6 companies.

Does anyone have any advice? If we gave the sum to SC to negotiate but they were unsuccessful would be able to simply return the money to the family? We are concerned that it would be used to just reduce the amount owed.

(The £20000 is only being given if it clears everything)

Look forward to any help

Ps been on dmp for 18 months and never missed a payment

sourcrates

Hi,

I have moved your post to a new thread as the debt advisers thread is run by stepchange.

sourcrates

In a nutshell it depends how old the accounts are, if they are still with the original creditors or been sold on to debt purchasers, there are a lot of variables, if you can fill in the blanks it would help.

So we need to know the following :

How long since the accounts (roughly) were originally opened ?

Are the debts defaulted, if so from when (again roughly) ?

Original creditor or sold on, mixture of both ?

What the individual accounts where, ie, loan, credit card etc.

sunflower17

The debts are
£11067.16. To pra group (was mbna. Sold to pra approx 1 year ago)
£8358.05. To pra group (was barclaycard visa sold to pra approx I year ago)
£10876.68. To pra group (was barclaycard MasterCard sold to pra approx 1 year ago)
£9719.08. Tesco credit card
£5018.90. Santander credit card
£9197.26. Nationwide credit card
£990.31. Nationwide overdraft

We have been on our dmp approx 18 months. Paying a total of £257 each month ( this goes up to £280 next month)
We have never defaulted on our payments although it has been a struggle we have managed to pay each month

Thanks for any help

sourcrates

Age of the accounts approx ?

The older a debt is, and the longer its been with the DCA, the more likely they are to do a deal.

You should send CCA requests to all the credit card accounts as well, prior to doing anything else.

sunflower17

Thanks for the reply. Not sure of the actual ages of the account. We had been with the credit cards for many years (approx 8-10 years). Been with SC since Dec 2015, On dmp since April 2016

zippygeorgeandben

Is the not working thing short term or long term?

sunflower17

Could be long term.....

enthusiasticsaver

As your debts are over £55k the £20k works out at 36% of the total debt. I would like to be optimistic but as you have only had the DMP for 18 months I suspect this is too short a period for them to accept what is a fairly low offer.

No harm in trying though so the best thing is to contact them direct and ask them to accept 36% of the outstanding debt or you could try 30% with the aim of going up a bit higher if they turn it down to start with. Stepchange can negotiate for you but whether they get particularly good deals is up for debate.

You don't have to pay anything out until a full and final settlement amount has been arranged so you could leave it until all your creditors get back to you before paying anything out if the deal is the £20k is only available to you if all the debt is settled.