Bill support for Cancer sufferers

K.A.P

Hi,

I wonder if anyone knows, a friend of mine has been diagnosed with Cancer and I am trying to help him out.

He has a Macmillan nurse and she has given him a lot of leaflets but I wanted your advice, he has a mortgage this I am paying for him atm but he also had a loan credit card and all other utilities.

We called the council and got his council tax reduced but he was on the breadline before and I don't want him stressing about money on top of treatment.

I have told him to claim ESA this we are doing today, he wants to still do his contracted hours but is not feeling well enough to do his overtime this he relies on to be able to pay his bills.

He starts Chemo next week so doing his normal hours from next week may be a problem and his sick pay has almost ran out, he has stage 3 Hodgkin Lymphoma so is quite poorly.

He will still have some income as he is 60 and took some of his pension early from a previous employer, this gets him £400 per month.

Thank you in advance xx

sourcrates

Hi,

Sorry to hear about your friend.

Was there a specific question you wanted to ask ?

K.A.P

Hi,

The main thing is the loan and credit card, do banks offer payment breaks to remove the financial stress whilst chemo is taking place and he cant work very much x

sourcrates

There is a 30 day automatic suspension of collection activity, which can be extended according to circumstance, if you can’t make minimum repayments.

Any repayment plan would have to be negoatiated with individual creditors or seek advice from one of the debt charities who can do this for you on your behalf.

There is a lot of help available from both debt charities and the creditors.

mumtoomany

Just wanted to say what a lovely friend you are. Or many people would pay someone else's mortgage for them. Hope all goes well for him, M2m.

National_Debtline

Hi K.A.P

I’m really sorry to hear your friend is ill. The best thing to do is contact his creditors to explain the situation, they are usually sympathetic when this kind of thing happens. As Sourcrates says, you can initially ask for a hold on the account for 30 days. There’s a sample letter you can use here https://www.nationaldebtline.org/EW/sampleletters/Pages/Hold-action-on-your-account-(sole-name).aspx.

Ongoing, if your friend has no spare money he can ask them to accept nil or token offers (£1 per month) and freeze the interest and charges. They will need to see a statement of affairs (SOA), that is a breakdown of his household income and outgoings. That will confirm he’s not in a position to afford his debts. You can complete one here http://www.stoozing.com/calculator/soa.php.

Depending on your friend’s circumstances he may have other options available and one of the free debt advice agencies will be able to offer you more detailed advice on those. Macmillan are a great source of information on extra help available for people dealing with cancer, so I’m glad to hear he has already been getting help from them. In addition to that you can use this website www.turn2us.org.uk to check your friend’s benefit entitlement and if there are any trust funds or charities who may offer him help at the moment.

Susie
@natdebtline

vintagebrighton

Macmillan can also award small grants which may help. Your friend can ask their Macmillan nurse for an application and information on how to apply.

VB x