I have come here to chew bubblegum and clear debt - and I'm all outta bubblegum AKA the £83,000 saga

Guybrush_Threepwood

No major developments this week..... quite a bit of back and forth with the lender referenced in my previous post, have been trying to ascertain:

1 - Will the refund be applied to the loan or will it be refunded to my bank account for me to pay the loan accordingly?

2 - Will the loan be recalled from the third party collection agent acting on their behalf?

I've had mixed responses n the first point and no response to the second. Hopefully will find out what's happening before the end of the week. They are removing the interest and refunding the amount I have already paid towards it. Just trying to clarify exactly how they are going to process this.

[Deleted User]

Guybrush_Threepwood wrote: »

This also means my total debt is now below £70k! :T

The new total is.....

£68,593.21

I've now managed to reduce my original debt by over 17% in 6 months. A long, long way to go, but I'm gradually chipping away at it.

Well done, that's fantastic x

Guybrush_Threepwood

Payday today, some manual payments made and some direct debits and ACPs will go out over the next few days. Once all payments are made this month I should be down to £67,347.91 remaining...

With regards to the payday refund I have mentioned in my last few posts, in another strange turn the company have emailed to say they have closed my loan account. When I logged in to their portal, it shows a balance owing of 0. I was expecting the balance to be just over £1000 after the refund had been applied! Not sure what they have done or if they are going to adjust it, we shall see...

adg89

Just wanted to drop by to say well done for paying off so much so quickly and for having your LBM and really tackling with the FO requests.
Good to see you are in a better place!

Guybrush_Threepwood

adg89 wrote: »

Just wanted to drop by to say well done for paying off so much so quickly and for having your LBM and really tackling with the FO requests.
Good to see you are in a better place!

Thanks for the message :-)

Guybrush_Threepwood

The numbers are in....

I'll be beginning November 2018 with a total debt amount of:

£67,217.62

My goal was to be under £60k by the end of 2018. Perhaps in hindsight that was a tad ambitious, but I won't be a milion miles away. Current end of year projection is: £64,838.88, though this may improve if I get any more favourable outcomes from the Financial Ombudsman before the end of the year.

Guybrush_Threepwood

Doing a bit of analysis on my first 6 months of my debt-free crusade. Although I'm proud of what I have achieved so far, the graph below shows how far there still is to go:

Hopes and goals for the next 6 months:

• Hopefully get a decent bonus from work that can be used to pay off extra debt (review in December, bonus paid next April).
• Achieve some more favourable outcomes from the cases still open with the Financial Ombudsman.
• Start earning extra income from other streams, e.g. I have been working on some 'app' ideas in my spare time that I'm hoping might come to something... if not, I'm learning a ton of new skills in the process!
  
• Continue to live a happy, gamble-free life

Debt_buster_2

Hi, I’ve jyst read your story and it is soooo similar to mine. Can I ask, how did you get to the point of going down the ombudsman route?

theblagger

Hi Guybrush great thread, will drop in every now and then to see it dropping , you've done amazing so far

Guybrush_Threepwood

Nothing new to report really... still waiting for a few outcomes from the Ombudsman, plus a couple of other direct complaints.

I did manage to reduce my list of creditors by 1 by paying the balance of an outstanding overdraft. It was only £40 or so but every little helps and it means there are now 18 creditors, a long way since the 30 or so I started with.

As 6 months have passed since I started tackling this, some of the creditors are wanting to review payment plans. I’m hoping to keep things much the same. I like the flexibility of overpaying when I can and how I choose but will try to keep the minimum payments as is. Currently my total minimum debt repayments each month stand at around £1180, which is manageable. This is down from near £1500 when I started. I would usually allocate that £320 that has become available to other debts, but this month it’s being used to pay for some car insurance that was due and a couple of other bits.