Freedom 2030

Remus1975 · 11 March 2020 at 11:31AM

Hi all. Thought I would start a diary now I'm starting my DMP journey. I've done a lot of reading on this forum and have decided to self manage the process.

My spiraling debts (almost £40k in total) span across several credit cards, the earliest being in 2006. I am a self employed sub contractor and have a steady reliable income. My partner and I own a property with not much equity in it, I've told her of my problems and she has been great and supportive. She knew I was in a lot of debt but didn't realise how much.

I popped a post on here regarding getting an emergency fund together and was given some really good advice. The first step was to stop paying and send CCA requests to all my creditors which I have done. I have currently only heard back from one of them who got my name wrong when replying and said they need further info regarding my PPI claim! 🙄
I've filled in the forms on the NEDCAB website and it's giving me a DMP end date of just over 9 years. Be nice if this could be brought forward a bit with F&F settlements in the years to come but that's a long way away.
So, I've stopped the payments to my creditors and sent CCA requests. Awaiting the postal bombardment at the moment 😬 At what point do I send out the holding letters stating I am in financial difficulties and ask them to freeze the interest? Shall I send them out now or wait for a response to the CCA requests first? Just worried about the fact I have stopped the direct debits but not informed them on my financial situation yet.
I'm also going to start paying in June/July as I'm currently behind with my HMRC payments and have a payment plan set up with them that is soaking up a lot of my spare income for the next few months. Do I send this request when I send out the holding letter?
So begins the start of a long journey and come 2030 (hopefully sooner) I will no longer be a slave to the credit cards which have pulled me down for so long. Thanks for the helpful advice you've given me so far.. I'll no doubt have many more questions but I'm determined to see this through

Remus1975 · 11 May 2020 at 6:32PM

Time for an update. I sent out the holding letters and CCA requests in March. Out of the seven creditors I have so far received four credit agreements back, the other three still haven't responded despite me sending out an additional request via letter. I know the current Covid situation is bound to have an effect on response times so its just a case of waiting in line.

I have today received my first Notice of Default through the post.. from Creation of all companies! Reading through the DMP Mutual Support Thread I was expecting to have a battle with them to default the account but its happening already

I was starting to get a bit of an emergency fund behind me but some of this is being soaked up now because of being self employed, hardly any income coming in and waiting for the government grant to materialise.

Still very early days on a long journey but its nice not to be using credit cards to get by from one month to the next.. even if it is my emergency fund that i'm dipping into at the moment