Debt Help Please

enthusiasticsaver

So you know how the debt arose which is a start so take every tool at your disposal to keep away from gambling. It has ruined many lives.

The interest rates are awful so minimums is not the way to go. Similarly borrowing on cards, from friends and your mum has to stop. Your essential bills are low and you have a reasonable income so you should be able to sort it but it will take discipline. Tackle them in interest rate order starting with that Drafty. Once your friends debt is repaid put the £300 to Drafty and the same the following month then Finio and so on. I would cut out all non essential spending for the foreseeable until those awful payday lender loans are gone. You can try as above to get the loans written off although if your outgoings were low when you applied you may not be successful. No harm trying though. You can probably do without clothes for a while. Look for bargains on groceries and forget the holiday for now. Just make getting the high interest debt paid off as a priority. Unfortunately there is no short cut to debt repayment. 

sparks_2023

Definitely make a claim against Drafty. I believe that is a rolling credit facility that has access to your bank account ? A bit like the gone-and-not-missed SafetyNet Credit.

Chances are you win the claim and if you've had the account for a long time the compensation may be more than you expect. A lot more. It's your money they took in wicked interest. Get it back.

Seriously, make the claim today. These companies can go bust at any time.

LP121

I have sent the standard complaint email to Drafty. I expect in about 8 weeks time they'll try to pass me off and I'll send all info to Ombudsman. Fingers crossed something good comes from that. For now, I'll try and knock it down as quickly as possible.

kimwp

Hiya! With the clothes, holidays and other things that you don't buy regularly, you need to go back through your accounts and add up what you've spent over the last six months (ideally a year) to give yourself a monthly average. Then you need to have (virtual though I believe some bank accounts allow you to have "real") pots that you put this "average" money into every month so that the money is there when you want to spend it.

LP121

Thanks everyone - On top of sending the complaint to Drafty today I had also emailed 3 of my creditors, explained my situation, and I think that 2 of them are giving me a month breathing space and reduced payment for a few months. I think this will benefit as it will allow me to give drafty more, and clear that quicker. Let me know if you think this was a bad move.. 

kimwp

I think the breathing space/reduced payments might go on your credit history as arrangements to pay, so it might be better to go for defaults to get the interest stopped and do a dmp, but I'd look to someone like sourcrates or fatbelly as the authority on this.

fatbelly

I expect it would go as an arrangement to pay marker but really the credit file is not a great concern for the op. The aim is just to get debt free asap.

kimwp

fatbelly said:

I expect it would go as an arrangement to pay marker but really the credit file is not a great concern for the op. The aim is just to get debt free asap.

I was thinking that if their credit history is affected, may as well default to stop interest being charged.

fatbelly

Yes but it doesn't make a lot of difference