Dealing with £39K debt

DisabledDan

stu12345_2 said:

dan is that true that if they got a ccj for £1 month, then in 6 years no more payments are due£72 in total and the debt ends or does the debt keep going after 6 years of ccj payments 

if the £1 a month stops at year 6 in the ccj, why do folk do £1 a month token payments for years and years  and that doesn't stop, they do this,  even if a ccj never happened and they simply agreed £1 as soon as the creditor got more demanding way back in the past for them

and when you did get a ccj for your large creditor, and you didn't pay, did they do an attachment of earnings can I ask?

I was just quoting the minimum you could likely get a Court to award if you showed them you had no disposable income.

I am a stubborn bar steward, I had paid token payments of £10, £5 and £1 which kept the debt alive, that was after being a good little citizen and servicing debt at up to 39.9% because I had dug myself out of debt of £70k incurred by an Ex before.

I did not engage, not with all the wink stain debt collectors or the single consumer debt that got a CCJ or the non consumer debts that got CCJ's or the High Court Enforcement twits.

I had nothing to lose and if I was not so stubborn I would have taken bankruptcy, I could not do a DRO as debt was too high.

The only ones that came to my door were the HCEO twits, they look so gormless I wish I had a video doorbell at the time. They can only hurt you if you have something to lose and the only way they know that you have something to lose is if you engage with them. I took certain measures I saw other people on bailiff forums advise, like taping an opaque bin bag over the letterbox so they can't see anything.  

As I understand it you still owe the money but it can't be enforced after 6 years unless they go back to Court and ask for more time, IMO that is extremely unlikely unless they have evidence your circumstances match case law on this matter.  Which is another reason to never engage, if you say something it can be used against you.

I always kept myself one step ahead of the debt collectors, they passed me around on each debt so I was able to eventually discern the pattern.  I found a way to keep off the voters roll without getting a fine and I made sure I was never with any company that shared payments with a credit reference agency.  

I had the THREAT of an Attachment of Earnings Order, it looked bona fide but later I figured out that they just downloaded the form online, filled it with the data and attached the Court slip, but it was not served by the Court and it had no Court Stamp.  Just another tactic to get me to engage. I waited out the debts until they became statute barred, then I waited out 3 or 4 CCJ's (only one from consumer debt).  

I am not advising others do this, I would suggest a DRO if the debt was under current limit of £50k, it is now free too.  It takes a year and then writes off everything and the debt is no longer owed.

I think the largest CCJ was a firm of Solicitors who wanted around £15k plus interest, I owed £25k to one credit card company on two different cards, they got nothing. I think the one consumer that went for a CCJ was lowest or second lowest debt.

Folk make token payments for different reasons, for me it was honour and a way to say I will pay thing when my circumstances improve, for others it is hope or compliance and believing the waffle that these companies give you.  I would have ended my debts years earlier if I had known about Fractional Reserve Lending, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I am not against Fractional Reserve Lending as such, I certainly don't have a better system but I do think the debt aspect of it is fundamentally flawed, but I understand that flaw. 

They would say that If people knew you could default a debt simply by ceasing payments then there might be as stampede unless there was a deterrent, that deterrent is that nasty debt companies would come after them forever, well for up to 12 years.

My argument is that a better deterrent would be a lifelong debt blacklist unless the original debt was repaid to the original lender.

I would create a credit reference agency status of "opted out of credit" where the lawful basis to share data would be outlawed for such citizens and it would apply to blacklisted citizens who would simply have the status of blacklisted.

I would remove the data sharing by utility companies, in fact I would make credit ref agencies only able to share and obtain data where there has been a credit agreement and I would give people a proper opt out of the voters roll being shared.

I would reduce the limitations act limit to 3 years for consumer debt and make it apply to any CCJ too, so if a debt defaulted in January 2024 then any CCJ (if sought) would expire in January 2027.  I would also bring in rules that say a debt that token payments for 6 months must be defaulted.

This would encourage more responsible lending in the first place and it would improve the UK economy, we would learn to live within our means.

DisabledDan

stu12345_2 said:

so if your very skint then a ccj should not be feared cos it ends after 6 years and you could land a good job very quickly after the £1 ccj has been awarded, but you still only pay £1 a month.

cos it is never re assessed by the court again once it had its decision for £1 a month

unlike an IVA where every time you earn more you pay more each month for 5 years
( bad comparison but you get my drift)

If your circumstances hit a blip that will likely last at least a year then a DRO is optimal as it will wipe out a CCJ on consumer debt and private debt, I am not sure about Court fines or Council Tax, I think Income Tax is forever.

The concept of fear is whether you want to participate in the system, that means buying a house, buying a new car and being able to do some jobs that require security vetting, although owing a lot would prevent you getting the kind of jobs where they feel you would be vulnerable to bribery.

I am not sure if a consumer creditor can go back to Court to seek a variation of a Judgement if they have evidence you are now raking it in.

I hate IVA's and the vermin that make money from them.

Really this game works on one thing, it is not money, it is CONFIDENCE, it does not matter whether you are the UK, a large Corporation, a Start Up or just another Citizen, it is all based on confidence of the promise to pay the bearer.

If we taught more of this in school people could make informed decisions about budgeting and debt, hell they don't even teach how to work out a Gas Bill.

bcs7

sourcrates said:

Original creditors rarely want or offer settlements, ideally you want the debts to be sold, as the best settlement deals come from debt buyers such as Lowell/Cabot/Arrow Global/Intrum/Lantern etc.

There are a few major players in the debt purchasing industry, who buy old debts in bulk for literally pennies in the pound.
PRA Group are not too hot to trot, they don`t like to deal, but the majority of the others will.

Obviously this will take time, 2/3 years maybe more, so saving a good settlement fund is essential.

You should not confuse "Debt purchasers" with "Debt collectors".

Collection companies just collect on behalf of banks, some multi task, by being a debt collector, and a debt purchaser, others are stand alone debt buyers.

The clue can be in the company name, and in what they write in their letters, if they mention "their client" then they are simply a collector, if they have bought your debt, they state as much in the letter.

None of these debts are with the original creditor.
The lowest has already been passed around several companies and is currently with Intrum which is why I made an offer.
The other 5 are all with Link who bought the debts off the original bank and credit card companies.
I'm wondering if I should reduce some of the monthly payments to a lower amount and concentrate on building up my emergency fund to put pressure in the opposite direction that it's going to take longer to pay off so they may be more likely to settle?

Andyjflet

Seems to me your are flailing around a tad, its better to have a plan/strategy as Dan mentions above, and then stick with it, thats your plan, you are half in half out. Just get on with the DMP and the advice laid out. You have no regualr income to service this debt. 

bcs7

Andyjflet said:

Seems to me your are flailing around a tad, its better to have a plan/strategy as Dan mentions above, and then stick with it, thats your plan, you are half in half out. Just get on with the DMP and the advice laid out. You have no regualr income to service this debt. 

The issue is I don't want to be paying a DMP for the next 15 years. If I can force the issue to get them to accept lower amounts I may be able to get money from relatives to pay them off. I can't do it with the full amount but if I can reduce the debt to somewhere in the region of £10K then I'd likely be able to get that within the next 12-18 months.

Andyjflet

Sounds like a really bad idea to me, at least with a DMP the decision is done, you can then get on with paying the debts yourself by saving the payment money into an emergency fund, you then know what youve got to offer rather than relying or borrowing off other people. 

stu12345_2

Remind me again why you aren't allowed to go bankrupt 

bcs7

stu12345_2 said:

Remind me again why you aren't allowed to go bankrupt 

From what I remember of my conversations with StepChange there were other consequences which made it a bad idea. I also didn't want the IVA option due to having someone else look at my bank accounts and decide what happened to the money in them.

bcs7

Andyjflet said:

Sounds like a really bad idea to me, at least with a DMP the decision is done, you can then get on with paying the debts yourself by saving the payment money into an emergency fund, you then know what youve got to offer rather than relying or borrowing off other people. 

You mean reduce my payments to token amounts and then put that money aside to build up an emergency fund?
I'm overstating the borrowing from relatives a bit as most of the money I can get by selling things. It's just it will take a bit of time to sell everything. For example I have a lot of wargaming miniatures which are out of production so the value of them is a lot higher than when I bought them. Even at a rough guess I could make around £5K from that alone. Then I have other possessions like guitars and music equipment that could make another £2K.

stu12345_2

unless you need to rent private, become a company director or buy a house, then bankruptcy is an option and debt free in a year.
with only a 1 in 5 chance of additional payments for 3 years