Is it time for a DMP or try to ride the storm?

Martico

Alternative is to chip away as best you can, in the knowledge that Dec 24 will free you of £500 per month currently going to that first loan. That'll be 15 months of cutting as much to the bone as you can / earning bits on the side through surveys / selling stuff, and directing all the extra that you can at the highest interest cards

Rob5342

Can you pay whatever amount you want to the creditors if self-managed? I'm not saying be ridiculous, but I mean leave myself the ability to save up and hopefully one day be in a position to offer full and final offers?

DMPs are informal arrangments, so you just pay them whatever you want. It would cost less overall to pay them a lower amount and save the rest for full and final offers. It will depend on who the debt ends up with, PRA are notoriously difficult when it comes to accepting offers.

I know a mortgage would be out of reach for a long time, but once the final default was off my report, would this be possible? So long as all debts were fully paid?

You can get a mortgage even with defaults but it's harder and will cost more. When they have dropped off it will start to become easier

https://debtcamel.co.uk/mortgage-recent-defaults/

Is it completely random how quickly different creditors go to default? I.e. creditor 1 after 2 months and creditor 5 could be after 6 months?

It varies a lot in my experience. Barclaycard were great and defaulted after three months and backdated the default to when I started my DMP. Virgin made things as difficult as they could for me and didn't default for 15 months.

CurlyTop11

Thanks all for your responses and advice. I will try to answer the questions below.

The debt has accrued from mainly just overspending. Living the 'I'm only young once' rather than just a 'I'm only young once but still spend what you can afford'. The main issue for me was then trying to juggle the balances/payments to make it more manageable, but then continuing to just pay minimum payments. I have some books and bits and bobs etc that I could sell for around £100 but that's it.

Everyone - Unfortunately, I need a car for work. I am predominantly office based, however I travel to a client once a week which is 20 miles each way and not on a public transport route (I have looked into this).

Everyone - I completely agree with regards to the availability of credit having been a major issue for myself. Thinking to yourself 'it is on 0% and therefore I can clear this', or 'I can do a loan for this and then not build up debt again', but it never works like that and you just end up in a bigger hole. However, I am not blaming this for my situation, it is just an observation and something I would advise people against if you don't have a plan in place.

@Rob5342 completely agree with regards to the 'best intentions' when budgeting. From my own experience, I have naturally aired on the side of 'oh I can stick to this' on a tight budget, and things happen, not necessarily always avoidable and it just doesn't happen.

@Martico you are right re the Barclaycard. I forgot I changed this manually to £150 when the minimum payment was around £145. Minimum payment is currently £129, so obviously in an ideal world would put the extra £20 or so to one of the other cards.

@Rob5342 understood re the payments and defaults. Thanks for that.

I think I have almost accepted in my head that I will probably have to do a DMP after reading through everything. When I look forward, it is always with worry about 'what if something goes wrong' and can't afford to get it fixed or replace it. Even if my work shoes were to get a hole in, I'd be panicking about replacing them. It's causing a lot of sleepless nights now and is pretty much all I think about, so is also affecting working performance. Not the way to be living.

On the flip side, I am also anxious about doing a DMP due to the chasing. I have read on another thread that Lendable are particularly aggressive and threaten to send people to your house. Living at home, this would be my worst nightmare. Another thing would also them be calling the house phone to chase and leaving messages etc. If I double check and remove house number from my accounts with them, can they then only call my mobile? Or can they call house phone as they have previously had the number on record?

All my payments are due out next week, so I need to make a decision pretty sharpish really. Am I right in thinking there is no point in making another month of payments? I'd be better to just stop payments as early as possible?

Thanks all

CurlyTop11

Regarding the extra part-time work...this would be difficult for me currently as I am around 75% the way through studying via work until next July time. I have a big exam and then a final report that will take up pretty much all my time. I wouldn't want to jeopardise this because 1) I wouldn't want to risk a fall out with work from failing anything and 2) I would have to pay for any resits myself, which would obviously cost more.

Thanks

Martico

It's finely balanced really. It's good that your flights and accommodation are already paid for the wedding. And tantalising that Lendable will totally finish in Dec 24, freeing up enough to hammer the rest over time.
For some extra funds, you could look into current account switches every couple of months - Nationwide pay their switching bonus pretty quickly. Add in some surveys with Prolific and you can make some inroads.
Plus, each month your minimum card payments will fall in line with the balances.
But you'll have little contingency for the unexpected (MOT) or expected (insurance)
So there's a world where you can accelerate overpayments for the next year on the Halifax CC and /or Fluid. 
It's a tough choice

Rob5342

CurlyTop11 said:
On the flip side, I am also anxious about doing a DMP due to the chasing. I have read on another thread that Lendable are particularly aggressive and threaten to send people to your house. Living at home, this would be my worst nightmare. Another thing would also them be calling the house phone to chase and leaving messages etc. If I double check and remove house number from my accounts with them, can they then only call my mobile? Or can they call house phone as they have previously had the number on record?

If you decide that a DMP is the right choice then don't let the chasing put you off. The chasing only tends to be when you are completely ignoring the creditors to get defaults, once you've got them and start paying they calm down a lot. I get chased about an uneforceable debt I have but I've just blocked the number and file the emails into a folder, it's not really any more effort than dealing with regular spam. Lender's can send people to your house, but they aren't bailiffs and don't have any powers at all, and if you just close the door that's it. Lender's play on peoples ignorance and mention home visits to try and scare them as they know a lot of people will think they are bailiffs. The thing to remember is that it's far cheaper to threaten home visiits than it is to do them, so they have a set of carefully worded threat letters they send people to try and scare them into paying.

stu12345_2

you can get "breathing space "when you are on a dmp.I got mine right at the start.a DMP company can apply for you.it means creditors can't hassle you for 2 months or apply late fees or interest.and anyway your DMP would start around the same time and stop interest and charges.
plus once on a dmp you  can alter your payments and budget as often as you like.and sometimes miss payments if you have a large unexpected bill.i cancelled my dmp direct debit a few times.then restarted it again next month.
A dmp is an informal agreement and I found creditors are happy to receive a reasonable payment and they then don't hassle you again.apart from posting statements that they have to send you by law.

stu12345_2

surely bailiffs only attend if you default on a ccj award and fail to meet the ccj terms.
but that is way way off.and if you do a dmp it should never get that stage.
bailiffs are not the same as debt collector.baillifs have power and are enforced by court law to collect your debt if you don't meet court demands.debt collectors are min wage nobody's trying it on.

Rob5342

stu12345_2 said:

surely bailiffs only attend if you default on a ccj award and fail to meet the ccj terms.
but that is way way off.and if you do a dmp it should never get that stage.
bailiffs are not the same as debt collector.baillifs have power and are enforced by court law to collect your debt if you don't meet court demands.debt collectors are min wage nobody's trying it on.

That's correct but a lot of people don't appreciate the difference, especially if they are new to debt managment. DCAs take advantage of that and mention home visits to try and make people think they are talking about bailiffs. I've had numerous letters from DCAs and they very carefully worded to and imply legal action and bailiff visits without actually saying anything untrue. 

CurlyTop11

Martico said:

It's finely balanced really. It's good that your flights and accommodation are already paid for the wedding. And tantalising that Lendable will totally finish in Dec 24, freeing up enough to hammer the rest over time.
For some extra funds, you could look into current account switches every couple of months - Nationwide pay their switching bonus pretty quickly. Add in some surveys with Prolific and you can make some inroads.
Plus, each month your minimum card payments will fall in line with the balances.
But you'll have little contingency for the unexpected (MOT) or expected (insurance)
So there's a world where you can accelerate overpayments for the next year on the Halifax CC and /or Fluid. 
It's a tough choice

That is my main issue really - the contingency. Obviously you could have the best intentions and stick to them really rigidly, but if something was to happen unexpectedly then I would be screwed.

Rob5342 said:

CurlyTop11 said:
On the flip side, I am also anxious about doing a DMP due to the chasing. I have read on another thread that Lendable are particularly aggressive and threaten to send people to your house. Living at home, this would be my worst nightmare. Another thing would also them be calling the house phone to chase and leaving messages etc. If I double check and remove house number from my accounts with them, can they then only call my mobile? Or can they call house phone as they have previously had the number on record?

If you decide that a DMP is the right choice then don't let the chasing put you off. The chasing only tends to be when you are completely ignoring the creditors to get defaults, once you've got them and start paying they calm down a lot. I get chased about an uneforceable debt I have but I've just blocked the number and file the emails into a folder, it's not really any more effort than dealing with regular spam. Lender's can send people to your house, but they aren't bailiffs and don't have any powers at all, and if you just close the door that's it. Lender's play on peoples ignorance and mention home visits to try and scare them as they know a lot of people will think they are bailiffs. The thing to remember is that it's far cheaper to threaten home visiits than it is to do them, so they have a set of carefully worded threat letters they send people to try and scare them into paying.

I would be able to deal with the calls to my mobile and letters, it's just if they did actually send someone round to the house or rang the house phone number, then living with parents this wouldn't be good. The last thing I want to do is worry them also.

@stu12345_2 I know these wouldn't be bailiffs at that point, however as I live with parents, I would want to avoid them coming round at all, as it may not be me who is in if they did come. If I lived alone, this wouldn't bother me.

Does anybody know if they threatened that and then you contacted them to say I'm starting a DMP, would this suffice? Or does this then mess up trying to get a default because you are meant to completely ignore them?

I know that either route I take won't be easy/will take a long time to sort itself out. I am just trying to weigh up which is the lesser of two evils stress wise. In an ideal world, I would try and get through to next year when the Lendable loan is finished, but the stress of not having any backup (my fault entriely I know) if anything did go wrong is huge at the moment. Like if I decided against a DMP and then in a couple of months time had a shocking MOT that I couldn't afford, would I regret not doing one more than if I did do one?