Debt has finally caught up with me

wdc208218

Good luck OP, bookmarked this thread. My wife and I have made the same decision as you with regards to defaulting after reading the positivity within this. We cancelled everything on Wednesday evening. 

andy26599

Starting to get annoyed with the amount of phone calls I'm getting from my various creditors, but holding firm and blocking them as they come through. But there are a large number of voicemails that keep popping up even though it doesn't ring. The letters are annoying as well, but holding firm.

£1,482 into my emergency fund in month 1. Roughly the same next month and the month after, which is when I'll likely see the defaults pop up fingers crossed and I can pass it all on to Stepchange.

enthusiasticsaver

Good start on the emergency saving.  You can write to your creditors asking them to contact you by letter only and asking them to remove phone numbers from their records. 

Prodigal50

Telling my wife I had lost us close to £100k and now 70k in debt was one of the hardest things I've ever done but it was the first step to moving on. 

tallyhoh

andy26599 said:

tallyhoh said:

I would strongly advise you come clean to your wife. Many years ago I was in her position & was so distressed when I found my partners the debt was fairly large that I had a nervous breakdown. It wasn't the debt that caused my health problems, it was the secrecy & deceit. Good luck for the future 

I know I have to, but the fear of torpedoing another marriage is strong. She's so credit averse, and I know I' should've fessed up years ago, but as it was manageable at the time, and we didn't live together and it's all in my name, I just kept it to myself in the expectation that I would pay some of it off when I got my pay out from my ex wife, and then use the money I'm saving on those to snowball the rest, but as I've previously said, that payout still hasn't come and now I find myself in the hole I've dug for myself.

It wasn't the fact that he was in debt that caused the problem, it was the fact that he hid it from me and I found out by accident

fluffyowl

Ah honestly I would tell your soon to be wife the truth. Not answering phone calls when she’s there (as she sees it), acting preoccupied…these are all signs of having an affair. Plus it’s not fair on her to hide it-marriage is a partnership. 

Answer the calls and tell them that you want them to put everything in writing and not to contact you via phone call again. Legally they have to do that. Ask for it to be put on your record. Don’t enter in to anything they may say or ask you. Just repeat that firmly but politely and then tell them that you are hanging up. 

You only have to do it once per lender (might take a week to kick in). It stops the ‘feeling hunted’ sensation. 

You can do this. 

andy26599

So it's been over a month now, first lot of payments were all missed at the start of March, and now the April payments which should've been paid today have all been obviously not paid. 

I now have £2,100 in my emergency fund, after an emergency popped up meaning I had to spend some of what I had put away last month.

Will continue to ignore their repeated requests to get in touch, and will hopefully start to see some movement with defaults at the start of June/July, which is when I will engage with them in meaningful discussion, alongside Stepchange.

DebtFreeWannabe27

You've grown your emergency fund so quickly! Well done. 

andy26599

DebtFreeWannabe27 said:

You've grown your emergency fund so quickly! Well done. 

That's largely due to the amount of money I was shelling out on debt repayments before things caught up with me tbh. I was spending £1700 a month on debt repayments, and after mortgage (£1200) and Child maintenance to my ex wife (£730) which left me £200 for fuel, food and commuting to work, When you factor in that fuel alone is around £300 a month after we were told we had to be in 3 days a week instead of WFH this is where my issues arose. I've put £1000 a month into Emergency fund (which I'm going to use as my DMP payment when it starts), and I'm testing £900 a month as a budget, which also allows a little for treating the kids to days out, and a little fun money for myself.

Anything left over at the end goes into my EF.

Had a few Notice of Arrears letters this month as I've now missed 2 payments. @sourcrates what are the important ones I should be looking for, is it Notice of Default? 

Current status

Novuna Loan 1 & 2 - Notice of Arrears Letters received
MyCommunity Bank - plenty of arsey text messages threatening recovery procedures but only one letter to say I'd missed a payment up to now.
Admiral Loan - As this is my biggest single debt (£16k) they seem to be sending me about 3 letters a week and a million voicemails (blocked numbers ages ago) which are just recorded messages, received notice of arrears last week.
First Direct/Barclaycard/Capital One CC - Not much correspondence at all tbh, other than "We've noticed you're behind, ring us and pay"
Updraft x 3 loans - Again just the standard letters saying I've missed a payment and I'm in arrears.

Right at the start of my journey but already feeling much better not having to use credit to pay for my monthly food/fuel and getting deeper and deeper into debt.

 

enthusiasticsaver

You want to see default letters as usually that is when interest stops.