My plan is now up in arms

stu12345_2

myself and wife owe £10,500 each to about 4 creditors each
 I was earning about £470 a week net , wife £250 net, we had planned to pay creditors as little as possible to save up and do full and final settlements

that was until yesterday, my job has been taking the Micky out of me, been with it for 4 months
It is meant to be 35 hrs a week, but I've been forced to do 50 to 55 hrs approx weekly spread over 14  or 15 hours a day with numerous parts of the day unpaid , sometimes unfairly.exhausted and after numerous complaints which all failed, I was getting home at 840 pm and back up at 440am !!!
anyway I resigned, and took a 10 hrs a week job at min wage.

the new income is about £1100 a month wife and £520 a month me
my wife and I are planning on paying nothing cos we can't not even a £1, we want to remain on those hours for a  long time,  in the proposal that creditors write the debts off as they will never collect the money.

bankruptcy is also a consideration , but a dro prob isn't cos my earnings are too low and hers are too high, depending how you split the bills based on our income.
she also paid a f and f settlement on a tiny payday loan last month, unfair priority over other creditors?
 I own a car worth £600, that is the only asset we have. we rent council. were up to date with priority bills and have £1500 in savings.

we are planning to write letters with income and expenses to creditors, do we show household income, all our debts each and how do we explain the household outgoings per see, is it 33% / ,66% split , will creditors need that explanation. but the car , car insurance, MOT, tax, repairs are in my name, hence can't split that expenditure.

I'm thinking off how to word it saying we are not going to up our hours, we have no assets , except an old banger, so it wilk be wasting creditors time only to get told you are getting nothing if it goes to a ccj, or will judge force £1 a month?

but one creditor we both owe over £5500 each. so it could make us bankrupt and not cost us fees?

elsien

Fairly sure this was covered on your previous threads, but what about UC expecting you to up your hours? 

stu12345_2

not get UC, our income is virtually equal to UC, mostly cos our rent and council tax is mega lowand anyway not actively increasing our hours any more, all debts have defaulted except one, all CCA requests proved they are legit

the only thing is my new employer said he could offer me a few more  hours every couple of weeks, depending on his contracts, maybe even 8 hours more one day  a month as well as the extra couple if I fancy, I told him my situation, he is smart about these things, he did mention bankruptcy or asking creditors for a commercial write off if im not going to increase hours for a long time. which I will make crystal clear to creditors about not increasing hours

where as a Dro would not be allowed for me as I'm running the car in House expenses and I would be too poor to run a dro and wife would be too rich to get a dro even if we split other expenses 33/66 as expected and she paid off a creditor last month, preferential treatment.

so if we give  creditors our income and expenses info , we can show they will be wasting their time doing a ccj as they would get nothing ,or would a judge force £1 a month, so to save them the cost , it maybe better for them to do a full commercial write off or at least the majority of it.

Brie

I don't understand a lot of this but in particular how you can be too poor to run a DRO and your wife too rich to get a DRO.  

And you have savings but don't expect to pay money you owe?

pseudodox

I really don't follow all this but it reads to me that you have debts thanks to previously living beyond your means but now think you should get these debts written off by declining to work enough hours to pay your dues.  And you don't think you should at least use your savings to reduce your liability? Who do you think actually pays for such debts to be written off?  The rest of society of course in higher prices.  

elsien

Pretty much all of the options have been discussed many times over in the OP’s previous threads. There’s probably little to add that hasn’t already been said before. 

The CCJ discussion and final offers has certainly been already covered. I’m starting to wonder what the OP is gaining by the repetition? 

stymied

My main question is do your household income and expenses balance with your reduced hours, regardless of the debts? If not you’ll need to increase them since you have no means of borrowing to cover any additional expenses. I don’t see why you can’t split the car expenses given that your wife uses it as a means of transport too, albeit with you driving.

Grumpelstiltskin

In the past 6 months we have gone round and round in circles with the OP and he does seem to have unfortunate experiences with his jobs, I'm sure this isn't the first time he has left because of problems.

it is just a waste of time as there isn't anything new to say.

stu12345_2

the fact is we started with max of  £53000 in debt due to newish  cars,  car deposits,etc paying for trips to see my ill mum that lives 600 miles away and other things , 2 house exchanges via mutual swaps,  to non local moves,  refurbishing those homes, which where terrible, but in great locations over a period of 10 yrs and with same employer for 8 years up until COVID hit business  and I left cos company had cutbacks, job wasn't safe, hours were being reduced 

we sold the cars, cleared the HP, and bought old banger , we then went on a dmp with stepchange for 2 yrs bringing the debt to £21000 from £34000 and recently ran out own self managed dmp 

my wife and I have changed jobs a couple  of times in last 6 months,  but we were with same employer for 3 yrs before that , when we had our dmp running,  now looking for a great employer, I have been unlucky to be shafted and conned by last employer ,( it went through  8 managers in 5 yes, the one that employed  me lasted 5 months and resigned 3 weeks after taking me on, saying too many hours unpaid, but her employer is great, friendly and sticks to the contract, mines didnt.so now I'm considering my options, dro, bankruptcy or commercial write off.

I researched dro in the past, but I'm too poor, why cos I run the car, I'm the owner,,car tax, car insurance, etc are in my name, in the house and the dro would be rejected by the CAB ( I had a chat before with the CAB)as it would seem I'm in negative earnings to work part-time cos of the car expenses. even though total household earnings balanced out normal living costs exactly !! as DRO's are individual things, but DMP's can be joint

but my wife being the higher earner, and still low paid , but no car expenses, would not get a DRO cos she is over the £75 monthly limit. where's as I'm negative monthly. and she did prefential treatment last month clearing a tiny payday loan via a full and final settlement 
 so I'm considering a commercial write off by creditors, as a dmp would not work in our situation.

where my wife still uses car to get to work, 3 mile walk to work , mega early start, but possible bus on return , hence bankruptcy would take it away.even an old £700 banger 

 the savings we had gathered over last few months will be used as emergency money and as a fund to visit my ill mother , get timing belt done and other car repairs.

What's left isn't even going to make any decent dent  into the £21000 outstanding 

MSE isn't allowed to let posters be judgemental , I've read a couple of judgement posts here, which is forbidden 
trust me the creditors have had over double what we borrowed over the last 10 years, so paying our dues????, lol

so if a dro won't work, would declaring to creditors our income will not be rising, so a ccj would get them nothing but pennies, so we would accept a good partial write off instead 

aa the debt collection companies bought our debts for pennies in the pound anyway and have already made good profit from us via our dmp.

and the original creditors have also made great money from us over last 10 years in interest, at 19 to 22% in credit cards

we are not interested in what damage our credit files are, as we never want credit ever again.

Karonher

The site is to give advice and you have had a lot. You must realise how it looks to people who are paying off their debt. You just dont want to work to pay back money you borrowed and agreed to pay back. I'll just ask a question. Why do you think you should be able to do this? You will have agreed to the interest rate at the time so saying they have had a lot back is irrelevant. There have been no insults about what you are trying to do, so you may have to accept that people are not going to agree with you trying to get out of paying.

stu12345_2

Karonher said:

The site is to give advice and you have had a lot. You must realise how it looks to people who are paying off their debt. You just dont want to work to pay back money you borrowed and agreed to pay back. I'll just ask a question. Why do you think you should be able to do this? You will have agreed to the interest rate at the time so saying they have had a lot back is irrelevant. There have been no insults about what you are trying to do, so you may have to accept that people are not going to agree with you trying to get out of paying.

morning, off to work soon, can I just point out a story posted by a guy about a year ago on here that had ran up about £80000 in consumer debts, he knew the interest rates, he knew he would  never be able to pay it back normally, ( despite having a good paying job)
he went bankrupt, but to avoid an IPA for 3 yrs, he deliberately moved to South Wales valleys  from Leeds,just before  applying for bankruptcy,he then rented a cheap flat and took on a  part time job, (after giving up his much better paid job up north)  ( did not claim any benefits)thus he then had no surplus income of any significance.per month to pay out in his bankruptcy 

he got bankruptcy, paid nothing for 12 months cos of his very low earnings and wrote off all his debt.

after discharge, he then took a well paid job up north and started again debt free.

he got congratulations from mods on here and from others for thinking outside the box.and using all ammo available that he could legally use. rather than have a dmp that would take 10 years or an IPA that would take every surplus for 3 years.if he remained in his original much better paid job 

did he feel any sympathy to the big corporate credit card companies that never got all  their money back, nope, not one bit.

his advice was if you have no assets and don't want to slog away in a dmp or get an IPA, then think outside the box.