Payplan and clearing debts

davetheman007007

sourcrates you reckon stop all payments and not pay a reduced amount, I was planning on paying £100 a month to Payplan with the last payment being 1st Jan 2025, I will get the money around 14th Feb 2025

sourcrates

davetheman007007 said:

sourcrates you reckon stop all payments and not pay a reduced amount, I was planning on paying £100 a month to Payplan with the last payment being 1st Jan 2025, I will get the money around 14th Feb 2025

You can do that if you wish, but is it affordable to you presently?

These are non essential, unsecured debts, nothing is going to happen if you don`t pay them till Feb.

davetheman007007

Am thinking of initially offering 50% of the each balance as a settlement, does this sound about right?

davetheman007007

Would it be best to pay enougth to Payplan to allow for a token £1 per creditor or just pay nothing?

sourcrates

Dave, I thought your strategy was to be making settlement offers from February, is that still the case?

If it is you need to be laying the groundwork for this, because settlement negotiations can take 6/8 months or more to deal with, sometimes longer.

A creditor will accept offers based on how much return they are likely to see, if your receiving regular payments why would you make or accept an offer to settle? its all about return you see.

You need to either reduce, or stop DMP payments altogether, you need the collection letters to start dropping on your mat again, they will go through there standard collection activity, offers to settle will be somewhere in the middle, between affordable payments, and threats of legal action.

Then its a case of letter tennis between you are each creditor, usually a reason why they should accept an offer will be required, job uncertainty, illness, lump sum on offer from a family member with limited funds, under no circumstances tell anyone you are to be getting a large sum of money shortly, otherwise they will want the full balance, and all deals will be off, you get the idea.

It may be one or more of them writes to you with an offer to settle, you then need to decide if you can accept that or negotiate further, none of this is quick or easy, its more of a marathon than a sprint, and can take quite some time to pull off.

Debt collection is the same, nothing happens quickly.

davetheman007007

I will be getting the lump sum mid February so was thinking of starting sending the letters in January, fully take on board about laying the groundwork,  Just trying to decide if best to make a token payment or no payment

davetheman007007

I presume there is no way of stopping letters coming through the post?  I would much prefer by email

RAS

You can, technically.

But there is a risk if you do that.

By law, before creditors place a default on your credit record they gave to write you, giving you 14 days to repay the whole sum, and again when they intend to register the default.

If they intend to take legal action they need to post letters to your mail address warning of action and then the court papers go to your address, as does any paperwork after the CCJ is issued.

Can you put the mail aside and take 15 minutes once a week to open it and see if you have default warnings, defaults, letters before action or court papers? The latter usually come from Northampton if you are in England.

davetheman007007

I received the below letter yesterday, should I contact or ignore, I plan to send the first offer letter end of Dec with payment possible end of Feb

Grumpelstiltskin

Ignore it, it's the letter before the default letter. The next one should be the actual default letter.