Debt Advice

stressy123

Please don't judge me, I am reaching out for some help and I would love some support and advice!  I got in a right state financially trying to save my business back in 2017/2018.  I owed large amounts to Funding Circle and Barclays which were personally guaranteed plus around £75k on various personal credit cards.  The business had to be liquidated and I had to pick up the personal guarantees.  I have worked really hard to pay this back over the years, so far I have repaid funding circle in full, paid Barclays, they settled for slightly less than the amount I owed and I have managed to pay off chunks to clear some of the credit cards, but 4 of them were defaulted.  Three of the four defaulted credit cards were sold to Link and I pay them £20 per month for two of them, one seems to have been sent back to the original card company and now that has gone very quiet.  The last one was left with the card company and i was paying them £20 per month until this month were it has been sold to Lowell.  I really want to just clear my name and move on, but cannot pay these off in full, du to the huge outstanding amounts.  I am hoping that they will disappear from my credit file after the 6 years has passed for each one, but they are showing up as Link and Lowell accounts on my file and the original lender for the one that was sent back to them from Link.    I am wondering if I just pay the £20 forever and hope my credit score improves eventually or should I try and settle.  I was reading yesterday about asking for CCA's from Link and Lowell so think this sounds like a good idea. Any advice of support from this forum would be really appreciated. Thanks for reading!

RAS

Please can you clarify exactly when the defaults were issued against each of these debts? 

MattMattMattUK

stressy123 said:

Please don't judge me, I am reaching out for some help and I would love some support and advice!

People are not here to judge, just to offer some (non-regulated) advice, they will be straight talking and factual, but not judgemental, so nothing to worry about there. 

stressy123 said:

I got in a right state financially trying to save my business back in 2017/2018.  I owed large amounts to Funding Circle and Barclays which were personally guaranteed plus around £75k on various personal credit cards.  The business had to be liquidated and I had to pick up the personal guarantees.  I have worked really hard to pay this back over the years, so far I have repaid funding circle in full, paid Barclays, they settled for slightly less than the amount I owed and I have managed to pay off chunks to clear some of the credit cards, but 4 of them were defaulted.  Three of the four defaulted credit cards were sold to Link and I pay them £20 per month for two of them, one seems to have been sent back to the original card company and now that has gone very quiet.  The last one was left with the card company and i was paying them £20 per month until this month were it has been sold to Lowell.  I really want to just clear my name and move on, but cannot pay these off in full, du to the huge outstanding amounts.  I am hoping that they will disappear from my credit file after the 6 years has passed for each one, but they are showing up as Link and Lowell accounts on my file and the original lender for the one that was sent back to them from Link. 

Have any of them ever taken out a CCJ against you, or are they all just down as debts? How much is still outstanding?

stressy123 said:

I am wondering if I just pay the £20 forever and hope my credit score improves eventually or should I try and settle.

Your credit score/credit rating is totally meaningless, so ignore it. What are your aims, to be able to buy a home, move home, remortgage? 

stressy123 said:

I was reading yesterday about asking for CCA's from Link and Lowell so think this sounds like a good idea.

How many of these are personal debts? You could try CCA for the debts that are for debts that were purely personal. For any that you own under a personal guarantee, they will be more complicated and the CCA route would not apply. 

stressy123 said:

Any advice of support from this forum would be really appreciated. Thanks for reading!

Are you in employment now? Where do you want to aim for going forward? With that information people may be offer advice on how to get there. 

stressy123

The only debts that are now outstanding are 4 credit cards between £9k, £10800, £13200 and £18500 each.  No CCJ's, just debts, 2 with Link, 1 with lovell and 1 with the original card company, but they have not been in touch for a a couple of years.  All the personal guarantees have been satisfied now.  I would like to be able to re-mortgage next year so keen to get my credit score in a better place and really just want to clear my name and put this all in the past if there is a way.  It is so stressful and I am on my own so noone to share the problem with.

stressy123

I managed to start upmy business again and earning a living now, but not making enough to pay these sums off.

MattMattMattUK

stressy123 said:

The only debts that are now outstanding are 4 credit cards between £9k, £10800, £13200 and £18500 each.  No CCJ's, just debts, 2 with Link, 1 with lovell and 1 with the original card company, but they have not been in touch for a a couple of years.  All the personal guarantees have been satisfied now.

As they are personal debts then you can submit a CCA request, it may or may not result in anything beneficial.

stressy123 said:

I would like to be able to re-mortgage next year 

Do you mean a rate change (eg. you deal ends and you want a new one), or or do you mean a re-mortgage, eg. move to a different provider, borrow more etc? If the former then you can do that with your existing lender regardless.

stressy123 said:

so keen to get my credit score in a better place

Your score is entirely pointless, it means nothing, ignore it!

stressy123 said:

and really just want to clear my name and put this all in the past if there is a way.  It is so stressful and I am on my own so noone to share the problem with.

You do not need to clear your name, you are not a criminal. You might want to clear debts, the CCA might mean some get dropped, or you might need to repay them, how you do that depends on your capacity to pay, how much you are earning etc. and whether you would rather pay a few debtors £20 a month for a few decades, or clear then quicker by using any extra income you have. 

stressy123

Thanks for the advice.  I would ideally like to be able to choose a new mortgage lender and get the best deal on the market and even borrow a bit more to pay off the debts, but it's good to know that if I have to stay with my current lender that the deals will be open to me regardless of my credit score.  I did look into getting a loan to try and settle the debts, but can't becasue of my bad credit score.  Any experience of how much these debt collectors would settle for as a percentage?

stressy123

RAS said:

Please can you clarify exactly when the defaults were issued against each of these debts? 

The credit files shows these dates 29/8/2019, 30/1/2020, 10/11/2018 and 21/8/2019.

stressy123

MattMattMattUK said:

stressy123 said:

The only debts that are now outstanding are 4 credit cards between £9k, £10800, £13200 and £18500 each.  No CCJ's, just debts, 2 with Link, 1 with lovell and 1 with the original card company, but they have not been in touch for a a couple of years.  All the personal guarantees have been satisfied now.

As they are personal debts then you can submit a CCA request, it may or may not result in anything beneficial.

stressy123 said:

I would like to be able to re-mortgage next year 

Do you mean a rate change (eg. you deal ends and you want a new one), or or do you mean a re-mortgage, eg. move to a different provider, borrow more etc? If the former then you can do that with your existing lender regardless.

stressy123 said:

so keen to get my credit score in a better place

Your score is entirely pointless, it means nothing, ignore it!

stressy123 said:

and really just want to clear my name and put this all in the past if there is a way.  It is so stressful and I am on my own so noone to share the problem with.

You do not need to clear your name, you are not a criminal. You might want to clear debts, the CCA might mean some get dropped, or you might need to repay them, how you do that depends on your capacity to pay, how much you are earning etc. and whether you would rather pay a few debtors £20 a month for a few decades, or clear then quicker by using any extra income you have. 

MattMattMattUK said:

stressy123 said:

The only debts that are now outstanding are 4 credit cards between £9k, £10800, £13200 and £18500 each.  No CCJ's, just debts, 2 with Link, 1 with lovell and 1 with the original card company, but they have not been in touch for a a couple of years.  All the personal guarantees have been satisfied now.

As they are personal debts then you can submit a CCA request, it may or may not result in anything beneficial.

stressy123 said:

I would like to be able to re-mortgage next year 

Do you mean a rate change (eg. you deal ends and you want a new one), or or do you mean a re-mortgage, eg. move to a different provider, borrow more etc? If the former then you can do that with your existing lender regardless.

stressy123 said:

so keen to get my credit score in a better place

Your score is entirely pointless, it means nothing, ignore it!

stressy123 said:

and really just want to clear my name and put this all in the past if there is a way.  It is so stressful and I am on my own so noone to share the problem with.

You do not need to clear your name, you are not a criminal. You might want to clear debts, the CCA might mean some get dropped, or you might need to repay them, how you do that depends on your capacity to pay, how much you are earning etc. and whether you would rather pay a few debtors £20 a month for a few decades, or clear then quicker by using any extra income you have. 

Thanks for the advice.  I would ideally like to be able to choose a new mortgage lender and get the best deal on the market and even borrow a bit more to pay off the debts, but it's good to know that if I have to stay with my current lender that the deals will be open to me regardless of my credit score.  I did look into getting a loan to try and settle the debts, but can't becasue of my bad credit score.  Any experience of how much these debt collectors would settle for as a percentage?

Brie

Ignore your credit score.  The banks don't look at it.  They look at your credit history instead.  And as long as the defaults are showing on that then I suspect you will have trouble moving to a different bank.  But your current bank will have to offer you something even if it's not what you might pick, given a choice.

Have you paid anything since you defaulted on the cards?  If not maybe you need to stick with your current bank until those drop off your credit history and then things won't look so bad to a new bank.  So that's going to be 2026 at the earliest for them all to be gone.  

stressy123

Brie said:

Ignore your credit score.  The banks don't look at it.  They look at your credit history instead.  And as long as the defaults are showing on that then I suspect you will have trouble moving to a different bank.  But your current bank will have to offer you something even if it's not what you might pick, given a choice.

Have you paid anything since you defaulted on the cards?  If not maybe you need to stick with your current bank until those drop off your credit history and then things won't look so bad to a new bank.  So that's going to be 2026 at the earliest for them all to be gone.  

Yes, I have been paying the £20 per month on three of them but the one that went back to the original lender has not been paid for a couple of years, they went silent on me, but I am hoping that one will go from my record next month.