Step by step guide to self managed DMP?

Kittymumof4

Hi everyone, I'm so glad I found this forum, the support here is amazing. 

I am autistic and need to know exactly what steps to take in our situation. 

I posted recently and had some fab advice, now I need some guidance on the steps we need to take please. 

I know that our first step is to post a SOA which I'll be posting tonight when I've had chance to sit with my husband to finish off the bits I'm unsure of. 

We have around 65k (maybe more like 70k) of debt, all on credit cards, and a 1.5k overdraft, and we're about to renew our mortgage with our own provider to a new 2 or 5 yr fixed rate as our current deal is up next month. 

Until we finish the SOA later today, we're not sure if we could still afford to pay the credit cards (swapping to 0% cards) if we make cuts and budget well, or if we need to start a DMP. 

Today we are about to go beyond the arranged overdraft, we have a credit card payment coming out. 

If it works out that we can avoid the DMP, then I don't really want to cancel today's cc payment or go into the unarranged overdraft as this will affect our credit rating? 

I could potentially borrow some money from family to keep us in the arranged overdraft for now until we work out what to do but then we will need to pay this back at the end of the month. 

What would be the best thing to do here for today? I'll post the SOA tonight. 

fatbelly

I would not want to be borrowing more money ahead of a possible (probable) dmp.

As you will be walking away from the overdraft and the credit card it does not matter what you do today.

Do you have new banking arrangements in place, with a bank unconnected to your debts? If not, that is what you need to be working on today

Ps a 5-year fix to your mortgage makes more sense

Kittymumof4

Thank you. No not yet, I will sort a new account out today. How can I find out which groups are connected to my creditors? Will a Google search tell me this or do I need to do something else to make sure I don't open an account connected to the lenders we owe to? 

fatbelly

Slightly out of date but should be ok

https://www.choose.co.uk/money/guide/bank-and-building-society-overview/

ManyWays

In the SoA can you put the new amount for your mortgage, assume you will go for a 5 year one.

Kittymumof4

Our current bank account is with TSB who are showing as having no partner banks. Could we stay with them but clear the overdraft with credit and cancel our arranged overdraft so the account has no overdraft? Or do we need to change to a different bank completely? 

ManyWays

There is no reason to do this and it's a bad idea to take out a different sort of credit (that you cant afford) to clear the overdraft, so just open a new bank account. Look at something like Monzo, which has a nice app

Kittymumof4

Okay thanks, I'll have a look. The only reason I thought of that was to save the headache of swapping direct Debits for income and essential bills etc. 

RAS

It also leaves you at risk of your creditors just reinstating the cancelled DDs paying them. You'll get the money back but it's stressful and time wasting.