Self managed dmp process questions

itsallrigged

Hi all,

Following advice I received on here a few months ago, I cancelled all 17 of my debt direct debits and stopped payments. So far, four accounts have defaulted. I’ve been monitoring my credit file to confirm each default before making any payments to the collectors.

Of the four that have defaulted, none have been sold yet — they’re all still being collected “on behalf of” the original lenders (except Savvy, who seem to collect in-house). I also have a few collectors chasing me by letter and phone for accounts that haven’t defaulted yet.

My question is:

Should I contact the debt collectors and set up a payment plan for the accounts that have now defaulted, or should I just continue paying them by bank transfer as I’ve been doing?

So far, I’ve stayed completely silent — I haven’t spoken to any collector or creditor. I found the bank details and reference numbers for each defaulted debt and have been paying them by bank transfer from a new basic bank account: £1 for the first month, then £3–£7 per month depending on the balance (£1-2000) They’re still chasing me, but they are receiving the payments and the balances are slowly going down.

I’m unsure whether it’s better to keep ignoring their contact attempts and continue paying this way, or whether I should send them my SOA and set up an official payment plan (they all keep directing me to online portals to submit information). Realistically, the monthly amounts wouldn’t change — I’m already paying what I can afford and these payments will be consistent.

I’m mainly waiting for defaults on some larger debts (ACI £12k, Moorcroft £14k and £10k). Once these default, I don’t want to do anything that increases the risk of court action, as my planned payments to these would be £40/£36/£31 a month respectively.

My plan going forward:

Split my available monthly repayment budget into two halves. Use 50% for monthly payments (adjusted per creditor based on balance). Save the other 50% to build up funds for full-and-final settlement offers. Snowball from the smallest debts upwards, f&f settling what I can as my savings pot grows.

Any advice regarding payment methods and contact at this stage would be appreciated. It’s still early days — only 4 of 17 have defaulted, and most of the others are still accruing interest and fees.

Will the bigger collectors be willing to accept £30–£40 a month for the next few years while I work on settling the smaller and medium-sized debts? Ultimately I want all the debts sold off cheaply so I can settle with the new collectors down the line, so it is better to keep quiet and send my payments via transfer ? Sold off debts is the aim but not so uncooperative they go for a ccj, as that’s not so good i guess. 

Any help on this is appreciated.