Finally Debt Free

anonoverspender

I have not posted on this board before but I have had a lot of support from reading other people's posts.

As of Friday, I am finally debt free for the first time since I got my first student overdraft 13 years ago. A giddy feeling.

Along the way, I have dealt with some honourable creditors, some hectoring sh*ts and everything in between. I have had loans and credit cards, overdrafts and unauthorised debt.

At its worst, last January, I had £95k of personal debt and no idea how to clear it. A payment plan followed by some aggressive haggling on the settlement figure and some mild good fortune has got me from that to being in credit across the board in 13 months. My average settlement figure is between 50 and 60% which means over £40,000 of my debt just evaporated.

I am not really sure of the point of this post, just a vague "thank you" to those who unknowingly gave me guidance and "good luck" to those still on their way to getting rid of their burdens.

It will be interesting to see what state my credit rating is in after the dust settles but even if I have to wait six years to be an attractive lending prospect again, it's not such a hardship.

Thanks again

IWantToBeFree_2

Congratulations

Discount-Diva_3

Must be an amazing feeling, well done :j

ms_london

Well done, you must feel great!!

I am sure there will be lots of people who would be interested to hear your story, how you got into debt etc etc - even tips you have on becoming debt free.

Congratulations again! What are your plans now? xx

mbaz

wow what an inspiration! :beer:

mummum2

Wow! totally impressed. Do let us know how you did this so quickly. What's your plans now your DF. I for one can't wait to get there, but have at least 5 years to go! :beer:

[Deleted User]

Well done.

Tea
x

NatashaP

Well done! You will be an inspiration to others - and to me - as many of us are faced with big debts that seem impossible to clear.

You have proven that nothing is impossible. Congratulations!

Bagpuss741

Congratulations:j Can't wait for my debt free day.

anonoverspender

It does indeed feel fantastic. My plan is to be footloose and worry free for a bit - long overdue. I don't need to feel guilty about spending as long as I keep within my means.

Now I need to see about my credit rating so I can predict how long until I have a blank slate again. I guess I will let it run for a year or so and then take mild steps to rebuild things - using a credit card a lot and paying it all off every month. Any other tips?

As for my story, it's really an attitude thing - I have very little excuse. I always considered that things would work out in the end and then when the crunch finally came, I handled things very badly: I consolidated loans but kept spending, I paid off overdrafts with more loans ... idiot. And I never spent as though I had debt. As I say, really no excuse.

I eventually could no longer pretend that I had things under control and I approached PayPlan to handle things with me.

Lloyds froze my loan interest and combined two loans and an overdraft into one (though they did pull a bit of a fast one, I had a £2,000 overdraft limit on an account I had never used, they maximised that before freezing all of my accounts). Morgan Stanley and American Express played along and accepted the payment proposal that PayPlan had made. MBNA had a couple of loans and a credit card of mine (in total £35k - ouch!) and they resisted for a long time. They eventually took the PayPlan payments but kept the interest ticking along ... and they called weekly, grubby, loan shark behaviour.

I also had one other credit card but I didn't want to include that in the plan - I wanted to keep one of my creditors thinking that I was a good citizen.

....is this crashingly tedious or would anyone like to know more about how the creditors behaved, etc?

Seaxwyn

It's not tedious at all anon... very interesting to know how the creditors behave.

Really impressed that you paid off so much in a relatively short time - well done!