DMP Mutual Support Thread (Part 4)

cloudnine_2

rob.be wrote: »

Hi guys my wife is entering into a DMP and I have a few questions you seasond pros might be able to help with. She own £35k to 16 creditors ranging from a 9k overdraft to £300 payday loan, plus I have a loan in my name for £18k which she pays which was a previous attempt to clear her debts, plus she had about £3k on her mums credit card. Very complicated. So she has declared her normal income to pay off her dmp and now also has a weekend job to pay my loan and he mum which she has not declared? Apart from the loan in my name im almost debt free. CCCs say it will take 5years 6 months to pay mack at £650 per month.
She has been under guidance from the CCCS but wants to administer it herself as we can then hide our finincial situation. She sent out letters explaining the situation in October and have just sent out offer letters. She changed our phone number and her mobile was cut off so she tries her hardest not to talk to them. She recieved initial responces from around 50% of creditors, is this normal? What happerns if a couple of creditors refuse reduced payments? Are creditors happy to only communicate by mail? If the dect is sold to debt collectors does this mean visits from the bailiffs?
Im worried that we will never get out of this situation. Plus i may be made redundant next week, but thats another story, and I have totally cancelled Christmas. Bah humbug

Crikey, theres alot in there to answer and, I'm sure others will provide valuable guidance. I can only speak for my own situation and experiences, and I have to say that I was tempted to go it alone, but, I just don't have the mental stamina currently to achieve this. I'm with CCCS and 'if nots broken...why try to fix it?'
I would sleep on the 'hiding things' scenario as I reckon this can come back to bite you in the backside later on. For one thing, all borrowings associated with the home you probably share will be listed for creditors to see. They may or may not take a look at this stage, but, if it reaches court stage then thats the first thing I'd be doing as a creditor to explore the state of the person's finances. So, if you try to hide a debt, I'm thinking it can be located quite easily. One the other hand, if you can put some money aside and save it for a rainy day, or, full and final settlement ( I wish !!) then thats easily placed into a savings account, so long as this account isn't allied to any of your creditors, otherwise theres a chance they'll grab it.
Bailiffs don't feature unless you have a court payment order against you and you don't pay. But even then, it doesn't happen overnight. So, I'd get that one out of your mind for now. As I said, my own experience and others may have a different perspective. Onwards and upwards !!!

catwoman150

I am on a fixed rate mortgage which finishes next year. I have just started on a self admin DMP. I know that I will have to pay a lot extra when my mortgage finishes. My question is : I have extra income coming in every so often, but this income is not regular. Shall I pay some off my mortgage or shall I save it for a full and final settlements for my creditors. This money is not a lot and is only as and when payments, but on the other hand sometimes it is handy if I am short one month.

Any suggestions????

MissKJ

Save for full and final settlements. The sooner you no longer have an outstanding debt, the sooner you can start to repair your credit ratings to get better mortgage deals. And psychologically you will start to recover.

Toffee_Penny

Hello all :beer:


I contacted CCCS and have a review on Monday, we are going to have to lower our DMP payments by at least £200 I think to get by until at least Jan/Feb time. Hopefully we can pick it back up again to the original agreed offer without feeling like we are living just to pay the bills as we feel like we are now.

I know the days of spending what I like are long gone but the past two months we seem to have struggled by, OH is self employed and income has been irractic so can't really suggest a figure that will stay the same throughout the months. I'm so desperate to pay it off asap and will admit I have got so worked up over it but what can you do?

So far for us the creditors have accepted the situation, sent a few snotty letters along the way but it has been really quiet recently in fact I'm a little worried that my Postman has got nothing to do now he doesn't need to visit my house every morning :rotfl:

Lloyds who I have a loan with have been really really quiet so I am expecting their little standard grey letter from their in-house solicitors Blair and whatshisface? anyday soon.

If you are not keeping up with minimum payments then credit cards, loans, catalogues etc will pass you over to their debt collection agency. Thi sis normal it just means they haven't the man power to deal with chasing you so pass it on to their collection service.

If you are worried about baliffs etc they DON'T come to your house unless the creditor has took you to court to get a ccj against you first, even then if you struggle to pay your ccj I'm sure you can apply to the courts to get it reduced. Creditors will threaten you with all their might about door stop collectors and sending baliffs round but they very rarely do this as it's costs money to pay a little old fella to knock on your door requesting a few quid here and there!. Even if a debt collector calls, they have no power tell them you are with CCCS paying through a DMP and shut the door! You do not have to speak to anyone on your doorstep to discuss your debt problem in full view of the neighbours.

Baliffs really aren't interested in little debts for credit cards unless you repeatedly miss payments for ccj's, they will come round for Council Tax debts so please make sure THIS is a priority to you. If baliffs do become involved you can usually negotiate a payment arrangement through them anyway so please it's the last resort and usually happens to people who do not want to pay anything back.

As long as you keep up the payments with your DMP you will be fine, change your phone number if you can to stop the calls from creditors. I did this before my DMP started obviously no one can contact me now and I'm so grateful that they can only contact me by writing plus they can't tell me bull over the phone to try and scare me.

Take care everyone, keep supporting each other xxxx

p.s I think Rayday started a new job so that might be why she hasn't been around unless she has had a big win on the lottery and not told us, if that is the case we need to find out where she lives to get the begging bowls out :rotfl:

tinkerbell12

Toffee_Penny wrote: »

Hello all :beer:


I contacted CCCS and have a review on Monday, we are going to have to lower our DMP payments by at least £200 I think to get by until at least Jan/Feb time. Hopefully we can pick it back up again to the original agreed offer without feeling like we are living just to pay the bills as we feel like we are now.

I know the days of spending what I like are long gone but the past two months we seem to have struggled by, OH is self employed and income has been irractic so can't really suggest a figure that will stay the same throughout the months. I'm so desperate to pay it off asap and will admit I have got so worked up over it but what can you do?

So far for us the creditors have accepted the situation, sent a few snotty letters along the way but it has been really quiet recently in fact I'm a little worried that my Postman has got nothing to do now he doesn't need to visit my house every morning :rotfl:

Lloyds who I have a loan with have been really really quiet so I am expecting their little standard grey letter from their in-house solicitors Blair and whatshisface? anyday soon.

If you are not keeping up with minimum payments then credit cards, loans, catalogues etc will pass you over to their debt collection agency. Thi sis normal it just means they haven't the man power to deal with chasing you so pass it on to their collection service.

If you are worried about baliffs etc they DON'T come to your house unless the creditor has took you to court to get a ccj against you first, even then if you struggle to pay your ccj I'm sure you can apply to the courts to get it reduced. Creditors will threaten you with all their might about door stop collectors and sending baliffs round but they very rarely do this as it's costs money to pay a little old fella to knock on your door requesting a few quid here and there!. Even if a debt collector calls, they have no power tell them you are with CCCS paying through a DMP and shut the door! You do not have to speak to anyone on your doorstep to discuss your debt problem in full view of the neighbours.

Baliffs really aren't interested in little debts for credit cards unless you repeatedly miss payments for ccj's, they will come round for Council Tax debts so please make sure THIS is a priority to you. If baliffs do become involved you can usually negotiate a payment arrangement through them anyway so please it's the last resort and usually happens to people who do not want to pay anything back.

As long as you keep up the payments with your DMP you will be fine, change your phone number if you can to stop the calls from creditors. I did this before my DMP started obviously no one can contact me now and I'm so grateful that they can only contact me by writing plus they can't tell me bull over the phone to try and scare me.

Take care everyone, keep supporting each other xxxx

p.s I think Rayday started a new job so that might be why she hasn't been around unless she has had a big win on the lottery and not told us, if that is the case we need to find out where she lives to get the begging bowls out :rotfl:

Hi Toffee Penny,

I am glad I am not the only one needing a review with CCCS. We are really struggling too - absolutely skint until I get paid next Friday! With Xmas coming up too I just don't know how we are going to manage. Gonna bite bullet and set up a review next week so I can actually sleep again at night.

We are about 9 months into our DMP and it was all going sooooo swimmingly - DMPs are definitely a rollercoaster ride!

Toffee_Penny

Hi Tinkerbell

I know I feel so much worse off on a DMP than when we were trying to juggle 11 creditors but I think that's because we always had the cards and overdraft to fall back on!

Depressing as it seems I only want it to come down for a few months just to give us breathing space, I wish I could say it was for loads of christmas gifts but it's just for things like general shopping, petrol.

I bought my lad several pairs of trousers to start school with and he has already ripped a whole in two of them at the knees when he skids along the grass at school playing football. I did think about sending him in in shorts but that's too cruel in winter lol

Forget the DMP my kids are gonna cost me a fortune!

ruthie70

Toffee_Penny wrote: »

Hi Tinkerbell

I know I feel so much worse off on a DMP than when we were trying to juggle 11 creditors but I think that's because we always had the cards and overdraft to fall back on!

Depressing as it seems I only want it to come down for a few months just to give us breathing space, I wish I could say it was for loads of christmas gifts but it's just for things like general shopping, petrol.

I bought my lad several pairs of trousers to start school with and he has already ripped a whole in two of them at the knees when he skids along the grass at school playing football. I did think about sending him in in shorts but that's too cruel in winter lol

Forget the DMP my kids are gonna cost me a fortune!

I know what you mean ToffeePenny, I think we are going to feel the pinch even more on our DMP but when I think about it, we always had credit to fall back on, thus digging an even bigger hole!! Even if I could afford to pay all the minimum payments I would still be going nowhere as it would hardly cover the interest - this way hopefully interest will be frozen and can make some inroads. This time last year I didn't know how I was going to pay for Xmas so ordered everything from the catalogue - will still be paying it for years to come at least this way, I can't spend what I don't have. Youngest son wants a computer, but he is going to have to do without that - I'm going to do a nicely written letter from Santa Claus explaining he has had to lay off elves etc. and has been affected by the credit crunch :rotfl: I have a few items on Ebay so should get about £100 from that, so that'll be Xmas presents.

cocker100

Hi all,

I've been reading through the recent posts with some dismay! Everyone seems to be finding it hard to manage on their budgets. I thought the whole point of a DMP was for you to live without having to worry whether all the bills are going to be paid.

It seems simple to me but if you are stuggling each month, then your DMP payments are too high. When I first started mine just over a year ago, I was asked what I could comfortably afford to repay each month without overstretching our finances. The answer was £200, and that was for a total debt of £38000. All our other committments were then moulded around this figure to complete the income/expenditure form.

I notice that 99% of people are using the free services available, CCCS, Payplan etc. I however am one of the few using one of the fee paying companies, Harrington Brooks. Maybe this is the difference as on the whole, most creditors have eventually accepted the offers made, with the expection of one who passed it onto 1st Credit DCA!:mad: They say that the payment is totally flexible and if I find i need to alter it, just call to arrange it. I haven't had to so far, but this is because we now can comfortable get by each month without worrying where the next penny is going to come from.

It is a fact that the free to use services are completely snowed under given the current financial climate and are struggling to cope with demand. However, the fee charging companies know that if they do wrong, then you will stop paying them and they will lose money, therefore I believe they do a better job for you.

This is just my opinion, but there seems to be a trend growing where people are getting dissatisfied with their DMP administrators and are getting more and more depressed about their debt and the whole point of the DMP is for you to be able to live a normal life without the worry of debt!

Cocker

Rabbit-in-headlights

Ruthie,
lol about Santa laying off some elves!!:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

ianmak

After three months I'm finally getting a handle on budgeting. It's been difficult, but satisfying, and I feel I turned a corner. I've lost a stone in weight through eating proper too! Please hang in there all of you!

I think if you reduce payments to make it easier to budget, will it fix the problem? Will you just live to your means every month? Obviously if you have unforseen circumstances then fair enough. I just find (with me) that I'd struggle every month, no matter how much money I have left to live on...