DMP Mutual Support Thread (Part 4)

maz1964

hello all

blimey we have lots of new people here, very warm welcome to you all

and hello to the regular ones, yes well hope rayday is okay have missed her but fab if its a new job,

anyway, just wanted to pop in and say hello, will be back in the week and try and catch up with more info

too late now off to bed, have a fun day everyone tomorrow

ciao MAZ

Jvic28

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

Hi, There is a lot to cover in this post but I just want to reply to the borrowing from family bit.

I ran up a debt on my Dads credit card and borrowed money off him personally. CCCS now about this and I pay him back out of my budget. It's on the CCCS budget as a loan from friends/family. This way, I don't have to hide anything about my income + expenditure. Much better to be honest about things I think, I sleep better anyway.

It is normal not to always here from creditors by the way. There are some which I still haven't officially heard from and I've been on a DMP for a short while now. However, they all have just about stopped interest (I now only get charged about £1 interest per month)

Good Luck, it'll all seem much better soon.

Jvic28

cocker100 wrote: »

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!

I think the problem is that people are struggling to adjust to living on a budget with no credit to fall back on. For example, I budget £80 a month for groceries, but it scares me that I might use it all as I have nothing to fall back on. Whereas before, I would have endless amounts of credit cards to use.
Personally I would never use a fee charging DM Company. If I am having to budget and save, I would rather every penny I pay on my DMP to go to the credit companies, I also don't really agree with the way they worked out your budget. Surely they should do the budget and then tell you what you can afford and not you tell them what you can afford then they work the budget around that....just my opinion though. I'm glad it's going well for you.

To everyone: Good Luck over Xmas, it's a tough time of year for us on tight budgets but we'll get there and in January we'll all be feeling much better for not blowing hundreds on credit.:D

x

Jvic28

Hello,

I had a review with CCCS last night at my request and my monthly payment to them has increased but there are things on my budget which I haven't allowed for at all and I was wondering what everyone else has on theirs:

Hairdressing
Dentist
Sundries / Emergencies

I also don't allow anything for the follwing:

Spares/Servicing
Road Tax
Insurance
Fuel & Parking
Fares & Travel

I don't know what to do about these as the car isn't mine it's my boyfriends but I do have use of it 2-4 days a week and other days I use the bus or walk.

Just some ideas as I want to be realistic on my budget so I'm not pinching from my shopping budget to subsidise other things.

Thanks

Janey51

Jvic28 wrote: »

Hello,

I had a review with CCCS last night at my request and my monthly payment to them has increased but there are things on my budget which I haven't allowed for at all and I was wondering what everyone else has on theirs:

Hairdressing
Dentist
Sundries / Emergencies

I also don't allow anything for the follwing:

Spares/Servicing
Road Tax
Insurance
Fuel & Parking
Fares & Travel

I don't know what to do about these as the car isn't mine it's my boyfriends but I do have use of it 2-4 days a week and other days I use the bus or walk.

Just some ideas as I want to be realistic on my budget so I'm not pinching from my shopping budget to subsidise other things.

Thanks

Hi Jvic28. Do you mean CCCS wouldn't allow you to have these added to your budget or you didn't want to include them? I have things in my budget which I don't really need but the CCCS advisor said it would give me leeway in other areas.

Toffee_Penny

Jvic28 wrote: »

I think the problem is that people are struggling to adjust to living on a budget with no credit to fall back on. For example, I budget £80 a month for groceries, but it scares me that I might use it all as I have nothing to fall back on. Whereas before, I would have endless amounts of credit cards to use.
Personally I would never use a fee charging DM Company. If I am having to budget and save, I would rather every penny I pay on my DMP to go to the credit companies, I also don't really agree with the way they worked out your budget. Surely they should do the budget and then tell you what you can afford and not you tell them what you can afford then they work the budget around that....just my opinion though. I'm glad it's going well for you.

To everyone: Good Luck over Xmas, it's a tough time of year for us on tight budgets but we'll get there and in January we'll all be feeling much better for not blowing hundreds on credit.:D

x

Hi yes what I was trying to say was that due to OH losing days at work recently it meant income has gone down it was just me getting slightly depressed at the thought of our DMP taking even longer to pay off.

We wish we had our LBM alot sooner but hey like most of us on here when things were good and could afford the minimum payments to cards who even thought we'd all end up on a site like this chatting to strangers about our everyday problems? :rolleyes:

We owe alot, £50k so we were looking at around 8 years at first but reducing it even for a few months means it will take longer to pay off and that's the bit I hate. We are budgeting and have to look how we spend in every sense now. I even bought Tesco value toilet roll to try and cut the costs of shopping and when you were used to buying Charmin and Andrex it's a big difference on your bum. If that isn't dedication to budget then I don't what is! :rotfl:

I thank god that I found CCCS and have no problems with the service they provide at all. I personally wouldn't use a fee paying company no matter how small the fee as I see that that £10/£20 I am paying them could come off our debt. If it works for you then continue to use them, we owe an awful lot and every penny counts to us and CCCS have given us a way out even if it's a very slow one.

OH always reminds me that at least we are paying something off the debt now whereas before payments made every month didn't even dent the interest, ppi and charges so we were just getting ourselves even deeper in debt.

It took us at least ten years to get into this mess, I just have to realise that it will take just as long to get out of it. We are not living on the breadline we can afford to put the fire on when it's cold and can afford to eat, it's just the budgeting and seeing money as very precious now that's difficult (every penny counts) and this is what is hard to adjust to when you have had an overdraft at your fingertips every month if you spent more than what you should have.

I don't mean to moan (honest!) but I am female and can't help it sometimes!

newlywed

ianmak wrote: »

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...

I do agree that it takes time to learn to budget. After all some of us are here because we couldn't budget before and spent to much (That's me by the way )

However, if your rent, gas, electric etc have all gone up in the last 6 months but your wages haven't then something has to give doesn't it?

I though very hard before I decreased my DMP payment because ultimately I want to be debt free as soon as I possibly can - unfortunately it will take a little longer now.

Jvic28

Janey51 wrote: »

Do you mean CCCS wouldn't allow you to have these added to your budget or you didn't want to include them?

I just haven't included them and was wondering how much other people allow.

symesd

I am please to say that I have done most of my Christmas shopping, I only spent £53 to buy family presents for 18 peoples (Just under £3 each). Got lots of BOGOF & 2 for 3 Offers. Only got the kids to sort out now (3 of my own) Will have about £60 for our 3 girls so they will have about £20 each on stocking fillers really. They always get lots of other presents from our large family so they will still get a lot really, and they are really great kids and know we are short of cash this year.

My Dad always gets Christmas Dinner as he works at Asda and gets a discount, good system really he buys it and I cook it.

I have also sold lots on Amazon this week total sales in last 10 days £97.58, so that's near enough paid for Christmas, still have over 50 items waiting to sell on Amazon, hopefully sell a few more items before Christmas to get some little extras.

Selling under the name of "Symes Enterprises" if anyone fancies taking a look.

lornz23

Hi Everyone

I am new to this tread as I have made my first steps towards startig my DMP and am waiting for my pack from the CCCS which they said i should have soon. Today I recieved a letter from HSBC that said that they don't accept the payment that the CCCS has offered them for monthly payments......what do I do now, what will the CCCS do?