11 years a slave - end of my journey from £103,500 in debt

Hello fellow DFWs. It has been a long time since I posted here, but today has been such a momentous day that I felt compelled to write something. Apologies in advance for the long post.

Today I made the very last payment to the very last of my creditors. It’s the culmination of an 11-year debt management plan journey, during which I have paid back £103,500 of unsecured personal debt. Just looking at that figure now shocks me to the core.

There is no smugness in this post. It was my own blindness and stupidity that led me into one gigantic spasm of a mess in the first place. This is simply a post to say that no matter how hard it seems, no matter how big a mountain you think you have to climb, no matter how far away your goal appears to be, you will get there if you stick with it. I am living proof.

It’s also a post to say thank you to the people running my DMP all these years, and in particular to the members of the DFW forum for the words of wisdom, advice and encouragement so often posted here. It’s sometimes not expressed just how much of an impact your advice has on the more silent forumites among us, but I’m here today to say my journey would have been so much harder without you all.

I won’t recap in detail the circumstances that led to my debt, but it basically it involved living in London beyond my means on a modest salary, a misguided attempt to work for myself, and an awful lot of easy credit. At the end of 2005, having sold my flat, car and nearly everything I owned, this was my statement of affairs:

Income: £0
Net assets: £0
Unsecured personal debt: £103,500 across credit cards, personal loans and overdrafts.
Ten accounts in default.
Three CCJs.
One complete idiot.

Oh <insert expletives here>! It was the mother of all wake-up calls.

PayPlan (who have been unfailingly non-judgemental and supportive throughout) quickly put me at ease and calmly presented me with the options. IVA? Bankruptcy? DMP?

I vowed I would do whatever it took to pay back every penny owed (frozen interest notwithstanding) and opted for the DMP, so I went out and talked my way into a new job. It wasn’t ideal and the salary was awful, but it had to be done. My DMP started, with modest monthly payments, in February 2006. The original debt-free date was something like October 2021. I thought I would never, ever, ever get there – it felt like a lifetime away.

But I never took my eyes of that goal and I stuck with it, battling through a decade of seeing my income stripped to the bone, month in, month out, year in, year out. I worked hard, and managed to land a job I actually wanted. I worked my way up the ladder, and took on any extra work as I was able.

The years ticked by and yes, I had some major hiccups along the way. I got divorced very amicably, for reasons other than my debt, and then nearly fell into a hellish payday loan spiral while trying to ‘live a little’ after so long on the DMP. It took a wake-up-in-a-cold-sweat night and the realisation that I had just pointlessly added nine months to my DMP to get me back on track.

Finally I just accepted the monthly routine, found ways to save money here and there, and sought out ways to live a little that cost a little less. I learnt how to say ‘no’ a little more often. I got to know myself a little better. I invested in a copy of You Need A Budget on the advice of these forums, and found that made things a little easier. If I wanted something, I started saving what little I could for it rather than trying to borrow. And little by little my Debt Free Date crawled nearer.

Which brings me to today. At 7:48pm I paid off the last of the debt in full, and for the first time in my adult life I owe absolutely nothing to anyone. The CCJs are gone and my credit file is clean. I own outright a nice car and a few other bits – all carefully budgeted for – and not much else except a small, positive bank balance and a sudden, overwhelming sense of freedom.

If you’ve read this far, then hopefully you will be able to take something from my journey that may help you with your own. It has been ***ing hard at times, make no mistake. But here are a few words of advice from two decades of debt and more than a decade of DMP slavery:

- Don’t hide from your debt. It will only get worse. Talk to your creditors, talk to a specialist or ask on these forums for advice. You will also find that just taking control will make you feel 100 per cent better.

- No matter how bad you think your situation is, there is always a way out.

- Don’t pay someone to manage your debt. Do it yourself, or talk to one of the excellent free organisations like PayPlan or National Debtline.

- Budget, budget, budget. Make a realistic budget and try to stick to it. That doesn’t mean you can’t have money for life’s little luxuries – just budget for them.

- Don’t let creditors bully you into making larger payments at the expense of being able to survive. If you are realistic with your DMP budget no one will force you to pay back more than you can afford - not even the courts.

- Starting your debt-free journey can feel like someone has asked you to empty a lake with a teaspoon. Just focus on the teaspoon. You won’t notice the lake going down from one month to the next, but one day you will look up and see there’s just a pond left, then a puddle, and then suddenly nothing but dust.

- Bookmark MSE and the DFW forum. Actually, this should be number one on the list

- If you feel yourself slipping, remember the goal and don’t give in to temptation. Play the long game and learn to say no. One day you’ll be so glad you did.

- And finally, when journey’s end seems so far away that you just want to sit down and give up, remember the idiot on MSE who ran up £103,500 of unsecured debt and spent 11 years of his life paying it back. He’s smiling as he writes this. You’ll be smiling again one day too and it will be the best feeling in the world.

Merry Christmas :xmassmile

Sentient

Apologies for any mixed metaphors. I’m finding it hard to concentrate this evening for some reason