Need help with my debts.

http://www.stoozing.com/calculator/soa.php

That's the link to write your soa. I'd complete one and post it which will give a clearer picture of where you are.

Can you pay your minimums each month? Or is the £500/£1000 less than that? What will happen in March?

WhenIam64 wrote: »

So debt free in 31+ months.

What's the issue?

This really is INCREDIBLY unhelpful when someone has posted saying that they don't understand the process. :mad:



Welcome aboard debtfreein2021 - and I see that MrsSave has already helpfully given the link for the SOA calculator. Your first step is top fill that in - it needs to be honest and accurate and to reflect the way things are right now - NOT what you think you *should* be spending. That comes later! I'd suggest that posting the completed SOA into here (format for MSE) would be a good plan - we can look over it, highlight anything you may have missed and perhaps even point out some additional savings you can make.

That will also then give you a list of your debts along with their respect interest rates - and most often interest rates are key in getting debt paid off as efficiently as possible.

Do you currently have things set to pay off at minimum payment level? If so I would suggest one tweak to that immediately - and that is that for any Credit Card you are currently paying at min payment (and NOT using the card at all - this is critical!) you change that DD to just above the CURRENT min payment. So if for example you paid £27.55 on a minimum last month, and haven't used the card since, re-set the DD for that one to £28 and just leave that to run for now. This means that the payment remains static - which is also the amount in your budget - and doesn't drop over time, so even without trying, you're making very sightly more impact on that debt.

Once you've been through the SOA then as well as paying any surplus that you know you have to the debt, the idea if that you create more by making savings on things, learning to keep track of any surplus cash you should have, and over time reducing costs of things that you may currently be over paying for - utilities and mobiles are common categories here! Whatever surplus you create goes to enusure that you have at least a small emergency fund set up, and then any balance goes to the debt with the highest interest rate. Once that debt is clear, you attack the next highest - make sense? That means you pay the least interest possible.

There is also potentially scope for transferring debt to 0% cards, but it would probably be a god idea to get the basics in place first.

WhenIam64 wrote: »

Thanks for your opinion. I've made a note of it.

Given that a DRO and an Admin Order is out of the question, then the choices sort of narrow to "managed" options which add cost to the repayment of debt. Self-management is cheaper and more controllable and given the amounts available to repay the debt, the question falls out - what is the issue?

Is that better?

Added later: As a observation there appears to be more emphasis on selecting "managed" options here that looking at or asking the question about financial capability/sophistication. There is a presumption in your posting that the OP lacks any sort of capability without actually asking that question.

There wasn't any presumption - the OP actually said

£31060.98!

That's how much debt we have and we want to get it paid off. At the beginning of April, we can pay £500 towards our debt and from then on £1000 a month. All our creditors are saying that we can make monthly payments to clear our debts, but I honestly don't know where to start.

I was wondering if anyone could help me try and figure out where to start.

Thank you.

B

Also no suggestion whatsoever of "managed" options from me - and I have certainly NEVER suggested, on here or anywhere else, that anyone should follow a paid debt management solution - that is something that this forum has been vehemently opposed to for certainly the 10 years I've been a member, and I suspect far longer.

I always assume that someone will "manage their own solution" unless it becomes apparent that in their individual situation, that's not suitable for them.