Determined to get out of this hole once and for all!!!!

thatchamlad · 10 October 2016 at 7:29PM

My wife and i have finally decided that it's time to put off the inevitable and deal with our debts once and for all. Don't get me wrong it was all our own fault and I'm not on here looking for sympathy but any advice would be very much appreciated.

We don't own a home, we privately rent and up until the end of September had been making payments on all our cards/loans etc without fail but enough is enough now and we are both emotionally drained trying to move money around to pay one bill or another. Over a period of 12 years we have racked up over £100,000 of debt and are determined to clear it without going bankrupt.

I'm sure some of you will look at the amount we owe and be think how the hell did that happen but it happens very quickly i can assure you. My reason for not going bankrupt is simple, i owe a family member £38K and if i go bankrupt they won't get a penny for 3 years because i would be certain to be hit with an IPA from the official receiver. My basic salary is £42K and my wife's is £24K so we do make good money each month.

I have drafted up letters to all our creditors requesting that they freeze any interest or charges on our accounts for 30 days so i can sort a budget (I've already done this). These letters will be sent tomorrow recorded delivery. All direct debits to creditors have been cancelled so no more payments will be made from now at the standard rate and instead new token payments will be offered in 4 weeks.

I have worked out that if they agree to freeze the interest we will be able to clear all the credit acrd debt in 3 years (£30K). The debt to the family member (£38K) will be clear in 3 1/2 years and the loans £60K will be cleared in full (including full interest) by April 2021.

The advice I'm looking for is going by previous experience from you all will the creditors be willing to freeze the interest in return for full settlement over a period of time or would they refuse and prefer that we go bankrupt and receive a fraction of the debt?

Any advice would be much appreciated from you on the query above or solutions i may not have thought about would be very much appreciated.

enthusiasticsaver · 10 October 2016 at 7:36PM

Presumably then you are going down self managed dmp route? You will need to send your creditors a soa, which you might also want to post here as well.

I can't see any of them insisting on bankruptcy. Do you know how the debt occurred in the first place and have you addressed the reasons?

thatchamlad · 10 October 2016 at 7:40PM

Hi

I've done a SOA from the debt line website template which i am going to send to each creditor in the next 3 weeks along with the offer for each payment. Providing they accept i have also put together a spreadsheet of the date each payment will be made along with the amount to clearly show when the debt will be paid off by.

The reason it spiralled has been addressed and was mail down to a mixture of events which all went against us. Illness and unemployment were the main contributing factors.

sourcrates · 10 October 2016 at 8:37PM

Hi,

You get so many people posting on this forum in similar positions to yourself, who don't have a clue how to start to tackle the problem.

It makes a refreshing change to see a post from someone who realises where they went wrong, and have already taken steps to deal with it.

You don't need our advice, so far you've done everything that you should of, your creditors are oblighed to deal fairly with you, so hopefully, they will freeze interest for you.

I am pretty impressed on your progress to date, and wish you luck with it !!!

thatchamlad · 10 October 2016 at 8:43PM

sourcrates wrote: »

Hi,

You get so many people posting on this forum in similar positions to yourself, who don't have a clue how to start to tackle the problem.

It makes a refreshing change to see a post from someone who realises where they went wrong, and have already taken steps to deal with it.

You don't need our advice, so far you've done everything that you should of, your creditors are oblighed to deal fairly with you, so hopefully, they will freeze interest for you.

I am pretty impressed on your progress to date, and wish you luck with it !!!

Many thanks for your reply. i think the thing that is keeping me positive through the whole thing is that it may have taken 10 years to get into this mess, but i can get out of it entirely in just over 4 years, provided that is that my creditors are willing to help by freezing the interest. While i know bankruptcy would offer an immediate stress relief in now having the debt any longer, the stress caused by letting down a family member is far greater in my opinion.

I don't want to walk away from what i owe, or pay a proportion of the debt back. I want to pay it all but at a rate i can afford and not be moving money about like a money launderer every month.

I just hope they do freeze it or we are in big trouble!

sourcrates · 10 October 2016 at 8:55PM

You might be better off telling your creditors you are taking advice from one of the debt charities, Stepchange for example.

As I can almost guarantee there first response to you will be to contact a debt charity.

With the sums involved you may be wise to run your plans past them, and possibly work with them, at first anyway, as the fact you are seeking there advice will give your cause more clout with your creditors, and they will be more likley to exceed to your request to freeze interest, than by going it alone from the start.

Once up and running with interest stopped, its then your choice how you continue with it.

thatchamlad · 11 October 2016 at 2:00PM

Letters all sent, now i guess the waiting game begins to see what they say:o

National_Debtline · 11 October 2016 at 3:29PM

Hi

I agree with the others that your creditors are much more likely to prefer an affordable payment plan than bankruptcy.

It sounds like you’re thinking along the right lines with your plan but you’re welcome to give National Debtline a call if you’d like to run your situation past an independent adviser. Good luck.

James
@natdebtline

thatchamlad · 1 May 2017 at 9:30PM

Not been on in a while but thought i should post a reply if for no other reason than to give others who may be in my position some hope!

So i sent all the letters as previously advised and within each i included an SOA and also a detailed month by month breakdown of how much i intended to pay back each month and the date i expected each individual lenders debt to be cleared.

Most of the lenders were straight on the phone to confirm the offer amount and set up a payment plan. What i did find though was that some actually asked for less than i was offering but said i could pay additional amounts to make up the amounts i offered. There reason for this is to give me a bit of breathing room if any unexpected expense occurred.

A couple of creditors just refused point blank on my payment plan so after a number of heated discussions i just gave up and told them i was going bankrupt and the amount they would receive would be minimal where by my offer i was going to repay the entire amount. They soon changed their mind and happily they all accepted.

I'm now 6 months into this long journey and have had to face facts that it will take more like 6 years to get out of this mess but as they have all issued defaults against us my credit file is going to be no better or worse regardless of what option we choose. Some of you might wonder why i don't just go bankrupt and the answer is in two parts. 1 if i go bankrupt it will mean that the family member will get next to no payments for 3 years until the IPA ends, thats something i couldn't live with and 2 if i go bankrupt even thought there is no clause in my contract it may give our landlord reason to consider not renewing our tenancy agreement in a few months.

I just want people to know that there is hope and with a bit of structure no problem is too big to be resolved.

gettingtheresometime · 1 May 2017 at 11:16PM

thatchamlad wrote: »

Not been on in a while but thought i should post a reply if for no other reason than to give others who may be in my position some hope!

So i sent all the letters as previously advised and within each i included an SOA and also a detailed month by month breakdown of how much i intended to pay back each month and the date i expected each individual lenders debt to be cleared.

Most of the lenders were straight on the phone to confirm the offer amount and set up a payment plan. What i did find though was that some actually asked for less than i was offering but said i could pay additional amounts to make up the amounts i offered. There reason for this is to give me a bit of breathing room if any unexpected expense occurred.

A couple of creditors just refused point blank on my payment plan so after a number of heated discussions i just gave up and told them i was going bankrupt and the amount they would receive would be minimal where by my offer i was going to repay the entire amount. They soon changed their mind and happily they all accepted.

I'm now 6 months into this long journey and have had to face facts that it will take more like 6 years to get out of this mess but as they have all issued defaults against us my credit file is going to be no better or worse regardless of what option we choose. Some of you might wonder why i don't just go bankrupt and the answer is in two parts. 1 if i go bankrupt it will mean that the family member will get next to no payments for 3 years until the IPA ends, thats something i couldn't live with and 2 if i go bankrupt even thought there is no clause in my contract it may give our landlord reason to consider not renewing our tenancy agreement in a few months.

I just want people to know that there is hope and with a bit of structure no problem is too big to be resolved.

I was in your situation and can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel rather than it being an oncoming train lol.

My words of advice would be make sure all payments are made on time - companies tend to cancel any agreements even if you're a day late - and then you have to start the whole process again.

Don't be surprised if they contact you every year just to make sure that your situation hasn't changed and that you need to adjust your payments.

Finally record every payment you make - I had a six month battle with one dca when the dca was changed and records hadn't caught up. There was no way was I paying even one month's extra payment to them!

enthusiasticsaver · 2 May 2017 at 3:02PM

Thanks for the update. It is useful for people to see there is a way out of the situation you find yourself in. Good luck but I expect it will be a tough few years ahead. Can I ask how old you are?

Determined to get out of this hole once and for all!!!!

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