To ask here about "payplan" debt management

[SunshineisSorry]

because i know its a popular section of the board

Apparently its not one of those dodgy debt management companies that end up getting you into even more shite than you are already in. Does anyone have any experience of them - apparently they are recommended by The National Debt line. We have various creditors at varying amounts and need to rationalise our payments as we are paying more than we can afford to companies who we owe less money to and less to ones we owe less to. We sort of want someone to act on our behalf and back us up legally rather than managing the debt. We have sort of been scraping through with all but getting nowhere and we want to try and clear the debts, its quite a lot, but we are up to date with our mortgage and clearing priority debts. It will all be so much easier once im working but im strugging to find a job (another thread) so really its a bit of time buying until i can get a job and start clearing them properly, now its a case of token payments really.

That was the lowest point for us as we had no secured loans and to have the charging order was a kick in the stomach.

That is true shite, kat. We will never own our home and in some ways I wonder that perhaps that's not such a bad thing.

I am thining of contacting payplan or similar too, so it is good to read that they are helpful.

I have debts totalling about 11000, some which were accrued when i was with xp, but as they are only in my name, I am the only one they chase for them.
Up until now I have always paid at least the minimum payments on them but I am slowly sinking.

Good luck to you Sunshine, I hope you get it sorted out.

thankyou nutcracker - please at least get in touch with the national debt line at least, we do have the interest frozen on our debts at least, its the unmanagable payment amounts that we are struggling with. All the while you are accruing interest and only making minimum payments you wont be paying off any of the actual debt. On the national debtline there is a payment calculator to work out what you can afford to pay, sample letters to send to your creditors to get them to hold off action until you have come up with an offer of payment. We did all this ourselves but due to our finances being so erratic due to partner being self employed its all gone wrong, we hopefully looking to make one payment as we have about ten separate creditors (including HMRC) amounting to about 18k :( It is vile vile vile and sucks out any joy there is in my life.

citi bank and mbna are definitely the c word ..... I often wonder if it is the American influence on them.

Expat, I think the English equivlant of debt arrangement is a Administration order

expat, i know exactly what you mean - the temptation to sell up is very high as we have enough equity to sort out the debts but we would end up paying more in rent than we do in mortgage, if we sell the council wont house us because we would have made ourselves deliberately homeless. My parents had a council house and its in a lovely street with only a few other houses, very very lucky - i sort of wish we had followed that route but there was no way would we have qualified. But i suppose with councils there is security? or not?

Call them tomorrow, Nutty. National Debtline or CCCS. Our minimum payments got unmanageable. We knew it was going to get worse as interest rates will rise.

Ah, I was wondering if there were an English equivalent, Honey.

No point us selling we live in a two bedroomed house, yes the equity would pay those debts off but we'd be homeless. We couldn't afford to rent where we live, so we are staying put. We have our DD to think of.

Katvond, I have private messaged you, I hope you don't mind. You seem quite knowledgable and I need some advice on this very subject. :-)

No problem xboxwidow will try and help you the best way I can :)

Payplan have helped me enormously over the last few years and I can't recommend them highly enough. Hope you get this resolved op as living with unmanageable debt is a horrendous feeling.

Honeydragon, an administration order is only for companies. For humans it would either be an individual voluntary arrangement or a bankruptcy if you are not doing a debt management plan.
If you are considering either of these you should seek advice from a licensed insolvency practitioner - the Department of Business (whatever it is currently called) has a list, or the CAB can help you.

Thanks for clarifying that, mum. I was wondering if there were an English equivalent. Anyway, our creditors have, legally, 21 days to respond and yes, we had to use a money adviser who is registered. In our case, our council provides on free of charge.

And he's never been busier!

mumtolawyer

I did say think , I was sure it was a administration order for individuals if the debt is under 5k and the debtor has no existing ccjs?

BTW like the "for humans"

sorry has existing ccj's, you need at least one.

i can not recommend them highly enough

once all the paperwork was done and payment was set up (this takes a while) i have had not had to deal with anything. they are great, give great advice (have your own case worker) and it jsut takes the pressure of you. you still pay what you own without interest adding up and without the pressure from credit companies

i am still able to get another mortgage (can not at the moment as i am a student), and a student loan jsut had to cut up those cards and tbh that was a relief

and the best advice they gave me was to not listen to callers from credit card companies, they are often treading a very fine line in the threats advie they give. once i had my payplan reference number i gave them that then hng up on them every time they called (as instructed to by my payplan case worker)

Ours stopped ringing within a day of the money adviser sending out the proposal and covering letter.

Same heer expat and we was told to say if anyone did ring to tell them we was with paypal,within a few days it all stopped. You will still get letters from creditors that your account is in default,but by law they have to send them out so don't panic if you get them. Within 6 months of being with payplan we had a review and was able to increase out payments to another £20. This will happen every 6 months I think.
The nightmare does not go away overnight but it sure helps. I can actually sleep again :)
Hope all this helps

Just a note on judgment/charging orders, if creditors are being difficult and do issue proceedings and apply onbtain judgment then if the debt is a consumar credit regulated debt they cannot charge interest on it. obviously a CCJ is bad for your credit rating but it is usually shot anyway so it is worth thinking about allowing a debtor to obtain judgment in these circumstances.

Additionally, if the debt is not regulated by the comnsumer credit cat then interest should be charged (after judgment has been obtained) at the rate of 8% pursuant to the county courts act - this is usually a lot less than the agreed rate on say a credit card debt in defualt so again something you should consider.

Finally, just becuase a creditor has refused a payment plan of £x per month before they issue legal proceedings it doesn't mean that they would reject it after they have issued legal proceedings and even if they do reject it the court may order it on your behalf. Please do be wary of people telling you that the court can order you to pay £1 per month towards judgment debts - this is veru unlikely to happen in practice.

I used them before. Unfortunately a dmp does not mean the creditors will freeze interest or charges. After a year and a half of the dmp, we found that we had paid off no debt, just interest. We then approached another company that told us we were eligible for a trust deed (we are in scotland) and we are now nearly finished with that, so will be debt free again soon. Payplan were good though, I never had a problem with them, just the fact the debt wasnt actually being paid off.

I'm struggling today, my DP is out to work, which is a good thing, so im trying to hold it all together at home, scared of the phone and the postman. I think most of our creditors have now stopped all interest, its just the unmanagable amounts that get to us. the HMRC take £300 a month and tell us we have to be up to date for our tax by january, we had to pay them £2400 just after xmas and thought they might give us a bit of time, but two weeks after filing the tax return (a week late) we were sent a distraint order. Which is mental because they left it for over a year before contacting us last time. What i don't understand is we have a tax bill for double what DP earnt becuase they want us paying tax in advance, so what i worked out to be a £800 tax bill, suddenly shot up to the best part of £4000 for no reason that i see as fair.

I just live in constant fear of losing our home, to the extent i cant even keep it clean (well it is clean, but its extremely messy and that just makes me feel worse) becuase i think that will "jinx" things and we'll lose it anyway.

I dont know how these debt collector people sleep at night, they have been vile to me on the phone, one calling me stupid because we didnt keep records - it was a debt company that refused to disclose what credit card company they were working for - turned out it was MINT and we owed them £300, but i was made to feel like shit for getting into debt. I didnt ask for any of this, we don't have huge TVs, flash cars (in fact my DP had to fix his own van because we coldt afford to get it fixed and had to use family car for work which is now ruined due to tools in it - thankfully van now fixed but its cost us double in petrol for past few months and that often has meant paying out £100 a week) or anything like that. I hae just sat and trawled through job websites, nothing.

I honestly sometimes think it would be easier to walk in front of a train, but i can't bear to think of my DD at my graveside :(

I would recommend posting on Moneysavingexpert, they were excellent for giving me debt advice. They can also help with the rude/harrassing phone calls.

Sunshine, have you thought about bankruptcy if things are that deparate. If there is no equity in your house then you would be unlikely to lose it in the bankruptcy although it would obvisouly have a big impact if you looked to remortgage/switch mortgage providers.