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Hi all!
My debt management journey.
Having stupidly tried to run a business and got into a lot of debt, I eventually gave up in 2015.
In the late 90's and early 00's I got quite a lot of credit cards and equipment leases. In the 00's it was mainly to help support my business as I didn’t want my husband to have the burden of the business.
I got out of debt several times once when my mum sold her house and then when we remortgaged to help me purchase a premises that then fell through. Following the remortgage, my husband was left to pay the extra as my business wasn’t generating cash. Maybe I should have given up rather than signing a 5 year lease for a shop, but I wanted to have one last chance to make it work.
I struggled for just over a year with the shop (rent was £12k plus VAT a year) managing to pay over £1000 in credit card min payments. The realisation came in 2011 when we had really bad weather and business dropped off for the first two months of the year.
In February 2011, I gave in and approached A DM Company and set up a DMP for the majority of my cards. I left my Tesco Card and Business overdraft out in the hope that I would be able to pay these back and get myself on track. I carried on paying the tesco card each month. The payment was around £170 a month but for some reasons a while later (maybe due to a change in the T’s & C’s), the minimum payment went down to around £60 a month. I just let this carry on going out of my account, but it didn’t seem to go down. I guess with this one I buried my head in the sand.
With my other debts in the DMP (around £33k - it all adds up!) I started paying £300 a month towards them. With £25 of that going on the fee for The Debt Management Comoany, I guess I should have changed to a non fee paying one sooner, but in 2016, when my payments to the DMP halved due to reducing work and becoming a carer for my mother who has Parkinson's Disease, I decided to switch to stepchange to increase my payments slightly having added both the credit card (just under £3k and my overdraft (just over £4k)) I wanted to try and pay a bit more.
At the beginning with the £33k debt, I was due to be on a DMP for 9 years paying £300 a month. Now after 5 Years, it’s going to be another 14 years, I can’t believe this so thought I would try and reduce it through PPI claims and, as five of the debts were with Debt Collection Agencies, I would request a CCA from them.
Another way I wanted to try and reduce the debt was to write to all the Credit Card Original Lenders and see if I had any PPI on any of the cards. It may seem daft not knowing, but I always turned them down, but have heard that they still added them on. I will update as I hear, but nothing much will happen for 12 days so will check back on 13th Feb.
For the record, my Creditors are as follows;
Co-op Bank (Business overdraft) £4200
Barclaycard £3268 (already paid £2440)
Capital One £1997 (already paid £1501)
Tesco £2993
Idem Servicing £4138 (already paid £3115)
MKDP £792 (already paid £595)
Moorgate (Virgin card) £1859 (already paid £1396)
Moorgate (HSBC) £5167 (already paid £3845)
RMA Resolve (paypal) £1717 (already paid £1307)
A couple of queries I have with Barclaycard and the M&S card is that with both of them, I had their cardsafe. Each time they took the premium out, it was added onto the card so accrued interest. It will be interesting to hear if I get anything from that.
Along with this, I was looking at some old Britannia Mortgages that I had. One with my ex and one with my current husband (the mortgage was transferable). In some old statements I found, we had buildings insurance for £35 a month but when I look over the statements, they actually took £54 a month. Not sure what this was so again, once I hear back I will update.
I have also just requested an SAR from Santander as I also had lots of store cards and credit cards that were under egg, GE money and some others (I can’t remember all that I had, which is why I asked for the SAR). This will be posted tomorrow, so will up date (40 day wait for this).
This is the beginning (well middle really) of hopefully becoming debt free earlier than I anticipated!
I will now list all my debts individually, but wanted to give you my situation first.
My debt management journey.
Having stupidly tried to run a business and got into a lot of debt, I eventually gave up in 2015.
In the late 90's and early 00's I got quite a lot of credit cards and equipment leases. In the 00's it was mainly to help support my business as I didn’t want my husband to have the burden of the business.
I got out of debt several times once when my mum sold her house and then when we remortgaged to help me purchase a premises that then fell through. Following the remortgage, my husband was left to pay the extra as my business wasn’t generating cash. Maybe I should have given up rather than signing a 5 year lease for a shop, but I wanted to have one last chance to make it work.
I struggled for just over a year with the shop (rent was £12k plus VAT a year) managing to pay over £1000 in credit card min payments. The realisation came in 2011 when we had really bad weather and business dropped off for the first two months of the year.
In February 2011, I gave in and approached A DM Company and set up a DMP for the majority of my cards. I left my Tesco Card and Business overdraft out in the hope that I would be able to pay these back and get myself on track. I carried on paying the tesco card each month. The payment was around £170 a month but for some reasons a while later (maybe due to a change in the T’s & C’s), the minimum payment went down to around £60 a month. I just let this carry on going out of my account, but it didn’t seem to go down. I guess with this one I buried my head in the sand.
With my other debts in the DMP (around £33k - it all adds up!) I started paying £300 a month towards them. With £25 of that going on the fee for The Debt Management Comoany, I guess I should have changed to a non fee paying one sooner, but in 2016, when my payments to the DMP halved due to reducing work and becoming a carer for my mother who has Parkinson's Disease, I decided to switch to stepchange to increase my payments slightly having added both the credit card (just under £3k and my overdraft (just over £4k)) I wanted to try and pay a bit more.
At the beginning with the £33k debt, I was due to be on a DMP for 9 years paying £300 a month. Now after 5 Years, it’s going to be another 14 years, I can’t believe this so thought I would try and reduce it through PPI claims and, as five of the debts were with Debt Collection Agencies, I would request a CCA from them.
Another way I wanted to try and reduce the debt was to write to all the Credit Card Original Lenders and see if I had any PPI on any of the cards. It may seem daft not knowing, but I always turned them down, but have heard that they still added them on. I will update as I hear, but nothing much will happen for 12 days so will check back on 13th Feb.
For the record, my Creditors are as follows;
Co-op Bank (Business overdraft) £4200
Barclaycard £3268 (already paid £2440)
Capital One £1997 (already paid £1501)
Tesco £2993
Idem Servicing £4138 (already paid £3115)
MKDP £792 (already paid £595)
Moorgate (Virgin card) £1859 (already paid £1396)
Moorgate (HSBC) £5167 (already paid £3845)
RMA Resolve (paypal) £1717 (already paid £1307)
A couple of queries I have with Barclaycard and the M&S card is that with both of them, I had their cardsafe. Each time they took the premium out, it was added onto the card so accrued interest. It will be interesting to hear if I get anything from that.
Along with this, I was looking at some old Britannia Mortgages that I had. One with my ex and one with my current husband (the mortgage was transferable). In some old statements I found, we had buildings insurance for £35 a month but when I look over the statements, they actually took £54 a month. Not sure what this was so again, once I hear back I will update.
I have also just requested an SAR from Santander as I also had lots of store cards and credit cards that were under egg, GE money and some others (I can’t remember all that I had, which is why I asked for the SAR). This will be posted tomorrow, so will up date (40 day wait for this).
This is the beginning (well middle really) of hopefully becoming debt free earlier than I anticipated!
I will now list all my debts individually, but wanted to give you my situation first.
. Sit tight and wait for next letter then use missing PT's letter 
as all MBNA Virgin cards pre 04/07 are. Just snuck in with this one! Sit tight and wait for next letter then use missing PT's letter.
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