wez_sti

Right, as some of you may of seen i am in a bit of financial strife at the moment (thread where i asked for 15k!)

my family have moved to Oz meaning i suddenly had to start paying more for rent, food, bills etc.. and this was after i was already in a bit of bother.

made some extremely nieve and imature financial discissions when i was 18 and i havent improved much.

my mail was being redirected from my mums to my cousins whilst i found somewhere permanent to live, kept meaning to go pick it up but never got round to it. well did yesterday and, OH ****!

Knew i was behind on my payments but thought i was paying enough just to keep my head above water, apparently not..

i have 3 companys threatening court action 'if i dont reply in 7 days' which has already passed.

i have a bit of money that i could pay them as a sort of gesture i'm willing to pay, but get the feeling they'll tell me where to stick it.


if i did end up going to court, what would the likely outcome be?


at the moment they dont have my current address as i dont have a fixed abode as such at the moment. i dont want to give them my friends address where i'm staying incase i get a knock on the door from the baliffs....

I know i've been an idiot, and have no-one to blame but myself (wont give a sob story but have had a ridiculously bad run of luck!)

what is my best course of action??

what would bankruptcy involve worse comes to the worse? what would hiding for the next 6 years result in?

clutching at straws here...

car is being MOT'd and taxed the weekend then going in auto trader, tempted to do what that guy did and e-bay pretty much everything and start afresh, though it might be too late.

i'm going to ring the relevant companys today and see whats the next step.

davegtt

To be honest most companies are very understanding if you contact them as soon as you possibly can and would more than likely come to some agreement with you. i.e. you basically say nope cant afford to pay you anymore simple, Im skint, take me to court etc and Ive still got nothing to give you, there is usually leeway in which they'll cut you payments or overall debt level....

Ive not been involved in a situation like that but I know a friend who has and basically got in touch before they was chasing him and told them straight, Im sure if you went to them and explained the situation rather than putting it off and dragging it to court you'll be fine....

Remember it costs the companies to take you to court only to say for example, your bankrupt and they still get nothing out of it. Id defintely be running up a phone bill trying to sort it out mate, trust me once its sorted you'll feel like a different person

Good luck

Scoobychick

iTrader: (1)

Work out how much you owe in total and what you can afford to pay back each month in total. Then ring the companies you owe money to and tell them what you can afford to pay them on a monthly basis, no matter how small it is. They should accept this as regular payments are what they are after.

Or go to the Citizens Advice Bureau and they will negotiate with them on your behalf.

pslewis

CAB are the people, they won't judge what you've done (but, don't go in smoking a ***, smelling of beer and dressed in anything other than Tesco £4 jeans!)

They will guide you through and speak for you ....... its free and excellent help.

Pete

davegtt

Jeez, Ive just read a helpful post by PSL... whats going on there then

wez_sti

cheers people, a sensible post from pete i'm in shock too! good advice though cheers.

EVOVI

Dont know who much you owe but if I was you I would sell up everything as you said but then get on the next plane to OZ with the rest of your family..It is got to be better than living in this crap hole especially as you will have a really bad credit rating and possibly worse if you dont pay up soon....

davegtt

Great advice, telling someone to run away from their problems

wez_sti

not the right thing to do but i must admit it is damn tempting.

determined to sort it out though. would like to own my own house this side of forty!

Leslie

Sorry to hear about all your problems. Hope it all sorts out for the best eventually.

Les

John Catlin

Be honest with the Copanies as you have with us.

List all out goings and income, see what you can afford with each and take it frome there.

Put all this in writing as if you have to go to Court you can show you have made an offer etc.

Court will be on you side with the above and telling the truth.

Will help to go to CAB that may negociate on you behalf.

You will still have to list all income and out goings.

All the best and I am sure that some thing can be worked out to satisfy all parties.

pslewis

HEY!!!!

All my posts are very sensible ...... they are just sensible to different people at different times

Hope it all works out ..............

Pete

brihoppy

wasnt some woman in a similar situation recently...she created a webpage just asking for money...she had debts that were quite excessive and reckoned on either a few thousand people donating the bare minimum or even a few people donating quite alot...if i remember correctly, she quite surpassed her target...

dont know what she looked like, but ive got a feeling that if a fella did it, he might not get the same response...

anyone else remember this...???

davegtt

no, think your making it up

wez_sti

yeah i remember that, as you say, think a guy would be less succesful (although if i remember rightly she was no oil painting!) plus its 'been done' so prob wouldnt create any interest as its not orginal...

robski

Gather all your income outgoings backup and go to CAB (as stated before they are excellent at doing this sort of thing), the fact that they are a 3rd party helps the situation no end as they companies know your not pulling the wool over their eyes.

CAB will do the negotiation for you, but make sure you stick absolutely to what you agree to do, treat this as a VERY last chance once things are agreed.

Most companies will accept very little as long as you DO pay regularly. Most I have heard of will stop charging interest or dramatically reduce it.
Its all to do with shareholders and reporting.
If you stop charging someone interest its insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but written off money is VERY badly looked upon, so better to get £5 a month from someone on a £5K debt than to have to write the debt off after trying to chase them through the courts only for them to go bankrupt.

mart360

erm out of date data again pete,

the CAB will no longer handle debt management issues die to the 1000% increase in cases, they now refer you to outside FREE agencys

tsk tsk for such a Knowlegeable person you arnt sometime the sharpest tool are you??

M

MikeCardiff

iTrader: (2)

Whatever you do, dont ignore it, and if possible avoid court.

Bankruptcy is fine if you want to lose every single possession you own at the moment, and never be able to get a mortgage, credit card or loan ever in your life.

As others suggest, as long as you show willing and promise to pay back something every month, AND STICK TO IT, the debtors will generally be happy - also, I'm pretty sure there is a law whereby once you make an agreement with a company over repayment, they have to freeze the debt and cant add any more interest to the amount as long as you stick to the repayments.

mart360

Bankrupcy used to guarantee you a fresh start, but with it becomming common place i believe they are now applying a charge on your property to recover debt over a very long term.

Re making payments, be prepared for some very hard calls, even though you offer and make payments they still treat you as crap..

and watch out for debt selling,,, one compny i owed and was making payments to sold the debt onto a scottish recovery firm...

lets just say that the methods used were borderline harrasment, and unpleaseant, suffice to say i dislike this company immensly and would relish with glee if they went bust!

above all talk to them it may be hard but it works

Mart

wez_sti

Right, spoke to them all....

Not a very pleasent 45 mins on the phone i must admit. does nothing for your pride!

as you all said, they were fairly keen to help, as i'm sure court action is the last thing they want also.

interest and charges have stopped which will make a big difference, they stopped me actually making any progress!

will just have to make sure i stick the the payment rigidly. not gonna be easy.

IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED MY CAR IS FOR SALE IN THE 'GENERAL' SECTION

due to my circumstances i'll be open to offers, and you can be sure its a genuine reason for sale! i love the car to bits, but even well-off people struggle to run scoobs sometimes!

http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/showthread.php?t=397991


thanks people.

davegtt

well wez, glad something has gone your way and its looking a little rosier for you, again though, ever feel your getting behind and struggling even to the point where your getting stressed from it all, it only takes a phone call to them, your pride might take a dinting but thats repairable and you'll feel alot of weight lifted off your shoulders.

good luck with the sale of the scoob

SJ_Skyline

Best of luck Wez!

wez_sti

cheers guys,

not gonna be easy by any stretch of the imagination, but not being able to get a mortgage till i'm past forty and living in rented accomodation most of my life wasnt a pleasant thought.

hopefully get an ok price for the car and pay part of it off.

cheers again.

Pistol_Pete

Good luck with it wez.

The women that did a help me web page and auction off her tat, wasnt it something like savekaren.com

Just checked and it looks like the plug has been pulled on that one.

Chris L

Wez - you'll be surpised what you can do if you approach these companies and make an offer. I have a mate of mine who has managed to run up £71K of debts on various credit cards (don't ask - very long story..). He was, not surprisingly, in a similar situation to you. He has made offers to pay nominal sums and most have been accepted. I think he is currently paying about £350 a month in total. Def get some advice from CAB.

Good luck
Chris

Leslie

Best of luck wez,

Les

The Zohan

Yep, give them a call, they deal with this every day and will give good inpartial advice.

Petem95

If you have really big debts, then going bankrupt should be considered.

One of my mates declared himself bankrupt not long after uni, he had debts of around 35k. The implications are not what they used to be - you can still have a bank account and stuff, and I think as it becomes more common, you wont get screwed that badly when you try and get a mortgage or whatever.

Really depends how bad your financial situation is tho.

Theres a lot of people in very bad financial situations in the UK right now, and its no surprise that the number of people going backrupt is rocketing. Lenders shouldnt really have made it so easy to borrow so much money, and with house prices being unrealisitically high, people have been offered huge mortgages that they should never have been able to get (especially FTB's)

KG386

Check out www.payplan.com or www.cccs.co.uk who both provide FREE debt management services

Also if you want to do more research about bankruptcy http://www.insolvency.gov.uk/guidanc...bankruptcy.htm should be some help.

In most cases if the amount you owe CAN'T be cleared in 5 years by making monthly payments, you should certainly be considering bankruptcy.

As others have said the downsides are not always that serious and it can provide a real fresh-start. You CAN get a mortgage in the future and they DO NOT take everything you own. Most personal belongings are exempt but cars (value over £1000), houses etc. are usually taken.

I am an ex-CAB debt counsellor.

SiDHEaD

If you are earning have u tried www.eurodebt.com

I'm using them to sort out my mess. Its been 3 months so far and going well. Payments down from 500+ to 65 and after a year i can opt to pay off all my debt at 20%. The card etc companies are happy with this as they write it off against tax loss or sth.

PM me if u want a more detailed info, i.e. my experiences (and my friend who referred me in the first place)