It has been decided. I will be cancelling my Debt Management Plan with StepChange and reverting to self managing my debts once again. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day as I have got to contact 24 creditors to let them know about this change. The way I will do this is to call them all, advise that the repayment amount won’t change but set up a Direct Debit as that saves me manually doing all the standing orders.
The main reasons behind doing this are due to the fact I now have a middle man between me and my creditors. This results in me not being able to sort certain things out as quickly I would like to. I was happy managing my debts before but due to a lot of changes it seemed moving to StepChange was the right solution for me. However it was not.
StepChange do great work though, don’t get me wrong and they are a lifeline for many people who are in debt. It’s just that with me writing this blog and having perhaps too much experience of being in debt it just doesn’t fit in with what I am trying to do. I will still continue to recommend StepChange for people looking for Debt Help as they are able to provide support and advice and help you through your worries.
Some Additional Changes on how I report the Debt on Debt Advice Blog
To make things easier for myself, I am also including the debts of my partner in the new debt totals I will begin to provide again at the beginning of the month. These updates will start again in October 2013 and will be provided each month thereafter. If you see that the balance has increased then that is the reason why. I estimate that our total debt stands at £50,297.96 and our monthly repayment towards that debt is £638.06. Based on that alone it will take 6 and a half years to be debt free which is right about where I would like it to be.
We also got a CCJ this month courtesy of Natwest and the reason that happened is because Moorcroft (the Debt Collection Agency) claim that they have received no contact from StepChange Debt Charity. I am not sure if that is true or not as I am still awaiting a reply to an e-mail I sent to StepChange to find out what is going on.
We spoke to Natwest who were not interested in the circumstances surrounding the CCJ so it will remain. We have completed the admission form and will wait to hear back. Not much more can be done on that one. Our credit ratings are already toast so it makes no difference and being in the debt we are in, credit isn’t something we would want to be getting anyway.
I will put up another post tomorrow to let you know how things went. Until then have a good Sunday afternoon and if you have any questions please ask.
