Dear trying2cope
i havent read every post but i will give you our story and sure its very similar to all the others. Im married, had 2 children worked 30hrs/wk and was living on CC to pay for normal life then paying min payments sometimes interest was morevthan my payment so balances were totting up. We were paying around £1200 a mnth in CC payments. We realised end of last year we were drowning and could see no way out. Id spoke to my bank and made arrangement for reduced payments and was put in touch with a debt company. All going well. Decided on iva and started the process. thankfully one night I found this forum and got put in touch with another company. After speaking to a couple I made my decision to go with Mel as I found her to be more down yo earth and considered our personal circumstances. If id gone with the other company theres no way we would have coped in iva.
Baby nimber 3 arrived a month ago meaning im on maty pay but i can telax knowing we can 'afford' for me to be off as smp has been taken into account. We have meeting on april 2nd to see if proposal will be accepted.
Just a few thjngs...stop paying creditors now youve decided on iva. Save everything you can for when things tough, ive informed creditors of plans but they are still ringing/textin/letters but i know im reasonably protected and trying to not let them get to me. im taking control of debts. its a huge step to realuse and admit to debt problems but this forum has made me realise not sline and some even worse off than me.
thinking of iva as 5 year loan is helping me to get head round it and looking gorward to being debt free by time baby starts school which will fly by.
good luck with it all. you are in fab position as found this before getting trapped in iva before getting your questions answered.
Dont get too bogged down with the income and expenditure, Mels team (or who ever you choose) will help you with it. Our company pretty much told us what we could put and then at our reviews every month i have just been honest and kept my fingers crossed and we have flown through every one of them. I got an Income and expenditure form from my IVA company to fill in so basically all the headings are all ready there and you just fill in the amounts, its easy really. They even sent me an example one for a family of three which we were at the time, just to give me an idea.
I thought that but I'd hate to have to prove every expenditure to hthat level.Surely it would be best to work in cash and then there's little ability for anyone to argue about what u spend?
You generally only have to prove expenditure that's above the norm, or changes drastically for one reason or another. In most cases they accept what you claim ( and are well versed in what they consider the norm ).
My opinions are merely that .. opinions based on experience. Always seek professional advice.
IVA Completed 23rd July 2013 .... C.C. 10th January 2014
Its yearly and i have found the reviews easy and straight forward, nothing much has changed each year and they have never put my payments up. Expenditure has gone up along with the cost of living but luckily our wages have gone up too so everything has remained the same. I didnt want the contributions to drop either through fear of not paying back enough. I feel you may be getting bogged down with it now and you really just need to have the chat with Mel or whoever. I was at the point of desperation so i didnt give it all that much thought to be honest, someone was offering to help me and i just jumped at the chance.
Wow - this is a really long post now, and it is clear that Trying2coper is having a little dilemma as to what to do for the best.
All I can say is that I am sure that a chat with an insolvency practitioner or debt advisor would be immensely helpful, would answer all of the many questions I am sure they would want to ask, and would set their mind at rest about the options available.
Making that call can often be the hardest thing to do, but you can feel a whole lot better when you have done so, and you will definately not feel so alone moving forwardss.
If you lot are not careful, I will change my forum picture to one of me when I was serving in the Army. Complete with full warpaint (cam cream!) and weapon. In those days, I really did look scary!!!
