Hi all, I have recently been informed (by my manager, who has heard rumours, which always end up being true) of some possible changes to mine and my partner's pay structure at work, which could have a big impact on our life and IVA. I am just wondering if anyone could advise me on what could possibly happen regarding our IVA - that is if anyone has ever had/heard of any similar experiences, either as a client or an IP. I don't want to discuss this with our IVA company until I know more details. This is quite complex so apologies for the very long post!
Here is a bit of background story. At the moment, I work part-time and my partner works full-time, for the same company. We both get paid our basic wage every month, which is quite low, plus £50 each per Sunday that we work (we obviously work them all because of this!) which usually gives us a nice £200 a month each on top of our hourly rate. This is sort of guaranteed at the moment as we rarely take Sundays off, and it is therefore included in our monthly income figure, so we don't benefit directly from it. It pays towards the bills!
Also, every three months, as we work in sales, we receive a quarterly bonus. We do have to hit certain targets to receive this and the amount can vary as it can increase/decrease based on what percentage of target we hit, but eventhough it has always been quite predictable, it is not guaranteed.
We currently pay £105 a month into our IVA due to low monthly earnings, and this figure, over 6 years, was the minimum dividend the creditors would accept. When we receive our quarterly bonus, we use the 10/50/50 rule, which means that the bonus payments are an extra payment into the IVA pot (on top of our agreed dividend) and every quarter we get to keep just over half of the bonus. This is a godsend for us as our monthly I&E is stretched to its limits with no contingency amount, and therefore the half of the bonus we get to keep is put into a savings account to pay any one-off bills, emergencies and for birthdays/christmas.
Now here comes the complicated bit!
Our company is thinking of changing their pay structure, in two ways. The first big change they want to make is that they want to stop paying us the £50 extra for Sundays, which will see us lose £400 a month between us. This is nearly 4 times the amount our monthly IVA payment is!
They are also apparently going to scrap bonus altogether, and whilst this is not included in our IVA payment, if we don't receive that extra money every quarter we will be in hot water again with our IVA as we would have no money for contingencies and one off costs. The last thing I want to do is have to take payment breaks and add more months onto our already long IVA.
Now it's not all bad, because apparently they are going to increase our basic wage to counter these actions, but to what degree we don't know until they officially announce it. However, unless they are going to increase my hourly rate by at least 3x (which they surely won't) then I will be losing a lot of money.
The thing that I'm worried about is that, if we are lucky enough to have our basic wage increased to the tune of what we would lose in bonus and Sunday pay, or even anywhere near, the IVA company may want 100% of the uplift because it will be guaranteed income, instead of the 10/50/50 rule. This would see us both losing money because we wouldn't have bonus anymore, instead we'd end up paying more monthly into the IVA. What would have been our contingency fund would get swallowed up by the IVA, and all it would take would be one big bill to come along and we'd be in trouble. I don't want to be financially worse off by working and the thought of this kind of makes me want to lower my hours at work because I won't benefit from earning more, I will be penalised for it.
I am going to be at my wits end over this until we find out exactly how much we will be paid and how much we will get to keep. At the same time, I don't want my IVA to be at risk because of these changes as it is possible that we could find ourselves in the position to not be able to afford to pay it, and even more so I am now worried about how we will get by on less money and how we will pay the bills if we end up earning less.
Has anyone had any experience with something similar to this, or have any advice on what could happen? It would also be helpful to hear back from any IP's that may read this, to see what they would do if this happened to one of their clients.
Thank in advance, I thought my money worries would be over when we started the IVA and it was such a relief, but now I fear we may be in a worse position than before because of the IVA and these changes xx
Last edited by
mummy2elliekate on Mon Apr 29, 2013 11:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
and at the same time he is hesitant to apply for higher paid jobs within the company because the uplift will just go into the IVA, so what's the point? I feel like our life will be on hold for the next 6 years - that's if we get that far through our IVA. I guess it's our own fault for getting into debt in the first place. I know I can't do anything about it until we get told officially what is going to happen but that won't stop the stress. I wish I could just float around and not worry about a thing like my other half! How do they do it? Are women just born worriers? 
