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I've taken to keeping Grant Thornton informed whenwe have significant changes to our I&E to help me stay in control of our IVA. I have just found our that my car insurance monthly payments are dropping by £30 so have informed GT accordingly and will make arrangements to increase my monthly contribution to them by this amount.

They did respond saying that if I preferred I could just inform them when it came to the annual review. If I did that would they want the additional money and would they want it backdated?

Just worried as I don't want any arrears and they have been very flexible towards us and my partners bonus last year (due to outgoings actually more than our incomings and car frequently requiring work) so I feel that I should do my bit and where we can offer more to our monthly contribution then we should and I don't particularly want any nasty surprises when it comes to our annual review - although if we didn't adjust it now and waited until our annual review and they didn't want to backdate the monies then could I put it towards my new car fund?

And I did resubmit a new I&E to them in December as fortunately both hubby and I got payrises with our new roles and I needed to amend the I&E to take into account some changes and thus actually being able afford an increase in our monthly contribution.

I think what my ramblings sum up to is should I take pro-active approch with our IVA and increase our contributions when we can or should we just wait until our annual review and do it then? And if we did wait until our annual review could they backdate the increases?

Sorry for the ramblings
Lou [:)]

If you get a significant payrise i.e. not just inflation, then you should probably inform your Supervisor straight away, if it's just an inflation increase or small reduction in expenditure you can leave that until the annual review date.

It may be a term of your arrangement, and this is very common, that if you receive any kind of bonus or overtime or other irregular payments that was not already factored into the original budget, then you would pay a proportion of that, usually half after tax/NI deduction, into the arrangement.

If this applies to you, then these should be paid over as and when you receive them.

Philip Beck

Licensed Insolvency Practitioner and IVA specialist

I forgot to mention, any increase in your contribution rate would not be backdated. If they've specifically suggested to you to leave it until your annual review date, it would be most unfair to backdate an increase.

Philip Beck

Licensed Insolvency Practitioner and IVA specialist

Lou,

I would just like to say that I commend what you are doing. Brilliant!

You're acknowledging that you have additional income, you're declaring that you have additional income and you are voluntarily increasing the level of your contributions. You're doing your Supervisor a favour, I think!

Whilst your insurance may have lowered by £30 per month, other expenses such as electricity and gas are on the increase, so you need to consider that too and do not leave yourself short.

The alternative to increasing the level of your contributions is to pay that extra amount in to a deposit account and have it earn some interest for you and pay over what proportion of it your Supervisor asks for after the annual review. I think that you are going to be disciplined enough with your finances to do that.

I just have a concern over one thing ... 'The new car fund.' If you need to replace your car, you should advise your Supervisor and take their advice on the best way to go about it

Tell it like it is.

Thanks for that!

In response to you Philip, James payrise was significant mine was relatively modest and took into account the fact that I needed to pay for my parking and I did ensure that I informed GT immediately along with a revised I&E to take into account certain changes within it.

Thanks Cybus, at least I'm not necessary doing a bad thing by being a control freak. As for the new car fund, before I speak with GT about replacing her and the best way to go about it I need to get the quote for the work to bumper (caused by Bambi) and from the garage for Gearbox/differential as it is on it's way out. When we went into the iVA 20 months ago the car was worth about £2000 and listed at that price as an asset, now she is falling apart with alarming regularly that I only need to mention my name at the garage and they tell me to bring her in! Unfortunately I do actually need my car to get to work as the alternative is 2 buses taking about 2 hours!

I think I might transfer the money saved from my car insurance into my car account until our review in April (ish) as following the payrises we can actually increase our contribution by £20 and that starts at the end of January. And see what increases are applied to car tax council tax and gas and electric.

Thanks!

Louise

You are probably going beound the call of duty, but no-one would knock you for that - things like this can properly be left to the annual review though, as IP's have to balance the amount of time they actually spend on cases these days, against much reduced fees. So we are perhaps a little more system based, and are used to looking at immaterial items just as part of the annual review.

If I were you, I would find a new home for the £30, if you only put it into a savings account. I'll bet it won't be there by the end of the year, as there will be other things which crop up which weren't originally accounted for!

Regards, Melanie Giles, Insolvency Practitioner for over 20 years.

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Louise I would ring them again and ask them if they would ask for it at annual review. Remember petrol has risen substantially, utilities are rising. I have saved a bit on a few parts of expenditure, but they are more than eaten up by other rises, council tax and water I bet will go up as well. Always look at what extra you are paying out as well.

Ang

Please visit my blog at http://aguise.blogs.iva.co.uk/