A few questions

[charliesbird]

I Have a few more questions as below if anyone can help please

1) Can my husband and I do a joint IVA - most of our debt is individual but we share the payments from joint bank accounts

2) How much are we allowed to put aside for household shopping (food, toilteries, cleaning materials, dog food etc)

3) We have a sky subscription of £18.99 per month - would we have to cancel (think we are still in first 12 motnh contract period but would have to check)

4) We rent our fridge, freezer & washing machine - costs £20 per month each, had to do this as we could not afford to purchase - still 11 months to run on contract, would we be able to keep this?


Thanks

[Moneystinks]

Hi I'm not an expert but just wanted to say welcome and somebody who knows what they are talking about will be online soon.

Good luck and if you need any good solid and honest advice then you have definately come to the right forum!!

[thanna]

We too had a sky subsciption pre iva and were allowed to keep it good luck with it all Tracy [:)]

[indebtforever]

get in touch with melanie on here she is highly recommended and will take you through it each step of the way are you both working? and are the debts unsecured? and how many creditors do you have?

[TheMatrix]

Best advice would be to speak to a IP direct, don't go through one of those middlemen though

Melanie would be a good choice!

[kallis3]

We kept our Sky package as well. It wasn't even mentioned

[charliesbird]

Thanks all for the responses! Yes we are both working - no dependants and all debt unsecured except for a car loan (about £6k) which I need to keep up with as I would face penalties/ lose money if I cancelled

Have about 9 creditors the largest of which is NAt west, we both have debts with them albeit separate accounts. Our situation started about 5 years go and we had to sell the house and move to a different part of the country where the rents were cheap, we paid off as many creditors as we could with the small amount of equity we had and then we sorted our own debt management programme. Have been managing ok and even increasing payments to creditors regularly but now my income has drastically reduced and we are almost back at square one - have about £80k worth of debt so this really looks like the only solution other than bankruptcy. If we went bankrupt we would not be able to stay in our present rented house and so it goes on.

[Soulgrowth]

Hi ... just wanted to support the advice of the other's in that your very best bet would be to talk to an IP firm directly who would give you sound advice and help you to consider your options. You could do a whole lot worse than speak to Melanie's team [:)]

Just a thought though ... I'm not sure that bankruptcy would necessarily mean that you would lose your rented accomadation, although it could present a few problems if you were to look for future accomadation ... but as many of the posters here have discovered that is not an insurmountable problem, espacially if you go via a private landlord [:)]

Good luck.

Debbie

[MelanieGiles]

An IP will be able to discuss your income and expenditure with you to guide you with regard to the level of allowances instigated by creditors. Sky TV is allowed at the basic package, and appliance rental would be allowed as an essential item of expenditure in my book.

In considering the merits of an IVA, it would be very wise to also consider the option of bankruptcy or a DMP as alternatives so that you can make a rounded decision.