I'm new to this and hope you can help me

[Frankie]

Hi all. I'm new to this and hope you can help me. I have finally made the biggest step in my life and admitted i need help with my finances i owe £72K to 7creditors. I have just filled in my form and ready to send off to clearstart. i have opened a new bank account with abbey because i owe money to my own natwest bank and will be cancelling all my dd from beginning of next month.. my question is since i will be cancelling my dd with my creditors what do i do regarding payments to them for now and will i need to write letters to them

[Soulgrowth]

Hi Frankie

I am not one of the experts here, just someone who is in the same situation as you ... so I just wanted to say a big "well done" on taking the first step.

Essentially, the experts will be able to confirm though, I stopped payments at this stage ... the time it takes for the IVA to go through also allows you a bit of financial recovery time. Some IPs suggest making token payments to creditors as a gesture of goodwill ... I was advised to send all my creditors £5 ... but your own IP will confirm this for you.

Good luck ... and keep in touch as you are well and truly amongst friends here [:)]

Debbie

www.familyceremonies.co.uk

www.soulgrowth.co.uk

[aguise]

Hi Frankie and welcome to the forum. The best people to ask is clearstart. they will advise, the usual is to stop all payments to your creditors but some companies like you to make token payments, these should be equal to the debt eg say £1.00 for every hundred owed, that way no creditor is shown any preference. As I say your company will advise on this. Set all your houshold debhits and income to the new account so they are not missed. I sat with a nice cup of coffee and rang the lot and changed them over. Ther are always lots of questions when you first embark so feel free to ask anything you want.

Ang

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

[aguise]

Sorry debbie same time.

Ang

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

[marsha1]

Hi Debbie, Welcome to the forum. Clearstart will give you all the help you need, I am with them.

[MelanieGiles]

What advice have Clearstart given you about this?

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

To have me propose an IVA for you, please visit:
http://www.melaniegiles.com/ivaEnquiry.asp

See customer feedback at:
http://www.iva.com/iva_companies/IVA_Advice_Bureau.asp

[Frankie]

clearstart has said to pay token payment but what is token payments and do i pay them thte same amount what i can afford?

Thank you all and i will give them a call tomorrow and see what they say!! Also i will need to ask clearstart if i need to write/ring my creditors regarding my debts. "I just don't know" like aguise says i need to ask clearstart a lot more question and you lot too but i'll save all yours thanks to the end.

[MelanieGiles]

That's really useful - advising you to make token payments and not advising you what they mean!!! I think that you need to phone them tomorrow to find out, but this could be anything from £5 to £50 depending upon your individual circumstances.

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

To have me propose an IVA for you, please visit:
http://www.melaniegiles.com/ivaEnquiry.asp

See customer feedback at:
http://www.iva.com/iva_companies/IVA_Advice_Bureau.asp

[Adam Davies]

Hi
Clearstart should write to each of your creditors and token payments would normally be an amount that you can afford split equally between all your creditors depending on the amount that they are owed.
For example if you could afford a total of £200 and owed 40k you would pay £5 per 1000 owed to each creditor
Hope this helps

Andy Davie
IVA.co.uk Spokesperson and Website Manager

About me:
http://www.iva.co.uk/andy_davie_profile.asp

IVA Helpline: 0800 197 4838
http://www.iva.co.uk/iva_helpline.asp

[Frankie]

Should i also tell my creditors if they ring me for payment that i'm entering into an IVA now or should i waiting until i get a reply from clearstart about them receiving my paperwork. Again its another question for clearstart i will be asking...[?]

[marsha1]

Hi Frankie, I left everything to Clearstart and they advised me every step of the way,of course you need to know the amount of any token payment that needs to be made to your creditors. I did not pay any, I had lots of questions before my iva, some of those questions were answered here on this forum but some I asked my case worker at Clearstart, either way you need answers so please ask,ask,ask.

[Frankie]

Hi All,

I rang clearstart and they said just make sure all your house hold bills are paid and then make token payments meaning what you can to the creditors and try and give a little more to the biggist creditors. They also said no need to ring the creditors about the token payment you are doing cause they WILL call you.

Thanks for your rely marsha1 did you tell your creditors that you was entering into iva before you sent your paperwork off...

So scared right now of what to expect to happen?

[johnz]

I cancelled all of my DD's, moved the household ones to my new bank account and then sat back and waited for letters. They tend to get notified when you cancel the DD, so the first letters I got were them asking me to set up a new DD. At that point, I phoned them, explained the situation and gave them details of the company dealing with it.

After that point, I referred any further letters or phone calls directly to the company dealing with the proposal for me.

This went on for quite a while, because it took a couple of weeks to find out that I couldn't do an IVA and then took a further 8 weeks to get my DMP sorted.

I didn't pay anyone anything once the DD's had been cancelled.

To be fair to my creditors, all of them were really good about it and I only had a couple of hickups, which my debt management company took care of.

At the end of the day, the company dealing with this for you should be taking most of the stress off of you now. They should be in contact with your creditors and replying to any letters and/or phone calls you get for you.

Best of luck.

Johnz

[Martin2011]

Hi Frankie,

I'm also with CS. I wasn't advised to make token payments, but did start paying the amount we were proposing to pay into the IVA every month for the four months between initial contact and the IVA being agreed. I assumed that CS divided those payments up amoung our creditors, but not really certain about that. Either way, never heard a thing from any creditors once DD's etc were cancelled as CS sorted all that out....

Well done on taking the first step and very best of luck for the journey...

Martin

[marsha1]

Hi, I told my creditors i was applying for an iva as soon as I sent the proosal back to CS. I did get an e mail from CS to instruct me to make no further payments, to be honest I cannot remember at which stage this was.