Just starting out!

[Rainbow]

Hi this is my first time on this forum and having read some of the very supportive posts thought I would give it a try. Hubby and I have just started an IVA proposal with Grant Thornton recommened by MyVista we owe £110K between us
MBNA Credit cards £26K
American Express £5100
Barclaycard £3K
Cahoot Loan X2 £8.5K & £10K
Egg Credit cards £20K
HSBC Credit card £5K plus £1,300 overdraft plus £1K business overdraft
Mint credit cards £8K
Morgan Stanley £15K
Nationwide Credit card £10K, plus overdraft of £1500
Simply Be £850
Grant Thornton have worked out our incomings and outgoings over the phone and we have approx £9K in an endowment policy and also £8K in savings which was supposed to pay off the mortgage but that will have to happen another way now I guess. GT have said that they in the process of drafting a proposal which takes 14 working days the advisor said that it would be around £250 per month. Does anybody think that this will be accepted? MBNA and Barclaycard are really aggresive the others don't bother us at all which I can't believe as we haven't made any payments since March!
Has anyone got any experience of these creditors and what the likely hood is of them agreeing to this proposal.
Hubby sticks his head in the sand and leaves it for me to deal with and sometimes it would just be nice to have some support!
Any advice greatfully received. Thanks in advance [:)]

[MelanieGiles]

Hi Rainbow

I am sure that your IP would not put forward an IVA proposal they thought would not be accepted, so you should stand a very good change of acceptance. The creditors you refer to are largely supportive of IVAs generally.

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

For further details contact me at http://www.melaniegiles.com and view my IVA blog at: http://melaniegiles.blogs.iva.co.uk

[RedDevil]

Hi Rainbow,

My head is fairly clear having just got back from a few days away with friends in London. My first question is do you own property? If so, is it joint ownership and how much equity do you have? I am no expert by any means but I am going through the IVA mill at the moment so I might be able to help. IVA's, debt and property equity have to be handled in a balanced way. Any good IP will point you in the right direction. Keep away from the intermediarys. They cost time and ever increasing interest on your debt. Go straight to the Insolvency Practioner. Any way, I think you are at that stage now. Just make sure you get a proposal that fits your circumstances. It is very easy to sign documents when you are desperate for a solution to your debt issues and just want to get on with your lives.

We are here to help. There are many of us in debt and some Insolvency Practitioners post on this forum.

RedDevil is back. [:)]

[Rainbow]

Thanks very much for the replies.
Yes we do own our house with a joint mortgage of £136K and we also have a secured loan of £50K, both of which payments are up to date. The property has been valued at £196K so not much equity. Three years ago we took advice from a financial adviser who we think got us in a worse situation and GT seem to agree with us. She told us to remortgage and then take out a secured loan for the balance to pay off our creditors - If she had advised us to go down the route of a one off IVA with the remortgage which was approx £70K for debts of £120K then having read all the info on these posts I am sure that this would have all ended then but she made no mention of IVA's and we had never heard of them - We have really struggled for the last 3 years and have had to live off the credit cards because of her advice.

MBNA rang me last week and I told her that we were going through a proposed IVA and she was really horrible and said what if we don't objective as you have excessive spend on the card, what are you going to do then? I rang GT and was advised that this is normal practice and not to pay the £4K settlement figure they had offered previously. She also wouldn't ring GT direct. GT said to avoid the phone calls if possible.

I haven't seen any feedback about GT does anyone have any experience of them?

Thanks for the support. [:)]

[Edwina]

Hi

Grant Thornton have a very good reputation so I would say that you are in good hands.

Edwina

Thanks very much for the replies.
Yes we do own our house with a joint mortgage of £136K and we also have a secured loan of £50K, both of which payments are up to date. The property has been valued at £196K so not much equity. Three years ago we took advice from a financial adviser who we think got us in a worse situation and GT seem to agree with us. She told us to remortgage and then take out a secured loan for the balance to pay off our creditors - If she had advised us to go down the route of a one off IVA with the remortgage which was approx £70K for debts of £120K then having read all the info on these posts I am sure that this would have all ended then but she made no mention of IVA's and we had never heard of them - We have really struggled for the last 3 years and have had to live off the credit cards because of her advice.

MBNA rang me last week and I told her that we were going through a proposed IVA and she was really horrible and said what if we don't objective as you have excessive spend on the card, what are you going to do then? I rang GT and was advised that this is normal practice and not to pay the £4K settlement figure they had offered previously. She also wouldn't ring GT direct. GT said to avoid the phone calls if possible.

I haven't seen any feedback about GT does anyone have any experience of them?

Thanks for the support. [:)]

[louiseh]

I am using Grant Thornton, started IVA process with first phone call at the begining of February, have only just received my proposal. To this date it has taken 16 weeks, I thought my case was straight forward and have returned all paperwork within days of asking. I was also told originaly it would take 4-6 weeks. I think they are very very busy at the moment and things are taking a lot longer than the time scales they set out. The 14 day wait for the proposal took 7 weeks. I have heard very good things about GT from this site and they do seem to have a good sucess rate, but do check your proposal very carefully, mine had several big mistakes, wrong name, duplicated debts, some debts £3000 out, and my income was wrong and the expenditure bore little resemblence to that discussed in the initial phone call. It may have been inaccurate as they are very busy and I have been pushing them for my proposal for weeks. Mine may just be a one off, wish you all the best with your proposal.

[Edwina]

This does not sound very good at all if you have returned all your documents as requested, and for the proposal to contain such glaring errors. Grant Thornton are a very old established firm and I am surprised that you have experienced such problems.

Edwina

I am using Grant Thornton, started IVA process with first phone call at the begining of February, have only just received my proposal. To this date it has taken 16 weeks, I thought my case was straight forward and have returned all paperwork within days of asking. I was also told originaly it would take 4-6 weeks. I think they are very very busy at the moment and things are taking a lot longer than the time scales they set out. The 14 day wait for the proposal took 7 weeks. I have heard very good things about GT from this site and they do seem to have a good sucess rate, but do check your proposal very carefully, mine had several big mistakes, wrong name, duplicated debts, some debts £3000 out, and my income was wrong and the expenditure bore little resemblence to that discussed in the initial phone call. It may have been inaccurate as they are very busy and I have been pushing them for my proposal for weeks. Mine may just be a one off, wish you all the best with your proposal.

[Dominic]

I think you will find they are busy, especially as the banks seem intent on making it harder to do an IVA I suspect we are seeing a pre tightening up surge.

[Dominic]

Nad the best of luck too

[louiseh]

In a way I did expect better, that is the reason I had choosen Grant Thornton, well established company with a good reputation. Like I say mine might be a one off. To be honest I wasn't the least bit suprised when the proposal turned up with so many mistakes, nothing really seems to have gone to plan since I started out on this journey. I've now resigned myself to the fact that I'll give the creditors meeting a shot. If it doesn't go through without major modifications then I go Bankrupt although I do think I've completely wasted the last 4 months.

[Rainbow]

Thanks for all the postings. I wish I had found this site before the IVA and gone with Melanie but being as I have signed their paperwork I guess that means that I have to stay with them. When I phoned on Thursday last week I spoke to the original adviser who told me that it would take 14 working days to draw up the proposal which means that it should be with us anytime the middle of the week commencing 11th June.... We sent all the paperwork back to them on 1st May.
Thanks for the warning about the mistakes etc. I'll make sure hubby looks at it closely he's a stickler for things being written correctly and with the fine detail.
thanks for the continued support, I really hoped that this would have been sorted in the 6 week timescale they told us!

Question for Melanie
Do we have to stick with GT now that we have signed the paperwork?
Thanks