usin credit cards whilst in iva process

[Adam Davies]

Hi
Quote'I have spoken with the CAB and my work union and they have advised that I must make payments until an IVA is agreed if I can afford to'
If you can do this without using credit to pay credit then you do not need an IVA.
What you should do is,once you decide on an IVA and have spoken with an IVA provider,stop paying all unsecured debts[or make only token payments depending on your IPs advice]You will then not have to use your credit cards to make ends meet.So going back to Melanies original advice 'Once you have decided to appoint a professional to repsresent you in an IVA process, you should most definately not use credit cards into the future'at this time you should also be advised to stop paying all unsecured debts.
Regards

[petes39]

anais743

your concerns over lawfully discharging a debt, must be looked at how much you have to pay the creditors, if it is £350 as you state ring each company, state your intention to pay them with the money you have, you will still be discharging your debts and working towards an iva, you will not be criticised by work etc, you are doing the utmost and if this needs to be proved at a later date it can. what the job frowns upon is you have not made every effort to discharge the debt, HR act etc

Best wishes Pete

[petes39]

So no more using credit cards I know how you must feel, as alot of us do on this forum,however for you with regards the job, dont worry.

Pete

[anais743]

pete your advice is welcomed as always!

I just find it strange that people advocate not paying what you owe until the ive is sorted! The way I work it when I get paid is to pay more mortgage and debt commitments. This leaves me nothing for food,petrol etc etc and I used my cards for this. I understand that Im not achieving anything by doing this (other than not getting calls from irate companies that I havent paid). Just would find it very hard to stop making my commitments with no formal plan in place.


Next point. If you stop making payments and then IVA is not agreed then what happens next? I would be in a worst position due to the charges,default fees on these accounts than when I started the process?

[petes39]

To answer that, yes totally horrible re creditors ringing, however you are in a good or better position than i was, your up to date`ish i believe with your payments. It is hard but let go and it takes at least 6 wks from your last payment before they call. As you are entering or attempting to enter an iva state that fact and also by then you will have advice from your IP/Superviser on the IVA team. The creditors will accept what you tell them, and the company chasing the money will tell u they will contact u in a week/? days for further info. To explain i had money from my recent divorce ( not much ) however with my constant O/T in custody I could pay all the bills, I hated the fact of missing one as i hadn`t for over 20 years. I was told to offer less than the minimum payment when eneteing my first IVA proposal, this was so alien and hard for me. although i did for several weeks i heard nothing from the creditors ( about 5 wks in total). the iva was refused I was told by my IP oh go bankrupt blah blah. I didnt i contacted pp and purposed a dmp which give me 6 mths to see what i could do to sort the problem by then all my excess money i had offered the iva was gone. This was when i didnt pay the bills in full and it was weeks before anyone contacted me and when they did i advised i had taken advice and passed on the reference number given to me it wasnt nice but if yoy have an answer for them, what can they do?, finally with the dmp they all stopped except mbna offering me no default if i paid £4 more or so, then went for iva again after 5 months and was accepted with alot less than i offered before.

Good luck pete

[petes39]

sorry for my grammer etc just got home after leaving at 0430hrs this morning, a long long day. Just wish you luck and piece of mind as everyone on this forum will.

Anything else pls ask, however on nights tomorrow for a couple so will catch up then.

pete

[r.t]

hiya,

i opened a new bank account and withdrew from my old account my monthly expenses and deposited them in the account and left enough money in the old account to cover the minimum payments on my credit cards. if you worked out your monthly expenditure you should get by on the money in your new account until the iva is properly in place.
the only thing that i got a bit concerned about with is that i used my old account for a couple of transactions whilst in the process by mistake but hopefully the creditor on that debt wont frown upon it!!
thanx rt

[buttercup]

RT

I cut all my CC up on new years day & thought I would feel releif but I did not I felt scared as my back up money (CC)had gone. This went to show just how much I relied on them all.
It takes a while to actually get used to not having them to fall back on but using them once starting IVA process is a no no!!

There is life after credit and know it will get better

[TheMatrix]

I cut my cards up on the day I decided to go down the IVA route. I was advised not to make any payments to the credit card / loan companies and to cancel all direct debits to creditors and at the same time I made two payments by cheque to Thomas Charles before the initial creditors meeting, then when the IVA was agreed the Standing order kicked in with the IP.

As I was making these payments, while the IVA was going through the intial set up. I thought justified in not robbing peter to pay paul by adding more to those retched cards.

Never having one of those things again, I can tell you!

The other thing I did was take the phone off the hook! As I was bombarded with calls, and got fed up of explaining that I was taking a IVA

[Shining]

When I made my initial enquiry that was the day I stopped using credit, scary at first but all been worthwhile as IVA now approved. Stopped paying creditors too, phone calls commenced soon after but apart from one creditor which to this day still hounds me, Saturday, Sunday and today! it hasn't been the nightmare that you so often read about.