Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 3:46 pm
I would just like to publicly thank McCambridge Duffy for the amazing result they have achieved for us – briefly we paid into IVA for 42 months and came unstuck in April this year due to yet another redundancy for my OH who at approaching the age of 62 finds he is not at the top of many job shortlists these days. We had a fairly stringent IVA, had to raise 40p (HSBC at the time), no modifications for the whole period £20k equity release, automatic bankruptcy for failure etc etc. so originally we were looking for a payment break to get through this time in the hope some work would turn up, but McCD said they would try and get the IVA concluded for payments already paid; I never thought this would be possible and after 2 adjourned variation meetings was sure that this was definitely the end of the road. However with the hard work and perseverance of one of the Directors the initial variation rejection was overturned. I am still in a state of disbelief! All I can say is whenever we have had cause to contact our IP we have been met with very supportive and professional guidance. I know that we tried our very best to get through the IVA and but for this awful recession would have done so. We kept in contact with our IP whenever anything changed, both for the good and not so good during the IVA and believe that this helped in getting this decision for us as it showed we were committed to seeing it through. I would pass on that advice to anyone; always keep your IP up to date with changing circumstances, if they know about it they can help. We knew they had a responsibility to the creditors as well as us but we also knew they would support us through difficulties using the means available to them. Sometimes I think it is easy for us to forget that they have to operate under restrictions too and cannot always change things without consulting the creditors. It’s also easy to forget that it is the creditors that ultimately agree to our IVA terms and write off much of our debt, yes there was some irresponsible lending but there was also some irresponsible borrowing, so I must thank them on this occasion for agreeing to write off even more! Anyway I could ramble for hours so will draw back to the point of thanking McCD for their support and hard work, particularly Eunan who kept me sane for the last 4 weeks or so and trying to keep me positive and also Rosie who must have worked really hard to get this decision, we will have eventually paid around a 14p dividend so quite a reduction for which we are very grateful. The experience of the IVA has taught us well, how to budget and make sure we prepare more for the future. Finances will still be tight with only one income but at least now we know we can manage without those credit cards!