www.iva.co.uk

I can't help thinking what I'm asking now is a bit naive! Anyway here goes. I am seriously considering an IVA. I am likely to be renting a property and have my 16 year old son with me. What determines the amount in the £ you pay? Is it the size of the debt ( mine is £90,000 to 8 creditors)or is it the amount of disposable income you have. Also is an IVA 5 years of living like a monk!! No money to take kids out or have a pint with the lads. Or is their an allowance for this? Thanks in advance.

Hi Mikey and hello from me.
Not at all naive. It is determined by the amount of disposable income that you have.
Yes you do live to a budget but if you have a sensible expenditure allowance, then you can budget and save a little,a lot have a £50 miscellaneous on the expenditure for the unexpected, also overtime you only pay 50% of so I find it well worth doing, it can build quite quickly. If you read some of the older posts on the forum you will see lots about budgeting. Quite a few of us save the vouchers for the sun newspaper hols. We are going for the second year, a fantastic deal. It isnt easy but certainly for me and my hubby we have a better quality of life in the iva than all the going without we did before, just to make the minimum payments.

Ang

Its not so much as living like a monk but learning to control your spending and work within a set budget. If you are wondering if an IVA is right for you just imagine how you will carry on not being able to pay your debts and getting into a bigger deeper hole,and suddenly living within a budget sounds very appealing!!!

Good luck.

Although I am despairing at the moment (we are just going through the process with Melanies Team) I feel that cutting up my cards and making the move to sort things out will be the best thing. The budget suggested actually is not too bad and as we haven't had remotely anything like that for ages because we have just been putting things on cards I think we can manage quite well. The only problem for me has been that although I thought I had prepared quite well before putting the wheels in motion all sorts of things have cropped up recently that means we can't pay for things. Once 6 months into the budget I probably can build up the contingency. I did have some money put to one side before I cut the cards up but I have used that now so nothing to fall back on. I know we will come out the other side. Its a relief to know that the IVA route is a way of taking the stress off (I have a demanding job and home so need my mental energy for that) and in effect starting again albeit from scratch. I am struggling with "I shouldn't be in this mess at my age" but lots of people are.

From my short experience of sorting things out - if you owe money to your bank (overdrafts) you need to change and open a new account (or two if you want savings account) before you go into default. I opened mine in advance and sorted out dds and pay going in so I haven't got that headache now. I spoke to a couple of professionals on this forum and chose the company to go with on the basis of who I would be happy speaking to over the next 5 years and how much faith I had in them to be supportive. I have heard some people on this forum haven't had good experiences but that was before they found this site.

Everyone just everyone on this forum is supportive even in your most dismal of times.

I hoping to make the frugal friends next meeting in Bradford but delay in booking room due to finances may mean I don't get a room.

Morning.Elizebth is right.I agree with the we shouldn't be in this situation at our age bit.However, it happens and facing it was the best decision we made.We should have done it years ago instead of inadvertantley making things worse by re mortgaging and consolidating.Things are tight here, but manageable.They always should have been tight but of course there was always the credit to fall back on.We live comfortably now, but have no excesses.We do have lots of animals though so we're not exactly frugal as I can afford them...Kids don't seem to be missing out too much.They have clothes, bits of money, music etc .They're not too impoverished.Best thing we did.7 months in now and doing ok.Cat

It were a case that more was going out than coming in with me just to make minimum payment, so the fact I now have a little bit extra every month is great.

If it were not for my IVA I really don't know what I would have done. With over 70K of debt, BR really was the only other option but really did not want to go down that route as I could have lost my job.