was just hoping for some advice re cccs. my husband had a meeting with the people he works with with regards to the debt we have. they couldn't help and recommended he try cccs. he has spoken to them and has a phone meeting with them next month. thing is we are struggling every month to make payments, and most of the time dont have enough coming in to cover everything. we had a baby 4 months ago and i have just finished maternity leave, and were hoping that i dont have to return to work as the travel and childcare costs would take up what i'd earn. my husband can do overtime and earn bonuses where he works etc, but this isn't guaranteed. we have a large overdraft (the bank manager at lloyds tsb recommended extending overdraft when we needed to get a car!) and have a secured loan on our property as well as husband having 2 credit cards which are at limits i think and we can only make the minimum payments each month. my husband thinks we may lose our house, and i desperately dont want that to happen. do cccs help and is there anything we can do in the meantime to try and help ourselves. our mortgage and secured loan are with halifax, we spoke to them about the difficulties we were having and they couldn't help.

Cccs are very good!

• ensure that you maximise your income, check that you are claiming all you can claim (child tax credits, child benefit etc etc etc.)

• fill in a financial statement, you can get one of these from www.nationaldebtline.co.uk they call it a personal budget sheet.

• ensure that you meet all your priority debts such as your mortgage and secured loan.

• offer your credit debts (unsecured) a pro-rata payment of any remaining surplus money, or £1 a month if you cant. Use the sample letters on www.nationaldebtline.co.uk to ask the creditors to freeze interest and charges on the credit debts.

Hope this helps!

As long as you make the payments on the mortgage and secured loan your house is safe FULL STOP. A long term plan may be to look at remortgaging over 25 years again on the reduced amount.

But who are the cards with? and how much

How much is overdraft? are you making a claim against Lloyds for charges?

Do you have anymore debts?

the overdraft is £4900, i'm not 100% on the credit cards as i've never used them, they're in my husbands name, one is also with lloyds and i think is probably about £3000, the other is capital one, and is about £600 i think. we have thought about looking at claiming the charges back against lloyds, but with the overdraft and the credit card being with them and the difficulties we are having we thought they may suddenly turn around and want payment of them both outright or something. we can continue making the mortgage and loan payments, would just be handy if we can reduce the other payments a bit so that we can get ourselves sorted. my husbands aprents took out a loan with their bank to consolidate husbands debts a couple of years ago, which we pay every month, things would be tight, but we could manage if we reduced the payments on the overdraft and credit cards etc. does anyone have any experience in lloyds and capital one taking reduced payments, or would we be better leaving cccs to sort that out for us?? thanks so much for replying, it's great to have a bit of advice from others!!!

Zoe, make sure you work out your income and outgoings before they phone for your appointment. If you have more going out than you do coming in after they have looked at your budget they won't be able to help you! They can only help if you have an amount left over each month that they can distribute to your creditors on a pro rata basis. PM me and I will e-mail you a copy of the budget and the sort of amounts they class that you can live on if you want me to. I can even show you a copy of mine and what they have done for me with regards to a DMP. I too thought I would loose my house but aslong as you pay your priority debts you won't. (i'm not bothered about showing you my plan as it doesn't show account numbers and I don't mind you seeing the amount of debt we are in if it helps! They are so good though, you will be in excellent hands with them.

hope this helps

hi, we do seem to have more going out than coming in most months i think, although we are doing something about that by getting rid of things like sky, changing out internet provider, changing our mobile contracts to a cheaper one etc etc to save some money so hopefully that may help. if you reckon they may not be able to help us then i dont know what we'll do!!!

I'm sorry, I obviously wasn't reading your user name properly. Please accept my appologies for calling you Zoe when you are infact her Mum. I'm having a slow day today:oops:

no worries! lol x

Open up a new basic bank account somewhere where you don't owe any money and make sure that all your income is paid into your new account. This is very important because the banks have something called the right of "set off" which basically means that if you owe them any money they can go into your current account and take out funds to cover payments elsewhere, such as credit card and loans. If you open a new account somewhere else it prevents your bank getting its hands on your money and then you stay in full control of it at all times. A basic account is an account with no credit facilities at all - no overdraft, no chequebook etc. so it is impossible for you to end up owing your new bank any money.

Make sure that you keep all of your 'priority' bills up to date as Zooman mentioned. These are things like your mortgage or rent, council tax, utilities - any bill where the consequences include something more than taking you to the county court. As an example, if you don't keep your council tax up to date then you could end up in prison, or not paying your electricity bill could eventually end up with you being disconnected.

Unsecured debt like catalogues, overdrafts, credit cards, personal loans, store cards etc. come very bottom of the list when it comes to paying people. The only thing they can do is try and get a CCJ to make you pay them back. They are normally the companies that cause people the most stress and hassle because they have the least power over you, and they know it. They have little chance of getting their money back except by frightening people to death.

Tell all of your unsecured creditors that you have an appointment with CCCS and quote your client reference number. Don't try and appease them by giving them £20 here, and £50 there to get them off your back because it doesn't work. Your priority bills are the ones it is essential to keep up to date with, and everyone else can go hang. You are not under any obligation to speak to them on the phone, so don't. Don't try and keep up to date with your repayments to them, but it is important to offer them at least a token payment, such as £1 a month. Even if they tell you that they won't accept this it's important that you carry on sending it every month, as it shows you are willing to meet your debt commitments and that you are trying to do something about your problems instead of ignoring them.

If you have any arrears with your priority creditors such as rent/mortgage/council tax/utilities then contact them to come to some kind of repayment arrangement. For rent/mortgage arrears then a year is a reasonable length of time to repay, and council tax tend to prefer repayment by the end of the financial year.

I've a DMP with the CCCS and have found them very helpful, its a shame that the banks are so slow in responding to attempts to solve any problems, be prepared for letters even after you have written/telephoned them to tell them of your situation. Banks are obtuse when it comes to you communicating with them.

All the best