Dear CAGers,

I am a self-employed IT guy and desperately seeking help. My debts are as follows:

Egg credit card: £2084 (account closed, paying just above the minimum payment)

Lloyds TSB credit card: £3723 (account closed, missed the minimum payment for the first time)

Lloyds TSB loan: £9429 (started March 2009, about 32 months left)

Lloyds TSB over draft: £2900

For the last few months I have been really struggling to make ends meet. I'm having sleepless nights worrying and it is affecting my health. This month I missed the payment for Lloyds credit card for the first time since I've opened the account and I'm afraid I won't have enough fund to cover the loan payments and Egg credit card.

Could someone please advise as to which organisation is easier to deal with CCCS or Payplan? Do I write letters to the banks with token payments before I contact CCCS or Payplan? Do I close the current account with Lloyds before writing to them. I'm at my wits end. Pleaase help.

Your advice is greatly appreciated

Want Debt Advice - read the excellent blogs by sequenci here: [/url]http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk...ries-Blog-Home

Hi dx100uk

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately the link in your post is broken and the link in your signature is broken as well. I can't seem to find the guide. My brains aren't working

Hi Soheluk,

There are thousands of people in your situation. Try to remember that debt is not a crime, and while you need enough money to live on, it is only money and nothing terrible will happen to you.

The link won't work for me either, so in the absence of Sequenci, I'll try to guess at what he might say.

The main thing is to maintain communication with your creditors. I notice that 3 out of 4 mentioned are with Lloyds TSB. Have you spoken to them about your position at all so far? They have duties under The Lending Code, and they should be being proactive in helping you - I suspect they won't be.

Are you repaying all your priority debts (Mortgage/rent, gas, electricity, council tax etc....)? These should take priority over all the above debts. Obviously you also need to be able to feed yourself and your family etc....

If you do not have a bank account with a bank unrelated to Lloyds TSB, I would open one as soon as possible in case you need to start having your income paid into that account.

If you could answer the questions above, then we can suggest the best way forward for you. It may well be a DMP, and it is good that you are tackling this before it is too late to retrieve things.

try now

dx

Thanks Ghost for your reply.

The main thing is to maintain communication with your creditors. I notice that 3 out of 4 mentioned are with Lloyds TSB. Have you spoken to them about your position at all so far? They have duties under The Lending Code, and they should be being proactive in helping you - I suspect they won't be.

Haven't contacted Lloyds yet. I'm not sure whether to contact them first or contact CCCS or Payplan first and then contact Lloyds

Are you repaying all your priority debts (Mortgage/rent, gas, electricity, council tax etc....)? These should take priority over all the above debts. Obviously you also need to be able to feed yourself and your family etc....

@ dx100uk. The link is still not working. Getting an 'Invalid Blog specified' error

the link is working now?

dx

Sorry - no!

try it from the blog homepage

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/blog.php?blogcategoryid=5

number 4

dx

Hi all,

Sorry for taking so long to give an update. I had my telephone discussion with Payplan yesterday morning and the Payplan lady advised me that they could get an IVA set up for me. She calculated that I could make a monthly payment of £75, but according to my calculations I could pay around £150 and I really didn’t want an IVA. She also said that since I am around £900 overdrawn on my business account that’d have to be added to the debts and I’d have open a business account with another bank. But I think opening a business account with another bank won’t be that easy. Do I really need to include my business debts on the DMP/IVA?

Is Bankruptcy better that IVA? I don’t have any assets.

I had a phone call from Lloyds card services on Friday and I was told to make a payment ASAP. I told her that I was seeking advice from Payplan and asked her whether they could stop all charges and interests. She said that since there wasn’t any payment plan setup they wouldn’t be able to do that.

Sent a letter to Egg on Friday asking them to hold any action.

BTW still can't find sequenci's blog.

Thanks for reading. Your thoughts please.

Hi,

I need to write to Lloyds regarding my current account to hold action, should I write to the branch manager? If not, then could someone give the adress to send the letter to.

Thank you