I should also point out, that on detailing all of out debt it was actually closer to £40000!!!

Hi all Well back in May I posted on here saying that myself and my wife had had the light bulb moment. That moment where your gut is in knots as the reality of your debt hits you. I read endless posts from people in the same situation and people that felt the same as us. Simply terrified! I made my first call to Step Change in May to talk to them about the problems we were in and I have to be honest they were brilliant. I went through our income and expenditure and what got us into such a mess. They didn't judge at any point and were really helpful. I estimated that we were approximately in £32000 worth of debt and at the time I was resigned to the fact we were going bankrupt. Within 20 minutes Step Change had convinced me that bankruptcy really wasn't necessary and with our salaries we could pay this debt off in a reasonable amount of time. I decided after reading forum after forum on the internet that maybe Step Change wasn't for everyone. I am quite an independent and strong character and my wife is to. Yes we felt disgusted with ourselves for the mess that WE had caused but on the same note WE felt that WE should lead ourselves out of it. Neither of us are afraid of speaking to people in difficult situations and we never let people get the better of us. a month ago we set about contacting our creditors witht he aim of having all interest and charges stopped and us paying the full remaining balances back in full. I have read endless posts from people who have gone with Step Change and others and that only a few of the creditors have agreed to stop the interest and charges. After a few weeks we have received 6 responses in total and all 6 have agreed to stop the charges and interest and allow us to repay at the rate we offered. Some of these creditors are also ones that have refused this to Step Change clients!! I will keep updating this but please EVERYONE, sometimes it pays to take control yourself. Your creditors are not all bad people. Be honest and be reasonable.

Just paying £1 at present. I have written to all creditors and actually been really surprised by the majority of their responses. Most have frozen charges for a few months until I make an offer of repayment. Been really surprised so far.

Hi fkofilee First Direct Overdraft - £900 First Direct Loan - £1500 First Direct Gold Card - £3000 2 X Aqua Cards - £3100 on each Barclaycard Goldfish - £1700 Barclaycard Visa - £1600 Santander Credit Card - £1500 Capital One Card - £750 Tesco Credit Card - £3000 Very Catalogue - £4500 Litlewoods Catalogue - £2000 Next Directory - £1600 Lloyds TSB Credit Card - £1300 Virgin Credit Card - £1400 All of these are still with the original creditors and are only now going to have missed payments on them due to my wife going to be out of work. She is going to another job but the salary is quite a bit less and she will not see any pay now until the end of August. I will not be making any payments to the until the end of August when I was going to send a DMP to them to show how we are going to repay it all. If only they would freeze interest the rough plan we did showed they would all have been paid in full in just over 3 years. But I guess they are not interested in that and will just want to add what they can. How quickly are these likely to default and sell the depts on?? It seems from reading posts on here that this is the average point at which the interest stops.

Hi, all of these originated after 2007. Is it still worth me going for the CCA? I definitely do not want to go down the bankruptcy route. Any advice on getting interest stopped though would be great.

I am about to setup my own DMP for the same reason. Going to wait for all the accounts to default so at least from that point it's an end in sight. I'm not at all concerned about my rating now I just want to clear the dept and quickly. But I do want to know that my file will be clear in 6 years so that I can get a mortgage.

Ok firstly hi, this is my 1st post on here. I have however been reading endless posts and in part this has made me and my wife make the final decision to stop trying to deny our dept and hit it head on. We are about £32000 in dept between us and although I haven't done a full budget plan yet I have roughly calculated at this point we can spare £800 per month to go to our creditors. The first thing that worries me is they will just refuse a monthly payment once they are defaulted and the second issue is getting them to stop or reduce the interest. Actually I know this might sound mad but from what i have read it looks like I may actually be better off if some of these creditors file for a CCJ. At least that would be a stop to excessive interest. I am sure I will get some proper advice when I post my particulars. I am seriously not bothered about credit rating, our only aim is to clear this dept in full and as quickly as possible. needless to say I will be calling on all you guys for assistance as I start and then progress this journey.