How am I managing my Debts plus some updates on my progress

As alluded to in my about page, my debt problems returned last year and is the whole reason this site exists again. It has been over a month since I last posted on the blog so I thought it was time to update you on how I am managing my debts. It has been nearly a year since my debts became unmanageable and quite a bit has happened in that year.

A number of my debts have changed to different debt collection agencies and I also set up a Debt Management Plan with StepChange which has been going well. What has been happening is the original creditors have either been transferring my debts on to Debt Collection agencies or in some cases selling them on.

This means a lot of updating StepChange with new creditor details and for the most part, that seems to be going well in that they do update the information. I am still receiving a lot of letters and communications around my debts but this should start to settle down once they stop changing hands.

How are things going?

Since I started my Debt Management Plan with StepChange, I have repaid £5097.87 off my debt so that’s approaching nearly 10% repaid since September last year which is good progress overall.

I should point out that the total debt I mention on my About page includes accounts that are up to date as well, so that would be my car finance for example. The total debt being paid through StepChange is around £18,000 at the time of writing this, around £10,000 for my car and the other £7000 is other hire purchase agreements and debts that I have not fallen behind with – and have no intention of doing so.

Things are fairly stable at the moment. Obviously April is coming around where some things have gone up in price, for example, Council Tax has increased. So that is going to eat away at the slim margins available to me but at least I do have them at the moment.

Anything else?

My Lloyds loan still hasn’t been defaulted yet but I think a default is imminent. I think that should be one of the last accounts to default. I do have some accounts showing as in special arrangement on my credit report so hopefully those don’t decide to default later down the line as it just extends the amount of time bad data will exist on my credit report.

The Lloyds account has moved to their recoveries area now though and it looks like they will be transferring it to another debt collection agency soon. Payments have been made to the Lloyds account although not at the originally agreed amount.

My credit score is falling to levels I have not seen for a fair few years now. This is to be expected with the number of missed payment markers, defaults and special arrangement flags being past to the Credit Reference Agencies. I suspect my score will fall further once Lloyds default my account so I will be sure to update on that when it happens.