Most people use a firm to run their Debt Management Plan (DMP). In this case you make one monthly payment to the firm, who then divides it between your creditors. This is free if you go to StepChange, Payplan or CAP – other firms do exactly the same but charge you a fee each month.
But you can do all this yourself, not using a DMP firm. The advantages of this are:
- you are in control;
- you don’t have to explain your finances to a DMP firm every year;
- you can repay money to someone in your family, just treat them as another creditor. Some DMP firms don’t like you doing this;
- you can make a settlement offer to one of your creditors easily if you get some spare money.
But would this be difficult? A lot of work? Would you get a lot of hassle from creditors?
This article suggests you should use the free CABmoney site. This does most of the work for you!
Contents
Setting up a DMP
Most of the work is done in the first couple of months of a DMP, after that it’s easy and you get very few letters.
You can’t include priority debts such as mortgage, rent or council tax arrears, electricity and gas bills, car finance etc in a DMP. You have to make arrangements with them first, until this is done you don’t know how much money you will have left to pay the less important debts such as credit cards and loans. If you aren’t sure about this, talk to National Debtline and they will explain and offer advice on your priority debts.
Once any priority debts are under control with payment arrangements in place, you need to:
- get a list of all the debts you are going to have in your DMP. This should normally be all your non-priority debts. It’s not a good idea to leave some debts out and carry on paying them in full – the creditors in your DMP won’t think it’s fair that they are getting less.
- create a Financial Statement with your income and expenditure (I&E) – this shows how much “spare money” you have each month after you have paid all your expenses and bills;
- divide this spare money between your debts on a “pro rata” basis, so the biggest debts get more money than the smaller ones do;
- write to your creditors offering these calculated amounts and ask them to freeze interest and charges. National Debtline has sample letters to make these offers;
- stop your regular payments to your credit cards, catalogues and loans – for example cancel any DDs or CPAs with your bank – and set up standing orders to pay the lower amounts each month.
If you owe any money to your bank – because you have an overdraft or a credit card say – you should change your bank account to one you don’t owe any money to. The overdraft with your old bank is just one more debt in your DMP.
Using CABMoney makes this easier!
CABmoney helps you run your own DMP by:
- helping you to create a budget, converting weekly amounts to monthly. It also warns you when amounts look lower or higher than normal;
- generating a Financial Statement for you, in a format that creditors will accept;
- calculating the pro-rata sharing of your surplus money between your creditors – these may be token offers of £1 or £5 a month if your surplus is low;
- generating the letters to your creditors with your offer and a copy of the Financial Statement, including automatically importing their
- letting you record creditors replies.
You can get an overview of how this works by looking at the sample CABmoney DMP here.
CABmoney was created by a Citizens Advice in Derbyshire. But it’s free for you to use wherever you live in the UK.
What will your creditors say?
You will get letters and phone calls because you have stopped the normal payments – most of these are because they haven’t yet processed your offer letter. You can ignore them for a few weeks or reply saying you can’t afford the normal payments and you have already made them a lower offer on dd/mm/yy.
The more creditors you have, the more work this will be. Some creditors are more difficult than others, but many are surprisingly easy, including payday lenders.
Creditors aren’t allowed to say they won’t deal with you, you have to use a DMP firm. Nor that they will only freeze interest if you use a DMP firm.
Guarantor lenders are usually very difficult. If you include a guarantor loan in your DMP, the lender is very likely to ask your guarantor to pay the rest of the monthly payment. If you don’t want this to happen, you have to leave the guarantor loan out of your DMP and pay them in full, which means your other creditors will get a lot less. Read How a borrower can complain about a guarantor loan as that is a possible way out of this problem for you – if you win an affordability complaint, you can then safely put the guarantor loan in your DMP.
Running a DMP
After the first few months, it’s easy to run your DMP. The payments just leave your bank account each month!
Probably the largest chunk of work isn’t actually to do with the DMP itself, it’s the effort needed to keep within a budget – this has to be done whether you are running your own DMP or using a firm.
Some common things that happen are:
- a creditor will sell your debt to a debt collector. Debt collectors are often easier to deal with than the original creditor so this is good news. In this case you cancel the standing order to the old creditor and send the new one a Statement of Affairs together with your offer and ask for their bank details so you can set up a new standing order.
- a few creditors may want to review your DMP every six months or a year, especially at the start. If your situation hasn’t changed, then you just reply to their letter with one saying that there has been no change and enclosing a new version of your Statement of Affairs.
If your income or expenses change a lot, you may need to revise your DMP offers downward if you are finding it difficult to manage. You don’t want to be changing the amounts every month though. You want a number you can manage to pay every month without a problem.
If your income has increased, you have three choices:
- increase your DMP payments
- save up the extra in an emergency fund. If this gets large, you may be able to use it to make a full & final settlement offer to one or more of your debts.
- spend the extra, especially if your bills have also increased.
A creditor may take you to court for a CCJ but this is rare. Creditors are much more likely to do this with debts where the client isn’t talking to them than where the client has proposed a monthly payment and backed it up with a Statement of Affairs. It is just as likely to happen if you are running your own DMP as if you are using a firm to do it.
If it happens, you complete the court forms offering as a monthly payment what your DMP offer is. National Debtline can talk you through this process if it happens.
What if you already have a DMP with a firm?
If you already have a DMP, you can stop using that firm and switch to doing it yourself. This is easy because all your creditors already know you are in a DMP, so you aren’t going to get hassled at the start by creditors hoping to be paid in full.
To switch, you need a full list of your creditors from your DMP firm and you need to give the DMP firm notice that you are ending your DMP and will be cancelling your monthly payment.
You then need to write to each creditor, ask them to confirm the current balance you owe and the details of the account you should be making a payment to each month. Your DMP firm should be able to give you a list, but it’s good to check this is accurate! Also think if there are any other debts that should really be included in your DMP – this is the time to do that.
Then when you have a complete list of your creditors and balances, the CABMoney system will calculate all the pro rata offers for you. After that, you just set up a standing order to pay each creditor the calculated amount.
Conclusion
Running your own DMP does involve some extra work. If you only have a few creditors and they are high street banks and credit cards, then it won’t be a lot, especially after the first couple of months.
But if you have loads of creditors or many of them may be “difficult” or you are very nervous, then you may decide that you want the moral support and hand-holding from a DMP firm. Phone https://www.stepchange.org/how-we-help/debt-management-plan.aspxStepChange!
Never go to a firm that charges. One reader who left a comment here had paid £4000 in fees in the 7.5 years of their DMP and still had 2 years to go. If they had gone to StepChange, all that money would have gone to their creditors and their DMP would have already ended.
Is it ever good to pay for a DMP?
What do to if creditor doesn’t freeze interest
Reasons people worry about starting a DMP
laurence says
It says above that many ‘priority debts’ will not be included in a DMP. I thought that debts like loans and credit cards were included in DMP’s? The only thing I can think of that is a priority debt outside these ones would be a tax bill? So if you had one it couldn’t be included in a DMP?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Hi Laurence, apart from tax debts there are other priority debts such as rent arrears, mortgage arrears, council tax arrears and utility debts. I’ve written more about priority debts here: https://debtcamel.co.uk/start/priority-debts/. Normally with these you need to talk to the creditor, make an arrangement to pay £x per month that they will accept. Your DMP will then divide up your remaining money between your non priority creditors, such as loans and credit cards.
nikki says
I have loan credit card with bank and 3/4 payday loans plus catalogue but its about 10 thousand pound will i qualify for dmp
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Hi Nikki, can I suggest you talk to StepChange? They will tell you if a DMP is a good idea for you or if there are any better options? They are very friendly to deal with, but busy, so you may have to ring a few times to get through: http://www.stepchange.org/.
If they say a DMP is a good idea for you then they could set one up and you wouldn’t have to pay any fees. Or you could run one yourself as this article suggests, but payday lenders and catalogues can be quite difficult to deal with, so you may prefer to have StepChange deal with them.
About your payday loans – if you were one of the many people that got trapped deeper into debt by unaffordable payday loans, have a look at whether you could reclaim any money: https://debtcamel.co.uk/payday-loan-refunds/
Danielle says
I’m trying to set up my own dmp at the moment and everything I have read has said, only offer to pay via standing order but avantcredit are refusing and stating that they will only accept cheque or direct debit. Have you got any advice?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Good heavens. Well it depends how fed up you are about this. I suggest you send them a formal written complaint to https://www.avantcredit.co.uk/complaints saying they are being unfair and making your life difficult. Point out a debt management company would pay them each month by a bank transfer and that is what you are proposing. And take your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman if they don’t change their mind.
And on the subject of complaints… have you looked at whether the Avant Credit Loan was “unaffordable”? If you win a complaint about that, you could get the interest removed so you only have to repay what you borrowed. See https://debtcamel.co.uk/refunds-large-high-cost-loans/ for how to do this with a template letter.
Danielle says
Hi Sara,
Thank you so much for responding.
Yeah I think I’m just going to have to complain to them refusing bank transfer or standing order.
And on the subject of complaining that’s it’s unaffordable, already done, they upheld my complaint for the first 2 loans I had with them but not the last 2. I am just getting it ready to go off to the financial ombudsman as I don’t agree, particularly as I took the last loan out 7 days after the 3rd loan, and had multiple creditors at the time. Your website has finally got me sorting out my finances. Thank you for that
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Good luck!
Let me know how you get on with the STO complaint.
Puppyowner22 says
Hi, new poster here. Setting up a self managed DMP and all going well apart from one creditor who has asked for a copy of my wage slip for their file. No one else has (I have quite a few creditors) and I don’t want to give them that information as it obviously includes confidential info about me including tax code, worker Id, NI info etc along with new bank details. Am I right in thinking they they don’t have right to this as this is a voluntary payment arrangement between us and they have accepted my payment suggestion and have reviewed my I&E which is really clear? Thanks for any info in advance. Also can I put in an affordability complaint at the same time with the same creditor too?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
One simple option (and I am always in favour of simple practical things!) is to copy a payslip and black out your NI number, bank account number etc not sure worker id is terribly interesting? Then you can send that on.
I personally would leave putting in an affordability complaint to a separate communication, not mixed up with the admin involved in getting your DMP set up.. Who is the lender?
Puppyowner22 says
Thanks Sara. It’s with TMA. They’ve front loaded all interest onto the loan. Had paid over year of £250 a month for a £3000 loan and still owe about £7000. Feel sick thinking I was in such a state when I accepted it I didn’t look at it properly.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
ok, that’s a large loan so they should have looked carefully at your situation before deciding you could afford it.
Larry says
Hello
If I start a self-run DMP, can I start them at different times with each creditor or best to start all at the same time? I ask as I’ve already got ‘breathing space’ applied on 3 credit cards which end in different months from each other. Obviously I’d get my letters off to each in good time before this ends and follow up.
I’m very good at keeping track of my income and outgoings and in this case it is literally just the 3 credit card companies I need to negotiate with. I do not have any other debts to consider in my DMP.
If I can get email addresses for all the creditors can I use this method to contact about starting a DMP with each or the more formal route of sending a letter?
And lastly for now, when I send my initial record of my present financial position, do I also list all of the other creditors and how much I’m offering them along with my monthly income and expenditure detail?
Thank you, L
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Do you actually have any other debts you are thinking of leaving out of your DMP? eg an overdraft?
Are you expecting to go back to your normal previous income soon – but you just think the credit card balances are too high and you need interest frozen?
Or are you not sure when/if things will get back to normal?
Larry says
Thanks for reply. There is an overdraft that I tend to use and not go over – should/would I include this too? Not any other debt but the credit card balances are very high so with interest as well it would become unmanageable on my current wage after all other priority bills are paid.
I live extremely frugally, for now. My situation will hopefully change with some effort but obviously hampered with the current lockdown situation. So forseesbly I’m living on a set amount each month. If and when I do generate more income or get a windfall of money I’ll contact the creditors. I have a an OK amount of remainder income to devide up to offer the creditors. A DMP also just feels like a softer option for now as opposed to an IVA, which may be necessary down the track. I’m basically finding it hard to decide between DMP and IVA still after reading everything here. My job now has been steady for years. I’m planning to create some more work but do not know how soon or reliable that will be, again due to current situation.
I’m tempted to give a DMP a go for a while first. So as above wondering can I contact them on separate occasions or best all at the same time.?And do I disclose to each creditor the amounts and who else I’m offering x amount to?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
It is good to include the overdraft. The charges on these can be very high and they are difficult debts to clear.
Have you spoken to a debt adviser about choosing between a DMP and in IVA? They may be able to point out something you haven’t thought of. Talk to StepChange.
If you are sure you can’t carry on with the normal payments when the payment breaks end, it is better to set up a DMP for all the debts now. The payments breaks don’t really help you unless you are going to be fine at the end, all they are doing is adding a few more months interest on so the DMP will take longer to pay off.
If you really want to do this yourself, go through the https://nedcab.cabmoney.org.uk/ process linked to in the article above. It generates the letters to send to your creditors.
Qwerty says
Hi Sara,
I’ve had a DMP through Step Change for around 20 months. I pay £561 a month. Since my finances were last reviewed at the beginning of this year my partner has moved in and we’re expecting a baby. He pays £500 to cover half the running costs of the house (bills and mortgage repayments).
I am worried that if I tell Step Change about my partner moving in they will try to force me to pay more towards the DMP – and we need that money to do up the house and for the baby/future childcare costs. Do you think this will happen? I am so worried about it that i’m considering setting up my own DMP just so I can keep the repayments the same.
Although I do think Step Change on the whole provide a great service, when I signed up for the DMP I felt pressured to agree to that amount even though it was crippling and left me with hardly anything to live on for the month. It also didn’t take into account money for any leisure activities, holidays or birthdays etc. – things that help to maintain a positive mental wellbeing. I felt like I should agree to it as a sort of ‘punishment’ for getting into the debt into the first place so I didn’t argue. But now I realise that our quality of life comes first and i’m not prepared to live a miserable existence just for the sake of repaying creditors a few months early – if I stick with the current repayment amount I will be debt free by early 2022 and I’m more than happy with that.
Your advice would be greatly appreciated!
Sara (Debt Camel) says
I suggest you just carry on for a while. Your creditors are happy, you are happy, your debts are going down. When the baby arrives and you are on maternity leave everything will need to be looked at again.
Qwerty says
Thanks Sara,
I will do that!
Best wishes
Victoria says
Hi, I’m just looking into going a DMP through Payplan but wondered about just doing it myself. For instance if I managed to save some money or come into any money can I bypass Payplan and pay off a creditor(s) so a debt is settled and essentially ticked off the list?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Yes you can do it yourself as the above article explains.
One of the advantages is that you can then offer a full & final settlement to just one or two creditors if you are able to do this later. £2000 could settle a couple of debts that way, but Payplan would probably want you to offer a tiny amount to them all which would be refused!
alfar says
Hi,
I am in a paid DMP for the last 7.5 years. I did not investigate about free DMP providers in the beginning, in hindsight, I would have saved over £4000 of fees. But I was very happy with the service fee, which, at the time, looked very reasonable given the stress I was in and the huge amount of interests I was paying to the creditors.
After couple of years of being in DMP, my income increased with promotion, so did my expenses after becoming a parent. However, I managed to pay the same amount every month and told my DMP that there has been no change in my affordability. There was a period when I didn’t have enough money, and did take out payday loans to get by (I should not have, but I didnt have the right mindset or time to do anything different at the time). Overall, i never missed a DMP payment to the creditors.
I now have £5000 left to pay and I was thinking of taking control of my DMP myself. If I pay myself, I will be able to pay off the debts quicker. However, I have couple of concerns –
1. While my income and expenditure have changed since DMP started, do I need to re-evaluate my I&E? I do have more disposable income, but I am now saving that for a final F&F offer.
2. all my debts have been sold to 3rd party debt collector with interest frozen to 0% for most. Do I have to renegotiate the ineterst with the lenders (I have 7 lenders; 3 show “No Interest” and 4 lenders show “Interest frozen”).
Any advice will be highly appreciated.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
wow, you would only have had 1000 left to go if you had gone to StepChange :(
Those payday loans – have you looked to see if you could get a refund from them? Anyone in a DMP would be likely to fair the affordability tests.
How much are you paying a month at the moment?
alfar says
Thank you so much for replying so quickly.
Yes, indeed. If i had saved £4000 over the years then would have paid the whole DMP by now with the £1000 saving I have.
I am paying £250 to the DMP, which includes £44.50 fee.
With circa £5000 left to pay to the creditors, it would take me 24 months and pay £1000+ fee to the DMP.
I have not looked into getting refunds from the payday loans – couple of them are no longer providing service (quickquid).
As I said before, I have been earning but I had to support my parents apart from my own family, so the expenses were racking up.
Thank you once again for your interest and support. Looking forward to receiving your advice (:
Sara (Debt Camel) says
With only two years left, it isn’t likely that you will have full and final offers accepted – they are going to be paid in full soon any way.
But it’s well worth taking over running your own DMP now to save the £1000 in fees! None of the lenders are going to start adding interest again, you don’t need to worry about that.
The other thing that is worth doing right now is asking all the creditors where the debts were originally loans, credit cards or catalogues (so not mobiles, overdrafts etc) to produce the CCA agreement for the original debt. there is a reasonable chance at least one or two won’t be able to and then you can simply stop paying as the debt is unenforceable in court. See https://debtcamel.co.uk/ask-cca-agreement-for-debt/. That has a better chance of saving you money than F&F offers.
alfar says
Thank you, Sara, for the information.
I also dont have high hopes for an F&F settlement, but I will definitely try asking lenders to produce the CCA agreement.
6 of the 7 debts are loan and CC – there is a chance that 1 or 2 might be unenforceable.
I will let you know how the process went. Your website and support certainly gave me clear directions and confidence to make the right decisions.
None of my debts were irresponsible – I was caught up in tough family situations and had to rely on loans and CCs. I tried to consolidate my debts with an affordable bigger loan but no bank provided that option at the time. My only option was to get into a DMP.
Thank you once again. Appreciate the time and effort you give in to the cause and vision of yours. I will try to return the favour by supporting local charities and Citizen Advice.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
if you had got that consolidation loan you would probably have ended up in a DMP later and with bigger debts – at least this way you haven’t been paying interest on them!
alfar says
You’re right that I did nt have to pay interest on the debt after the DMP started.
I was actually after one unified debt with fixed payment and interest. Having debts scattered amongst several lenders with high interest, I was not paying enough to lower my balance much (interest eating up most of the amount I was paying). After a while, it got out of control and I had to do DMP (Which I did not want, as I know what it was gonna do to my credit report).
Now that my DMP is nearing to the end, I can start to build up my credit report so I can apply for a sensible mortgage.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
How many of these debts are still in your credit record?
alfar says
Only 1 still showing in my report, which will come off later this month, so, none would be present in the report from February this year.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Great.
Victoria says
Hiya,
When setting up your own DMP, do you have to prove your income to your creditors by sending payslips etc?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Not normally. But if one asks you, then why not?
Emma says
Hi Sara
I’m in the process of setting up my own DMP using the CAB tool, which is great by the way!
Out of my 3 credit cards, I’ve had a positive response from MBNA , but nothing at all from Tesco, and a hold on my account with Barclay card. I wrote to Tesco again (so three times now) and still no response, so I’m not sure what to do now about my payment. Any advice greatly appreciated.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Are you still paying Tesco?
How long do you think it will take to complete your DMP if the offers are accepted and interest is frozen?
Emma says
Yes, I paid them last month. That’s the last full payment I can afford so I’ve been trying to get my DMP set up for the end of this month when I get paid.
The DMP should take just under 5 years to complete.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
I suggest you phone them up and ask why you haven’t had a reply to your letters. Also you should consider stopping any direct debit you have and tell them you will be setting up a standing order to pay them.
Emma says
Thank you, I’ll call them asap.
Emma says
It turns out that the address provided on the CAB tool was wrong for Tesco and also Barclaycard so I’ve fed that back to them. My plan is pretty much all set up now, thank you very much for all the great advice on your website!
Mari says
Hi I am 4 months now on DMP with Payplan, all si lovely however I will be getting a bonus at some point from work the next few months and I was thinking repaying the snowball way 6 of the 9 creditors. I could then continue sharing increased payments to the 3 remaining creditors only… Hiw does it sound? Should I cancel the DMP theough Payplan or first contact the 3 remaining creditors myself?
The reason I don’t want to pay the lump sum to Payplan is that they will share the payments equally and none of the accounts will close. Plus I will start getting defaults…
Would appreciate any advice if I didn’t confuse you guys!…
Sara (Debt Camel) says
So it’s good it is all going well!
Could you give me some idea of numbers –
how large is the total debt in the DMP?
how large are your monthly payments?
Do you expect to get bonus regularly? How large is the bonus?
Are any of the debts defaulted?
Are you behind with any important bills? Do you think you will be able to manage ebergy bills going up anoer 40% or so in October?
Mari says
Total is approx 20K…
I am currently paying 390/month on the DMP…However when I started it I had to include all creditors and Didn’t actually have any missed payments until then or defaults but I was really struggling after paying everything. The bonus will be around 2K.I am not expecting another one…
One of the creditors is overdraft with Monzo and they are about to default it. Everybody has accepted the DMP but I am actually worried that since I pay less than the normal through the DMP they will start defaulting and CCJ and all scary stuff…
DMP people are quite strict on paying extra or pay off small debts. They say they won’t be treated fairly and they can take legal action for preferential treatment. My plan is to see how much money I could squeeze of my budget plus the bonus,pay off most of the smaller ones and then the big loan of 10000 and 6100(that one is bamboo so the actual loan was 3500) continue with either my own managed DMP or go back to their original payments.I want to avoid court actions etc due to work (law related) and as I am 38 I don’t want to be destroyed from a credit perspective.
I am a bit overwhelmed. DMP company say not to worry about CCj or defaults that can happen. I want to find the least painful solution.
Mari says
I should be alright with the energy bills, I live with my bf who by the way does not know about aaaall DMP stuff etc.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
who is the DMP firm?
They say they won’t be treated fairly and they can take legal action for preferential treatment.
I don’t think I have EVER seen this happen. I suppose it’s possible but it’s absolutely not normal.
I am actually worried that since I pay less than the normal through the DMP they will start defaulting and CCJ and all scary stuff…
There are literally hundreds of thousands of people on DMPs with millions of debts included.
Most have at least some defaults – they aren’t that scary and they will drop off your credit record after 6 years, which sooner than debt with payments arrangements will.
Few people in DMPs get CCJs – most of the ones that do either have unusual debts eg business debts or they have a house with a lot of equity.
Bamboo – read https://debtcamel.co.uk/refunds-large-high-cost-loans/ and make an affordability claim. They lose a LOT of them. If you win, the interest is removed from your balance and so are any negative markers such as payement arrangements or defaults.
What was the other big loan?
Mari says
Thanks for your reply!!! Wish you could do phonecalls haha
The other large one is TSB that I got to consolidate high interest loans that I had previously. Not too bad interest.
If could pay off everything else eventually and have only that one I would be happy. At the moment they accepted the DMP for the next 4 months.
With Bamboo could I still try for the refund even though I am on the DMP? So far they haven’t bothered me and I don’t want to nag them and they start any extra demands…
Payplan is the company I am at the moment.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
It’s up to you if you want to give payplan the bonus to divide between the debts or pay off the smaller ones and annoy payplan or come out of the Dmp and have a DIY one. The whole concept of snowballing doesn’t really make much sense in a DMP when the interest on the debts is frozen and they are all being paid a pro rata share.
With Bamboo could I still try for the refund even though I am on the DMP?
yes. I recommend people who are struggling have a DMP while they make complaints as it gets them into a safe financial space.
You can also try for affordability complaints against the high costs loans you consolidated with TSB.
And for affordability for the TSB loan – the test isn’t how high the interest is, but whether the loan payments were affordable for you. As you then struggled it may well be that the TSB loan too was unaffordable even though it was cheaper than the debts you consolidated.
You need to relax about your DMP. I have never seen any lender decide to change their mind and not accept a DMP because the borrower has made a complaint. That would not be treating you fairly.
Ellie says
Hi, I’m on dmp with Stepchange four years still to go. Started in 2019, three creditors defaulted straight away other two froze interest but now they have decided to issue defaults no idea why now as payments have not reduced. Can I request that they back date the defaults as I let them know in 2019 that I couldn’t afford payments that is why I entered a dmp.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Yes. Read https://debtcamel.co.uk/debt-default-date/
Are the payments still affordable? Most people have had to reduce them because of cost of living increases in 2022.
Ellie says
Thanks Sara, yeh they are still affordable as I have had a pay increase and my children are no longer in education and providing for themselves.