Well done!!

Have a bourbon biscuit for me!

Merry Xmas!

Well done pammy1969.

I hope that biscuit tastes fantastic!

Brilliant Pammy, great to have some nice news before Xmas! Chuffed for you x

Great to have that news before Christmas-enjoy!

I think you know we were all rooting for you - well done!

Nothing like a celebratory bourbon!!!

Great news Pammy,hope you sort out hubbies wages,same thing happened to us at the start of our trust deed journey but it was our own fault as we didnt let payroll know in time. So the money went into our tsb account,cleared our £700 overdraft and they would only let us take out the difference. The overdraft was included in the PTD!!!

Paul

Thanks everyone for your replies. It's nice to know there are others like us out there and we're all supporting each other. Hubby's salary apparently goes in the bank tomorrow not today so fingers crossed it's fine.

Paul - did TSB have to refund the money they took? And when is your final payment due?

Another question now that I know exactly what is happening to my budget! I was reading another post on here about savings and contingencies. We have a few headings in our budget (set by IP) for putting away money for insurances, TV Licence, emergencies etc. We also have a very generous food/toiletries/cleaning/pets budget _ I think we'll struggle to spend it all! We're so used to getting by on a very tight (read non-existent) budget for all our shopping which was about £350 a month, now we've been given an "allowance" of almost double that figure. What happens if we don't spend it? When we attend our review, do we need to produce receipts for everything? Just to prove we've spent the money?

Hi Pam.

Think of your expenditure in two sections:

1 - The big things. These can generally be easily checked on your bank statement and might include your mortgage, rent, council tax, gas, electricity and so on. These are generally recorded in your expenditure for your trust deed "as they are" and can easily be confirmed at any point during the trust deed if they have changed.

2 - The smaller things. These might be things like food, petrol, clothing etc. They vary from month to month (and week to week), may not be visible on a bank statement and (in practical terms) will be hard to verify. For these reasons "allowances" are set rather than them being set "as they are"... you'll not need to verify exactly how you spend the money usually.

I don't think you have anything to worry about. It's actually quite common for people to cut back massively on essentials when trying to manage debts that in fact just aren't affordable. It's therefore quite common for people to find that they can manage much more easily on the "restricted" budget of a trust deed than it was when huge amounts of their income were going on debt repayments.

quote:

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Originally posted by pammy1969

Thanks everyone for your replies. It's nice to know there are others like us out there and we're all supporting each other. Hubby's salary apparently goes in the bank tomorrow not today so fingers crossed it's fine.

Paul - did TSB have to refund the money they took? And when is your final payment due?

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Final payment in january its been amazingly fast,and no tsb didnt refund the money!!

Paul

I looked over what we used to pay for our creditors for the loans and credit cards,and I have no idea how we got by!!!

As for budgets,make a shopping list and stick to it,and only be drawn in on offers that you will actually use. I enjoy shopping much more than I used to as I dont have to stand at a checkout working out which of the 5 credit cards has money left on it!!!

Cash all the way!

Paul

Cash all the way!

Paul

Agreed! I'll be withdrawing cash from now on. I plan to have individual savings pots labelled TV Licence, Car Insurance etc. and I'll withdraw cash for them. Old fashioned but it's the only way I'll be able to keep track of everything. Apart from daily? Ha! HOURLY updating of my super-duper spreadsheet!

I think plasticdraft's comments "how did we get by!" sum up life pre PTD perfectly! I recently found an old credit card statment showing mega thousands due and having made the minimum payment of just under £300 to that card (and there wwere many others), I realised that I had chipped less than £1 off in the capital repayment due, the rest was interest! Even one of the banks with whom I had a loan told me (after reviewing my finances) that I needed to speak with the CAB, which then steered me towards the world of IPs and PTDs. And the last payment of my three years PTD was two months ago so life is good again!

Some more good news today. I actually answered my first phonecall from one of creditors today and it went surprisingly well! But imagine phoning on Xmas Eve for goodness sake!

But best of all, my hubby got a tax rebate today of £415!

God bless us, every one! (in the manner of Tiny Tim)