This is a note for people who are at the start of the TD process. Maybe they haven't signed it yet, are just about to or are still considering it.

There IS light at the end of the tunnel. Believe me - the stress you are feeling now can be a thing of the past if you take action having decided that a TD is the best way forward for you.

As soon as you take action, whatever that may be, you'll:

(a) feel much better

(b) be on the road to a debt-free life

This forum is an absolutely fantastic resource. There is loads of information here and questions (no matter how daft they seem to you) are answered quickly and accurately. But TDA, do you have a life? I have seen you answering questions on here after 11.00pm on a Friday night!

Anyway, I met with my trustee (represented here) in November (I was terrified) but it was very, very easy. No-one judges you (at least, not to your face). It's all very matter of fact and quite re-assuring. It's all about the facts of your income and expenditure, no more, no less.

I then signed my TD in November and the 2nd meeting with my trustee and immediately stopped paying all my creditors as instructed.

As predicted, my crediors didn't like that and the phone would have been ringing off the hook for about 6-8 weeks if I hadn't installed my little "blocker" box That was a godsend!

My postie also had a lot of extra work to do - his mail sack was somewhat heavier for a few weeks as all those "you missed your payment" letters came in. But I wasn't even worried about those because the TD was in place.

I found that during the 5-week "non protected" phase, it didn't seem to matter what I wrote to my creditors, they continued to write and call anyway (but read on!).

At that time, I also started the process of opening new bank accounts, moving direct debits and standing orders etc. This process was probably the most painful aspect of the whole thing! Payments don't seem to come out when you're told they will or amounts are a bit different. I also discovered that utility companys' computers will use this opportunity to appraise your account and adjust payment amounts (upwards!) at the same time as you're moving your direct debit. Actually though, if you give them a call they're very open to adjusting them back downwards if you ask them. That's exactly what happened to me.

Anyway, my TD became protected after a little to-ing and fro-ing between my trustee and my creditors. I found that the calls and letters began to slow down dramatically right at the end of the 5 week "pre protection" period when my creditors had learned of my TD and were having to deal with it before it was too late.

Even after it became protected, we still received the occasional phone call from a small number of creditors (1 or 2) - probably from a department who didn't know that the TD was in protected. When that happened, I just wrote them a polite note back asking them to contact my trustee if they needed further information. That seemed to do the trick and one letter seemed to do the trick in each case.

But even that has stopped and we have had no more of those "pay us now" letters for a while.

In fact I've now started receiving letters from my creditors acknowledging the protected status of my trust deed and pointing out that I shouldn't make any further payments as they have claimed on the TD. Those were quite re-assuring letters. And although they get a lot of stick on here, the first of those to pop through the letterbox was from Capital One (credit card). The next was HSBC (credit card).

I live in hope that one of them will write to me thanking me for all the money they've made from me over the years. Some of them got thousands more from me than they lost in the TD so you'd think they might be a little bit happy. Hey ho.

Finally, this week I contacted my trustee about slight alterations to my payment schedule (the dates not the amounts) and that was absolutely fine with them.

So today I actually feel that I have reached that light at the end of the tunnel and everything is now in place that will make this perfectly manageable for me until it runs its course.

If I were to give any advice, I would say be patient and don't stress too much. Kick it off and let the TD process run its course and you'll get here too.

I hope this helps someone out there who is where I was last year before I kicked off this process, which was stressed, tired and frightened.

Now I'm none of those.

Cheers,

DebtFreeWannabee