Hi there RyanK92.  A Trust Deed may indeed be a preferable solution for you now and you are certainly right to ask the question. Circumstances change and it always a good idea to keep these things under review to ensure you are in the most appropriate solution.

It would be useful to know a few further details, if you don't mind sharing.  How much are you paying to your DAS currently?  And what do you think you can realistically afford to pay going forward?  Also, do you own any other assets such as a car?

Posted by: @kevin-mapstone

↑

Hi there RyanK92.  A Trust Deed may indeed be a preferable solution for you now and you are certainly right to ask the question. Circumstances change and it always a good idea to keep these things under review to ensure you are in the most appropriate solution.

It would be useful to know a few further details, if you don't mind sharing.  How much are you paying to your DAS currently?  And what do you think you can realistically afford to pay going forward?  Also, do you own any other assets such as a car?

 

I am currently paying £595.16 to my DAS at the moment but with increasing Gas and Electricity costs, I'm starting to find it really difficult. I do currently have a car which I need to travel into work etc.

OK, well it will mainly boil down to what you expect that you can realistically afford going forward as to whether a Trust Deed would make sense for you.

For example, let's say you can afford to pay around £400pm instead.  You could probably vary your DAS agreement and reduce your payments to this level if you wish.  You would then expect to repay your debts within around 79 months instead, ie just over 6.5 years.

Alternatively you could enter a Trust Deed and pay for 4 years only instead.  You should pay back around £12.4k less and be debt-free around 2.5 years sooner.  

If you own your car outright and it is worth over £3k then it might not be quite so straightforward and there may need to be some extra payments made to safeguard it, but that should be clarified before you agreed to sign up to anything.

The first thing that is needed is to clarify your budget and how much you would be expected to pay in a Trust Deed.  This will then help inform your decision-making.  One of the forum experts would be happy to look at this for you if you wish - you would just click through via the contact button and this can be easily arranged.

Posted by: @kevin-mapstone

↑

OK, well it will mainly boil down to what you expect that you can realistically afford going forward as to whether a Trust Deed would make sense for you.

For example, let's say you can afford to pay around £400pm instead.  You could probably vary your DAS agreement and reduce your payments to this level if you wish.  You would then expect to repay your debts within around 79 months instead, ie just over 6.5 years.

Alternatively you could enter a Trust Deed and pay for 4 years only instead.  You should pay back around £12.4k less and be debt-free around 2.5 years sooner.  

If you own your car outright and it is worth over £3k then it might not be quite so straightforward and there may need to be some extra payments made to safeguard it, but that should be clarified before you agreed to sign up to anything.

The first thing that is needed is to clarify your budget and how much you would be expected to pay in a Trust Deed.  This will then help inform your decision-making.  One of the forum experts would be happy to look at this for you if you wish - you would just click through via the contact button and this can be easily arranged.

Thanks so much for this,

I've reached out and will await a reply 🙂

Hi RyanK92, 

Just thought I'd drop a reply as I have personal experience with both a DAS and Trust Deed. 

I understand the frustration you have with the ever rising costs of paying back debt. 

I had a DAS twice and both times I did manage to clear the debt, however the third time I was encouraged to enter a Trust Deed by the personal manager allocated to myself. My debt at the time was in the region of about £28000. 

At the time I felt this was the best option as the required payments were much more reasonable and seemed to be a better plan in the long run as the plan was for a set duration of time and this gave me hope for the future in being able to re-stabilise my credit rating and perhaps get on a better footing for later life. 

Half way through my T.D. I changed jobs, so naturally I knew with the increased salary my monthly payments would be reviewed and as expected I had to pay a little more than was initially agreed. 

Now what was an unexpected surprise to me, was that if i done any Overtime with my work - you know to try and have a bit of breathing room with monthly bills and even at that time costs rising with general living and travel etc - was that there was an expectation that any overtime payment I received was to automatically be paid to the T.D (even though I had in writing that i was to pay a certain amount and this had been accepted by the creditors). In addition to this, when I cleared my pre-exiting car finance (I had to keep this going as I needed my car for work - the finance was in my dads name fortunately) I had wanted to put the car into my own name, but was told by my advisor that this was a deductible asset and I would be required to sell this and any monies obtained from the sale would go to the T.D. So unsurprisingly i did not put the car into my name!

Further to this about 6-8 weeks before my T.D was due to end, I received contact from my advisor to do the final review, to be told that due to earnings I was going to have to pay a further £2800 as overall when they looked at the 4 year period in which I had paid the required amount each month and they looked at my overall earnings, I had earned just slightly over what was expected. So this ended up in a rather larger debate and back and forth before I finally made the decision to stop the payments (which BTW I have had no recourse from and the T.D. is no longer on my credit file and neither are any of the debtors from that time). 

I fully understand that we get ourselves into debt, and yes we have a responsibility to pay this back, but not to the extent you feel like you are literally breathing to earn money to give to other people. I had no quality of life in the time that I was in the T.D. I could not work extra to maybe give myself a breather. When I was off sick and did not get paid, I was still expected to pay the T.D. 

Overall my experience with the T.D was not the best. Now I am not saying in any way that you would have the same, however I just thought i'd pass on some of what I went through. All I would say is before making any decision make sure you ask lots of questions, no matter how insignificant you may think it is because trust me, there will be something later down the line. 

@heever86 Thanks so much for sharing your experience. It's a really helpful insight.

I'm currently going through the process of setting a Trust Deed up and unlike yourself, I feel more sufficated with the DAS than what I will be with the Trust Deed. I think the most important thing is by having a really clear, sustainable and realistic budget set which with the DAS, really hasn't been the case for me (some categories I was only allowed the monthly average for example - £15 for clothing, £27 for leisure and hobbies). With the Trust Deed,what's set aside for these categories means I'll be able to live my life and not worry about buying myself a T-Shirt..... as sad as that sounds I know.

I've had a good conversation around Overtime and expectations with that too so I do feel really confident in the fact that any overtime worked goes into the T.D. Really sorry to hear that in your experience that wasn't properly explained to you which isn't great.

Overall, as scary and daunting as it all feels for me right now, I do think the T.D is going to be the way I get my life back. Otherwise, with the DAS, I'm going to be counting every single penny and struggling to really do too much with my life.

Thanks for sharing though, really appreciate it 🙂