Hi readyeddie and welcome to the forum.

There is a risk that if you've been able to save significant sums of money your trustee might believe you can afford to repay more towards your debts.

However, modest saving for emergency costs and irregular expenditure is unlikely to be an issue (and probably should be encouraged).

Your payment is based upon an affordability calculation, so if you lose a major cost (like the car) there is also a good chance that your trust deed payment will need to increase (all other things being equal).

I would advise you to inform your trustee that you will have costs associated with having a baby in the future as they might make some allowance for that in the affordability calculation used to assess your future payment amount.

The essential issue here is that you're expected to pay your full reasonable disposable income into your trust deed. This is the commitment people make in return for creditors writing off what hasn't been paid back at the end.

Ok that makes sense, thank you. If I was to move address to live with my girlfriend only a couple of months after the TD started, is it likely that there would be a review of my I&E immediately after informing my trustee of the change? My expectation is that the review would happen about a year after it started, but I'm wondering if an event such as an address change would trigger that sooner than expected.

Hi readyeddie,

If there's a significant change in your financial situation (income or bills or expenses) you should let your trustee know ASAP. This might be the case after a move.

If necessary, changes can be made to your contribution level. One danger of leaving it for months until the annual review comes around is that arrears (of money that should have been paid based upon affordability) build up. Sometimes this can only be resolved by extending the trust deed to collect in the money.

Another danger is that your bills increase and your current trust deed payment becomes unaffordable. This can lead to missed trust deed payments, priority bill arrears, or the use of further credit (all of which could lead to pretty bad outcomes for you).