I found being in debt so confusing and scary!

Not knowing what to do i fell into the trap of contacting a debt management company I’d seen on television.

They sounded knowledgeable and promised to reduce my monthly payments and save me dealing with all those nasty creditors.

GREAT!!

Or NOT as I found out!!!

Companies of this nature who advertise on television or in the newspapers normally aren’t that bothered about you or your financial issues. 

Sure, they’ll start off by helping you to fill out a debt management income/expenditure plan and advise you what you’ll be paying to each of your creditors & some will even post this information off to the creditors for you.

The first problem is that the creditors will still chase you directly via phone calls and letters. I ended up contacting creditors continually advising them to contact the debt management agency (as they’d told me to) quoting a contact number and reference code.

However, in most cases the creditors ignore this stating that they do not deal with debt management agencies or that they’ve never received any paperwork!!  When I advised the debt management agency of this they would only advise that they would resend the payment offer to the creditor in the post. Not really that helpful!!!

The second issue is that most of these agencies will charge you a management fee for dealing with your account which reduces the already small amount of cash you have available each month to pay off your debts.

I decided that instead of paying them a fee I could deal with the creditors myself (as I was already doing) and thus increase the monthly payment offer.

I’m pleased I did!!

More soon….

Alex.