I confirmed to him that I wasn’t earning much money and that with my outgoings, I was only left with a small amount of money left over to pay my creditors. He scoffed at this somewhat and suggested that he would have to recommend to Barclaycard that they sell the debt on.

This is all idle threats as far as I can see as they have been saying similar thigns for months. He also brought up the threat of having a door step collector sent round to assess my ability to pay. I say bring it on, they can’t do a thing, they have no rights at the property I live in as it’s not my property.

I explained to him that before they do consider selling the debt on, perhaps they should reconsider my offer of full and final settlement which I made towards the end of September. I believe I then re-offered this at the end of October, somewhere in the region of 15% of the balance.

He scoffed at that amount and said the least they would accept would be 70%. I informed him that I thought he was talking complete B.S. as I have already settled one Barclaycard account through Calders Financial for around 30% of the balance outstanding, and that was October, so this is now two months further on and the value of their “so called” asset has reduced as it is further into arrears.

He seemed to get a bit annoyed at this revelation and stated that he would tell me how it works, and that the least they would be able to offer me on a full and final settlement would be 60%. I informed him that I don’t think he has any credibility considering my experience of negotiating with creditors such as Calders Financial and that if it was alright with him I would just continue to play my waiting game.

I wished the guy a happy new year and hung up…no doubt he’s a bit cheesed off that his colleagues are making him look stupid, but that’s not my problem really is it?

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Last time I spoke with them, before christmas, I spoke to a nice chap who seemed to be just wanting to go through the motions. He asked me if I could pay more on my debts, I told him the £1 a month I was already paying on each debt really was a much as I could afford. I then explained all of my outgoings so he could understand why I couldn’t afford to make a bigger payment.

He then checked that they had all of my contact details correct. I assured him that my contacts hadn’t changed and that if they were to change, I would inform them of any changes.

After this he enquired as to whether I could get onto a debt management plan, I informed him that I had already spoken to various debt management companies and not been able to setup anything.

The last thing he then said was that as I wasn’t able to pay more, he would give me a couple of weeks to discuss my situation again with a debt management company. I informed him that I would.

He then ended the conversation with what was the most weak threat I have ever heard. He said that if I couldn’t get a debt management plan in place, they would have to send out a door-step collector. I asked why they needed to do this. His reply was just to discuss the situation with me face to face.

I then informed him that I didn’t see what the point of sending someone out to see me would be as I had already given them all the facts, so by sending someone out to see me wouldn’t materially change the facts, it would just be a waste of time and money for them. I don’t mind, the more money they waste not getting anywhere with my debts the sooner they will come to their senses and be prepared to settle the balance. I predict that February they will have gotten to that stage, roll on Feb!

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I’ve already made it quite clear to them that I can’t do anything to pay the money back, so they will just have to take legal action. I seem to remember that I’ve had similar threats from them before and they’ve not been carried out, so why worry about this one, right?

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It’s only been 18 months of me not paying the full amount. I did have a six month spell where I paid just 1% of the balance each month, but even this is a full 1.5% less than the minimum payment should have been, and even then they didn’t freeze interest and charges, they simply charged a reduced figure for interest.

So all this time, they have been pilling on the interest and charges until now, when they have finally taken their heads out of the sand and realised that I can’t afford my debts.

The letter states that they will pass the debt over to their Consumer Debt Recovery service, who will deal with it from now on. I’m guessing that within three months or so the consumer debt recovery dept will accept a full and final settlement on the debt, so I will keep this updated with what level of discount I get on the FFS.

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If you have credit card debt that you can no longer afford, don’t panic, there are literally thousands of others in your situation. The worst thing you can do is to stick you head in the sand and hope that the problem will go away – it won’t!

Think about it rationally, the only way the problem will go away if you stick your head in the sand is if you suddenly come into a windfall and are able to pay off the debt in one go, or perhaps you may suddenly get a huge payrise at work? If both of these scenario’s sound a bit far fetched, that’s ok, they were supposed to! The reason being, to make YOU realise that YOU and only YOU can do something about your debt problems.

The first step is to take responsibility, they are your debts, so you need to do something about them if they are no longer affordable.

But what can you do about them?

If you can no longer afford to pay the minimum monthly payments on your debts, then you need to contact your creditors (lenders) and inform them of this situation. To do so, write each creditor a letter explaining why the debt is no longer affordable. Include with this letter a run-down of your household budget, showing that the total minimum payments on all of your debts exceeds the amount of disposable income you have left after all your other necessary monthly payments.

You should be able to come to an agreement with your creditors for at least six months, during which time they will freeze interest and charges, and accept a much reduced payment from you. This should give you time to figure out how you can reduce monthly costs or increase your income, such that you can start repaying your debts at the normal rate.

If after six months of paying a reduced amount each month you are still not able to revert to the normal minimum payment, then it would be advisable to speak to a professional debt management company about a longer term debt solution. This could be a long term debt management plan, with some form of plan to settle the debts at a later date, either through a full and final settlement or IVA.

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I will continue paying them what I can afford – £1 a month – on a £14k debt, I can only assume that sooner or later they will start to think rationally and will reconsider my offer of full and final settlement.

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