Unemployment has been a big issue throughout the country since the last recession with the latest stats showing that 2.67 million* people over the age of 16 years are currently unemployed, the highest level since 1995. During Chancellor George Osborn’s Budget Speech in March, he stated that part of 2012’s agenda was to get people back into work.

In recent years as the unemployment level has risen, Payplan have seen a large number of clients coming to us for help and advice after finding themselves out of work and not knowing how they are going to keep up their repayments. It can be difficult dealing with situations like these as we need to make sure the client is able to maintain all of their priority payments, feed their family as well as trying to make an offer of payment to each of their creditors.

If you are unemployed and have debts that you aren’t sure how you will pay then try following these steps…

  • Make sure you are receiving all of the benefits that you are entitled to, making sure that your income is as high as it can be.
  • Write down all of your expenditure – rent/mortgage, council tax, utility bills, food, fuel and anything else that you have. Then see if there are any areas that you can cut back on – for example can you cancel your cable or satellite TV, mobile phone, gym membership or change your supermarket to make it cheaper?
  • Work out how much you owe to each creditor and how much the contractual payments are. You can then look at how much you can reasonably afford to pay each of them.
  • You can then either write to your creditors yourself or contact some for free debt advice such as Payplan or Citizens Advice Bureau or National Debtline.

Remember it is important that you keep your creditors up to date with your circumstances at all times so that they can do all that they can to help you too.

*source http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/february-2012/index.html