Debt happens. How we are here to help

This will not go away until you deal with your debt. But there are rules the people you owe must follow to make sure they treat you fairly.

Read our guide about what creditors can and cannot do.

The first thing to do today is to make a budget to explain your financial situation. Share this budget with your creditors. You can use it to ask them to pause action against you or agree to new payment terms.

We can help you with this when you come to us for debt advice. Our advice is always free and based on what you are dealing with. If we recommend a ‘debt solution’, such as a debt management plan, you can deal with the debt you are being chased for through that.

Your other options are to:

1. Pay them what you owe in full, if you can afford to.
2. Prove you do not have to pay. Such as, you can show the debt is not yours.

Further action will be taken to collect the debt, such as county court judgments (CCJs) and other court action, fines and debt collectors visiting you. But there are ways to stop this happening by acting now.

Lenders will often give you time to deal with money problems. And even if you are taken to court, you often have the chance to pay back what you owe at a rate you can afford.

Please don’t ignore calls and letters about debt.

To remove your worries, you can follow these steps today.

1. Gather details about all the money you owe. If you are not sure, check your credit file, which lists all your missed payments.
2. Get in touch with the people you owe and tell them you are finding it hard to pay. It helps to give them a reason and to share a budget showing what you can or can’t afford.
3. You don’t need to deal with this alone. By getting free advice from a debt charity, like StepChange, you can find a way to deal with your debt.

Find out about how our free debt advice and support service works.

We can understand you just want this to go away. There are ways to write off debt, through certain debt solutions. Or you can do this if you can prove that the debt does not have to be repaid by law.

The first step to take is to be clear about your options and how writing off debt can affect you. Such as, would your job be affected if you were bankrupt? That’s just one way to write off or deal with debt. But there may be better solutions for your situation.

1. Step 1: Read our guides to writing off debt
2. Step 2: Gather details about what you owe, how much you can afford to pay and how much interest is being added
3. Step 3: Find out what to do next. The best way is through having a free debt advice session from someone like us at StepChange. You should never pay for debt advice and always get help from a company who base their advice on what you need, rather than what money can be made from you. You can get started with us at any time of day online – and pause and restart whenever you need t
4. Step 4: Review your advice and follow the guidance, with our support, to pay back or write off your debt

Sadly, debt will get bigger if you don’t find a way to deal with it, through interest and charges or if bailiff fees and court fines are added on. We can help you. The easiest way to get started is to get online debt advice, you can take it at your own pace.

The government has a few ways to help with debts. There are solutions like insolvency and debt relief orders.

In England and Wales there is also the Breathing Space scheme, which gives you a break from contact from creditors while you work out how to deal with your debts.

We have lots of guides in our Debt Information section to tell you about the different ways the government supports people with debt.

Do be wary though of adverts that promise ways to ways to clear or write off debt.

Make sure you are getting free debt advice, we believe nobody should pay for it, from a company that does not make money from the solutions they recommend. Our debt advice and support service is always free.

If you register for debt advice with us, nobody needs to know. When you complete your advice session, we may let some of your creditors know we have advised you. This is only if we have a relationship with a creditor who bases their funding for our free services on how many of their customers we help.

We can reassure that this information will not be used in any way other than to support our funding. We will explain more during your advice. Other than this, nobody needs to know you have come to us for help.

Although that is nothing to be ashamed of. We have helped more than 8 million people since 1993.

If you are worried about your need for help with debt being used against you, don’t worry. We can make sure no letters go to your home, if that is something you are concerned about.