The Insolvency Service has recently issued a warning to couples planning their weddings this year – ensure that wedding suppliers are financially stable.

Weddings can be costly and if you’re on a tight budget the last thing you need is one of your wedding suppliers disappearing with your deposit.

A recent example of this happening is Anouska Antonia Semp, the 35 year-old former director of Avorio, a Sheffield-based bridalwear retail company. On 25 January 2011, she was declared bankrupt at Barnsley County Court.

Similarly, another bridal wear shop in Peterborough, Perfections, had one of their business partners file for bankruptcy this year. The landlord of the premises they rented sealed the doors and withheld stock in lieu of outstanding rent payments. As part of the initial investigation by the local Official Receiver(the government officer responsible for investigating financial failure) it was found that the shop had taken more than 80 deposits of around £300 each on wedding dresses. The brides, being unsecured creditors, are now unlikely to receive the wedding dresses they ordered.

It’s not just bridalwear shops you need to be wary of, in August 2010 Peter Gelardi and Pepita Diamand, directors of Wrapit PLC, a failed wedding gift company, were disqualified from acting as company directors for a total of 15 years when an Insolvency Service investigation found they had continued to take payments from customers of at least £872,000 when they knew the company was insolvent. Wrapit’s accounts showed the company had never made a profit and when it collapsed in 2008 there were 72,000 undelivered wedding gifts for which the company owed over £4 million.

The Insolvency Service has advised anybody planning their wedding this year to make a few simple checks before paying deposits or entering into a contract with a wedding supplier or venue. Below are the checks and how you can make them:

Is the company director subject to a bankruptcy order?

You can check if a director is subject to a bankruptcy order or has been disqualified from the world of business, on the Insolvency Servuce website database here: Disqualified Directors Search.

If they are a limited company, when did they last file their accounts?

Again, this can be checked online for free and more detailed information can be accessed at a charge of £1. You can check for this information on the Companies House website.

If you’re looking for some tips for planning a budget wedding, see the blog we wrote about this last year: Weddings and debt, two things that always go hand in hand? and if you’re in an IVA and want to find out how getting married will affect your arrangement, read our blog about this here: Marriage, Divorce and Debts.

Do you have any tips for planning a wedding, whether they be about how to save or how to protect yourself from financially unstable suppliers? Leave a comment below and share your views now!

A report released last week by uSwitch claimed that Brits are no longer bragging and boasting about having the biggest and best possessions, instead, they’re comparing who’s got the best bargains.

The report suggested the reason behind this change is that people don’t want friends or family to think they are escaping the recession lightly and as such 79% of the people surveyed said they were more likely to show pride at how cheap their possessions were rather than the expensive cost.

Bagging a bargain

I’m not sure how many people were polled for this report and whilst I agree that in certain circles it’s becoming more fashionable to have bagged a bargain than to have paid full price, I don’t think the same is true when it comes to discussing debts.

From my experiences here at ClearDebt, I think being in debt is something the majority of people aren’t happy to admit and discuss proudly. Owing money and struggling to pay it back is very much different to finding a bargain and telling your friends how much you saved.

Thrifty with your money

The two could almost be complete opposites – showing that you are thrifty with your money is a sign that you’re surviving the recession, whilst having unmanageable debts show that you’re struggling.

We want to know how you feel when it comes to talking about your debts, vote in our poll and tell us if you’re comfortable discussing your debts with friends and family.

When looking at possible new IVA cases, or indeed when reviewing existing ones, Insolvency Practitioner’s will generally refer to a set of guidelines to set a benchmark as to what is fair and reasonable to allow as expenditure against income.

Expenditure benchmarks

This benchmark will determine the amount the individual has to contribute towards the arrangement. The guidelines used are generally ones supplied by the Consumer Credit Counselling Service, or CCCS for short. It should be stressed at this point that any proposal should be driven by actual expenditure rather than guidelines, but nonetheless, some creditors and their representatives view these guidelines as being set in stone, and, if exceeded, will ask for that item of spending to be cut back to fit within those guidelines. If our client has a genuine reason for the expenditure we always argue the point, and often win.

New guidelines have recently been circulated, which, in fairness, have seen some guideline budget allowances being increased from the previous set (circulated in 2008). No new guidelines were issued in 2009. Here at ClearDebt we welcome any increase in budget guidelines.

Family budgets are hard enough pressed as it is, what with pay freezes, child benefit freezes…

Family budgets are hard enough pressed as it is, what with pay freezes, child benefit freezes, tax credit reduction and the such like, not to mention the ever present volatility of the job market itself.

New CCCS guidelines

However, careful analysis of these new guidelines shows that, whilst certain expenditure allowances have increased, others have dramatically decreased. As an example, I have worked out that for a family of four – two working adults, two children of school age, running two cars – if guidelines were to be applied rigorously to this scenario making pretty much all expenditure allowances possible against income, then under the new guidelines, the proposed payment to creditors would be £17 more per month than under the old ones. This doesn’t seem much – but for a family already living on a strict budget and in tough times, a loss of £204 (more than £1000 over the likely duration of the IVA) a year could easily make the difference between success or failure of their IVA

With industry guidelines being set like this people in debt are really up against the odds when trying to pay it back.

Unaffordable limits

I cannot fathom why guideline figures for the likes of sports, entertainment, contingency, dental, general medical and hairdressing, amongst others (this list is not exhaustive) should have gone down. Has anyone else noticed the cost of a trip to the dentist getting cheaper within the last two years? IVAs are supposed to be achievable as well as affordable. A person’s creditors can expect them to work hard to repay as much as they can afford of what they owe – but they shouldn’t expect hard labour.

It does very much seem like a case of giving with one hand and taking away with the other. Surely I’m not the only one slightly outraged at the new guidelines – please, help our voice get louder and share your views here.

As women’s spending habits are hit by the media again this week, we ask are women in the UK really all shopaholics?

Research carried out by comparison site uSwitch reported that four million women are shopaholics with average debts of £3,353. This time however, men’s spending habits were also looked at and the report found that there a three million male shopaholics with average debts of £3,425 each.

uSwitch’s Ann Robinson blamed “today’s celebrity obsessed society” for the shopaholic behaviour, but as we’ve discussed in some of our recent blogs, such as our discussion of the increase in bankruptcy among women, it’s all too easy to make a sweeping statement about women copying the celebrity lifestyle at the expense of credit cards and overdrafts without looking at the bigger picture.

Sure, there are lots of irresponsible spenders out there, both male and female, but there are also a lot of people who are making conscious efforts to manage their finances and deal with their debt problems. We know because we’re helping them to do so with IVAs and Debt Management Plans!

A few months ago ClearDebt’s Jacqueline Cohen took part in a feature for the Daily Mirror where they looked at the cost of a woman’s daily wardrobe. We ran a poll along with that blog, with somewhat of a smaller sample size, and found 65% of voters said they had cut down on their shopping habits since the start of the recession.

I’m proud to say I’m part of that 65% and even though there are still some shopping urges I can’t resist, on the whole, when I’m out shopping I find myself putting things back before I make it to the till! Another example is Piper from Frugal living, who has been blogging about her experiences of shopping on a budget.

Are you a reformed shopaholic? What are your top tips for resisting the urge to splurge? Leave a comment and let us know!

Alternatively if you’re a shopaholic who needs help with their debts, take the ClearDebt analyser and see what debt management solutions we can offer you:

-    ClearDebt client, Struggling63, writes blog giving first hand detail of debt and IVA solution
-    Struggling63 confirms he had credit cards from age of 18
-    At age 42, Struggling63 was almost £42,000 in debt
-    In August 2010, age 47, he started a debt free life

Leading UK debt solution company, ClearDebt, publishes a blog written by one of their own clients which details his first hand experience of getting out of £41,982 of debt.

The blogger, using the pseudonym, Struggling63, talks about why he went into debt.  Struggling63 also explains the process he experienced throughout the duration of the IVA and the emotions this created as well as the financial restrictions during the five year period.

Struggling63 is now debt free – having paid back £28,758 over 60 months and completed his IVA in August 2010.  Like many, he found the hardest step to be seeking help in the first place: He completes his blog by saying:

“Please, from someone who’s been there and got to the other end of the tunnel, if you can recognise any of your situation in the above, you should seek help before debt swallows you up.”

ClearDebt CEO, David Mond, comments:

“As professionals in an industry which is often tainted by less ethical companies, it’s sometimes difficult to communicate effectively with people in debt and help them realise they need help.  Having someone who has been there and who is willing to make their own story public is a huge contribution to helping others.  Srtruggling63’s story will encourage people in similar situations to take stock and start thinking about moving forward with their lives in a more positive way.”

ClearDebt recently released statistics confirming the average debt level for women in debt was £33,885 whilst men on average owed £42,741.

Notes to Editors:
For full details on this research or further comment, please contact:
Jacqueline Cohen, Group Marketing Manager – ClearDebt Group
0161 968 6823 /07976 739 125
jacqueline.cohen@cleardebt.co.uk
www.cleardebt.co.uk