Category: Debt Advice News

Survey highlights interesting Trust Deed Scotland statistics

The effects of the 2007-08 global financial crisis are there for everyone to see. Rows of empty shops demonstrate how challenging small and local businesses have found coping with the unexpected crash after years of prosperity. Despite there being a new government, nearly a historic referendum and a home Olympics, millions are still struggling to make ends meet. Progress has been unsurprisingly slow due to austerity measures, but could the public be in danger of being recipients of more economic woes?

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) the UK has made a pretty strong economic recovery with growth for 2015 expected to match last year’s levels. However, that’s not to say we are guaranteed a rosy financial future. This leading economic think-tank are worried about an unstable Eurozone along with Britain’s expensive house prices and large banking sector. Countless residents are finding it more difficult than ever to buy a house that they can afford, with renting suggested as being safer by some economists.

Unfortunately, renting can be expensive and combining regular payments such as food and household bills leaves some taxpayers in financial bother. With inflation rising and wage rates remaining stationary it is not surprising the rising cost of living is taking its toll on families and poorer residents. This leads to be slipping into debt and feeling the pressures of ongoing large payments to energy companies and other much-needed expenditure. Although it may not seem like at, there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

Dealing with debt on your own is a gut wrenching feeling and everyone with serious money troubles should contact a free and impartial company like Trust Deed Scotland. Our sole aim is to help clients reduce and remove their arrears by creating affordable repayment plans. A debt of £5,000 will typically be written off within 48 months if you have steady employment and stick to the agreed payment strategy. This keeps creditors off your back and, in most cases, allows you to keep living in the comfort of your own property.

With the election coming up in May all parties are targeting certain groups in order to win their support on polling day. Whoever wins the keys to Number 10 could be under intense economic pressure next Parliament, OECD suggest:
“The sustainability of economic expansion and further progress in living standards rest on boosting productivity growth, which is a key challenge for the coming years … Weak export performance and productivity could be driven by infrastructure weaknesses and difficult access to bank finance, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), holding back the emergence of new firms and high-skilled jobs,” said their report.

What is clear is too many debt sufferers suffer in silence and require urgent solutions that will not result in paying back more than they owe. Payday lenders are not a viable solution, but consulting with independent debt advisors is so email us at enquiries@https://www.trustdeedscotland.net or fill out your details here if you’d like us to call you back.

Chancellor George Osborne has revealed the pre-election Budget, and it features some key changes that will interest the residents of Scotland. There’s a boost to the country’s oil and whisky industries, and the Scottish government will be provided with an extra £31million next year. A £1.3billion package was also pledged in support for the North Sea, including slashing the headline rate of tax in the sector.

The supplementary charge on oil company profits will be cut from 30 per cent to 20 per cent, and a “simple and generous” tax allowance has been promised that will stimulate investment in the North Sea from the start of April. An additional £4billion of investment is expected to be raised following the package, and production will be increased by 15 per cent by the end of the decade, according to UK Government figures.

Elsewhere, the alcohol duty on whisky will be cut by 2 per cent, meeting the demands placed by the industry. The Scotch Whisky Association has welcomed the move, claiming it will boost the market exponentially. “This is a historic decision and only the fourth time the whisky duty has been cut in a century,” claimed the association’s chief executive David Frost. “The move is a major boost to our industry as we look to grow again in the UK, and equally sends out an important signal on fair taxation to our export markets.”

The income tax threshold will be increased to £11,000 from 2017-18, benefitting 2.33 million people in Scotland. 287,000 Scottish residents will be relieved from paying the levy altogether. Alistair Carmichael, Scottish Secretary and Lib Dem MP commented on the Budget, saying, “It gets the important things right, with a focus on helping create a fairer and more generous personal tax system which will benefit thousands of people in Scotland, and giving a helping hand to some of our key business sectors, securing jobs and prosperity for the future.”

Scottish labour leader Jim Murphy said the Chancellor was in “denial” over the damage he’d caused to Scotland. “George Osbourne’s tax and benefit changes have cost families the equivalent of an 8p tax rise,” he said. “On average, that amounts to £1,127 a year. He will leave office as Chancellor with the majority of people worse off than they were when he moved into Treasury. It’s a record of failure.”

The Budget will no doubt leave many people scratching their heads, and Scottish citizens who are struggling with debt may still be wondering how it affects them. If you’re struggling with debt problems then Trust Deed Scotland is the first choice for helpful advice in the country. We give you free, qualified debt guidance so that you can discover all of your options and decide the best direction to take next. If you’re interested in securing a Trust Deed then our Trust Deed Wizard will be able to assess whether you qualify within a few minutes. Make sure you get in touch with Trust Deed Scotland for the best debt advice around.

As Christmas approaches we are all likely to feel financial pressures in preparation for this special time of the year, usually in the form of buying gifts and accessories for families. The anticipated build-up towards this festive season can place an unnecessary burden on people struggling to pay their bills. It doesn’t help when payday lenders regularly pop up on television adverts when children are watching. Thankfully, vulnerable targets are set to be protected following discussions in the House of Lords.
Payday loan companies could have their TV and radio advertising banned before the 9pm watershed, driven by a Church of England bishop. Proposed changes to the Consumer Rights Bill include advertising restrictions on payday companies which relate to tobacco, alcohol and gambling industries. The Children’s Society are concerned with young people pressurising parents to take out high interest loans after watching adverts with misleading messages about borrowing.
Currently, a plethora of adverts targeting people with money issues is raising the profile of multiple payday lenders among children. Their awareness could cause damaging financial implications in future if tougher curbs are not introduced. In UK Parliament’s second chamber the Bishop of Truro, Rt Rev Timothy Thornton, Lord Alton and Lord Mitchell tabled the proposed amendments. They hope this bill will come into effect before the General Election in May.
This is more evidence of a clampdown on the industry after a UK regulatory body capped the rates that payday lenders can charge from January. Wonga recently stopped showing its adverts with animated figures after they were condemned for interesting children. A study in 2013 found out a third of parents with children under 10 years old heard their kids repeating slogans of payday loan adverts.
With an abundance of payday adverts on our television screens of these companies’ messages can become engrained in our minds. Their presence is extremely dangerous with debts spiralling out of control. Fortunately, there is a much more reliable option. Unlike payday lenders our team at Trust Deed Scotland value the well-being of our clients. There is a much safer alternative.
If you have fallen into financial difficulty, here at Trust Deed Scotland we offer affordable monthly repayments which prevent creditors from adding more interest and charges. They also are unable to take legal action against you once your Trust Deed is protected. We help those burdened by financial problems get their lives back on track by using government legislation to manage debts within a realistic timeframe.
The three Lords pushing the removal of payday television and radio advertising before 9pm said: “While many parents are struggling to pay the bills, payday loan adverts are making borrowing money seem easy and fun to their children.
“This is creating ‘pester’ pressure on parents to take out high-interest loans.”
Take control of your financial situation by contacting our dedicated team by phone or emailing us at enquiries@https://www.trustdeedscotland.net. Changing government bills can be a strenuous and long-winded process, but our employees at Trust Deed Scotland ensure you get a swift quote which will ease the stress imposed by payday lenders. If their adverts remain on TV and radio before the watershed don’t fret because you are guaranteed an excellent service by our team due to a 96 per cent TrustPilot rating.

Snowballing debt problems – What type of debts are they?

With campaigning for the General Election now well and truly under way, the spotlight on the amount of personal debt is lying on the shoulders of the British public is only going to increase. With reports in the mainstream media detailing in great length the extent of the country’s problems, there is clamour for a change in attitude towards our current over-reliance on credit.

Without doing so, we are warned, we are faced with the very real prospect of spending our lives battling debt in one way or another – something that is the cause of much stress and anguish for a huge number of people, especially here in Scotland. Whether it is credit cards, bank loans or borrowing from payday lenders, it seems it is a problem that is just refusing to go away.

Although there have been small measures to try and curtail this downward spiral, it is felt throughout the political spectrum that not enough is being done to help people tackle their financial difficulties in the proper manner. While a cap on the charges that can be imposed upon a borrower by payday lending companies has been introduced recently, ‘still the public drowns in bills, with little respite in sight’, according to shadow business minister Stella Creasy. While the public can wait for changes to be put through Westminster or Hollywood, for many of us our problems are much more pressing and require attention sooner rather than later; the need for evasive action on debt has rarely been greater in the modern era.

The bill itself will provide a small piece of respite for those in financial difficulty, but it is hard to see how big an impact it will have later down the line. Interest rates are now capped at £15 per day, and defaults have been set at a maximum of £15.

On top of this, customers can now no longer be charged twice the amount they originally borrowed – a move that prevents small debts snowballing out of control. While this is all well and good, it doesn’t necessarily provide the structured support required to beat serious financial problems.

As the shadow minister said in her statement, the cap needs to be lowered ‘to have real bite’ – until that point (a point that may indeed be a long way off), we need to work towards resolution positively. With the credit industry under pressure to adhere to ethical practice, the opportunity that the securing of a protected trust deed provides to Scottish residents is something that could have a serious impact on any financial predicament. Instead of leaving your loans and debts in the hands of creditors eager to put the boot in before stricter regulations come in place, protecting your debt and structuring your repayments will allow you to regain control over your finances and start to move forward out of the red.

Here at Trust Deed Scotland, we are a team of experienced personal finance experts who specialise in helping people get their lives back on track.

While we are aware of how suffocating money troubles can be, we are also aware of the invaluable benefit our service can provide for people struggling with money.

For more information on what a Scottish Trust Deed entails, what is a Trust Deed and how Trust Deeds work and whether it could provide a way out of your current financial predicament, please contact one of the team today.

When the Global Financial Crisis began in 2008 a dark mist of gloom spread across the United Kingdom with difficult times inevitable for most taxpayers.

Nearly seven years have passed since the world was plunged into economic uncertainty and rates of panic loans to cover debts show little evidence of slowing down. In fact, there has been a record number of loans and credit card debt from October to December, 2014 since before the worldwide economic crash. Despite the fact that politicians warned about the consequences, even they must be surprised that Britain’s economic recovery has been so slow although progress has been made.

This progress has not resulted in prosperous times for the majority of UK citizens, however. The soaring debt problems arising from the Christmas period were expected because of the high expenditure this festive season brings, but the Bank of England England’s figures are quite concerning. They revealed that unsecured lending was at its highest since the second quarter in 2007 over the past three months.

Nearly 55 per cent of lenders revealed there was more demand in terms of unsecured learning, with 58 per cent of credit card debt also announced by these groups. Reasons for this include more appealing interest charges and larger scale marketing of credit cards. Britons borrowed an incredible sum of £1.25 billion in November –unfortunately another record since the recession. Over one-third (35 per cent) of credit card providers believe that demand, and consequently debt, will soar from January to March.

Adam Marshall, director of policy and external affairs at the British Chambers of Commerce wants financial institutions to re-evaluate their strategies after these findings. He said: “With credit availability to small firms expected to weaken in the coming months, the findings from the latest credit conditions survey reinforce the case for more radical action – by financial institutions, the regulators, the ministers building up the British Business Bank and the Bank of England itself, which must do so much more to build up a liquid market for SME debt.”

A lot of small firms have been forced to close during the financial crisis due to job losses and less consumer spending because of this. People having disposal income was crucial to their survival and increased unemployment did not help their cause. Unemployment has gradually been falling, but this did correspond with people avoiding payday lenders at the end of 2014. Going to a payday lender may seem like a last resort, but you have much cheaper and more effective alternatives.

One of these is by contacting our helpful and experienced team here at Trust Deed Scotland. We offer tailored debt advice to anyone who calls us or visits our offices in Glasgow, Edinburgh or Aberdeen. We ensure that you take control of your finances without having to spend extortionate fees to payday loan companies and you will not lose your property if you can demonstrate you’re able to make affordable repayments. For more information contact us today – it’s time to solve your problems rather let lenders worsen them.