You will need to make sure the due dates on all your credit cards work well with the DMP payment dispersment. For example, I pay my DMP between the 1st and 3rd of the month, and the payment is held for 4 business days minimum, and it may be 2 days before payment is actually sent after that. So if I made an online payment on the 3rd of the month and it was a Saturday, my payment would be held for Monday-Thursday (5th-8th) and probably would not actually get sent to creditors until the following Monday (12th). Now given the credit card companies fondness of setting due dates on weekends, say for this example my payment was due on the 11th (Sunday), it would be late. So I requested that all my due dates be changed to fall between the 19th and 23th of the month, with closing dates following close behind.
Another word of caution as well. You may want to adjust any due dates for cards who closing date falls between the 30th-5th of the month so that they close by the 30th . I paid my DMP early one month (about a week early), and my payments were dispersed a week early. This caused the payment to be credited to the cc account before its closing date, showing two payments in this month. Then the following month, no payment showed up, and I had a past due balance on the card. I had to send them a payment myself to catch back up.
But once you get it all tweaked, it runs pretty smoothly.
All of the credit cards are effectively closed, but most don't report that to CRA (at least it doesn't appear so, as far as I can tell-DH EQ 719 and mine 693 EQ after being on DMP for three years) , although some note that we are in a debt management program in the note section. However, any indication that you are attempting to get new credit (such as an inquiry on your CR) could cause the CCC to drop you from the program, reinstating your old terms (i.e. high apr%). Also, missing two payments on the DMP can lead creditors to quit accepting your negotiated DMP payment and raise your rates and minimum payments and drop you from the pla. All said, I would recommend a DMP. I use MMI (
www.moneymanagement.org). They do charge a monthly fee that is based on your ability to pay (max $40), but they have saved me that amount in interest many times over each month. (27% reduced to 9.9% apr on 3 cards, other cards 19-22% reduced to as low as 6% and 7%.)
