Follwing the Frugal Friends meeting the evening before I spent the following day at Melanies office,Cardiff. After a leisurely breakfast,and a sore head[thanks Andrew] I took a taxi to Melanies office,arriving at 9.15. The offices were larger than I had expected,covering two floors and Melanies staff were friendly and welcoming. We started the day touring the office and meeting Melanies business partner.

I then sat in on a creditors meeting,successful,and was surprised at the amount of paperwork and modifications involved.
Next was a client meeting and this I found so interesting as it reminded me of my own problems pre IVA.The gentlemen involved had travelled from Letchworth,close to 200 miles and Melanie explained all the options open to him.The sobering part of the meeting was seeing the guys face when it hit home to him that he really did not have enough income,even without any debts to pay,to live on.
We then met Adrian from Film 121 and I interviewed Melanie,this can be seen on IVA.co.uk tv.
After this we broke for lunch with Melanies business partner and their accountant,very nice it was too !!
A client telephone interview followed lunch and in this interview Melanie outlined the bankruptcy option to a client who had been referred from a debt management company but who had not been advised of all the options open to them[shameful]
I then sat in on another creditors meeting,another successful one,again noticing that creditors had attatched a list of modifications as long as my arm even though most of them were already included in the proposal.
My overall impression was the amount of work involved,both on time spent with the client and the time spent on the proposals.Let’s not forget that for the vast majority of IPs they do not get paid until the IVA is agreed,even then it will need to run for many years before they recover the initial costs.
A very useful and enjoyable day,as was the visit to TIX,it is always different to how you imagine it to be and it’s good to see first hand exactly what is involved.

This meeting was very kindly hosted by Melanie and we had Andrew from Brightoak,Tony[welshboy],John Tegg and his wife Gwen plus myself,so an experts only event !!!
I have to say that the evening was brilliant,as was the food.Most subjects were covered and John was able to report on his meeting that he had with TIX earlier in the day.
Myself and Andrew didn’t leave until gone midnight ,so much to talk about.
We have the debt debate in London on the 4th Feb,it would be good to see our London members[Dominc,Skippy,Ray A etc] at this event
I am on holiday in January so I hope to have the next Frugal Friends meeting somewhere in the North of England in late February.