How I Got Into Debt
(and how I got out)
When people come to us with their debt problems these are the sort of things we hear....

“...well, you can’t plan for the company going bust, can you? And, of course, there was no redundancy money or anything like that. And then when you can’t get a job you still have your expenses every week, what are you going to do except use whatever credit you can get? But then you start not being able to make the payments on the cards every month. I tried to ..what’s the word... ‘consolidate’ by getting a bank loan, but then I had to pay that off, and I still couldn’t get out of using the cards as well. The debts just kept on mounting up. I was so stressed out with it all I started to get ill...”

Steve, Bracknell

“...I was actually doing fine. Nice little mail-order business. Okay, I got a bit behind on the VAT payments, but I could have handled it. Only then my bloody house goes and burns down. Insurance takes forever to pay, and frankly I was so shook up by the thing, I lost it a bit workwise. Just couldn’t keep on top of things. Started missing payments to Customs and Excise. And the tax people. The money just wasn’t there any more. Woke up one morning and found the IR’s petitioning for my bankruptcy...”

Mark, Dudley

“...I mean, all right, I put my hands up, I over-reached, got greedy, simple as that. Thought scraping together what I had to buy an extra property had to be a good investment. Turned out I just couldn’t afford it, basically. Ended up with the bank repossessing, and me with a socking great debt on it into the bargain. But I was just about handling it, just about doing the payments, though I can’t say it was easy. It was the double whammy that got me. Restructuring at work, twenty per cent drop in salary, just like that. Didn’t have the money for the payments any more....”

Michael, Esher

“...I took the break-up with Tony pretty hard, I must admit. Didn’t really have my head together for a long time. And, of course, since he was the one that’d swanned off, I was left paying the mortgage on our flat by myself. That would have been a problem even if I had been completely compos mentis. But as it was, what with one thing and another, I just kept running up credit card bills like there was no tomorrow. By the time I realised what I was doing, and started taking out consolidation loans each year to try and deal with things, it was basically too late – I didn’t seem to be able to reduce the debt whatever I did...”

Erica, Wisbech

“...I still say that the people I worked for then were a complete load of...well, you know what I mean. I should probably just have shut up about how they ran the place and got on with it, but that’s just not my way. So we...parted company, shall we say. Got myself a redundancy package, of course, but that doesn’t take you too far when you can’t get another job for the best part of a year. And you can’t claim any benefit since you’re ‘deemed’ to have left your job voluntarily. Yeah, right. I feel a bit stupid now, having run up those huge credit card bills at the time, but, actually, I don’t really see that I had too many alternatives. You’ve got to live, haven’t you? Still, by the time I did get another job, I wasn’t able to keep the minimum repayments up. Worse than that, the job involved relocating, and I had to sell my house. Which in turn got me in another heap of trouble, since I had a shortfall as a result, and couldn’t pay off the secured lenders...”

Brian, Cardiff

 “... Of course, things were hardly a bed of roses to start with. I’d hit the credit cards pretty hard when I was unemployed, so by the time I got the new job keeping up the payments was already a bit of a squeeze. I was just about handling it, though, until the company I worked for started doing this cute trick of not paying my salary on time. When you’re on a bit of a knife-edge financially that sort of thing starts a snowball effect. Your cheques bounce, the bank charges go through the roof. That’s when my entire money situation got really out of control...”

John, Halifax

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