The debt management Myth;
Written by Announcement Author on Sunday, June 21st, 2009 in Finances, Money and Credit.
The financial counselling Fable;
Debt Consolidation in Canada has become a accepted solution for dealing with debt but might not be the right route for clients to deal with their debt. In a growing number of cases people will seek out consolidation loans to pay off their debt and start with a clean slate. Although this takes care of the short term problem it generally creates bigger problems later on in life. The reasons why this happens are;.
First of all, people are creatures of habit. By getting a consolidation loan you’re only masking the underlying problem, your habits. Although a debt consolidation loan will pay off your original debt it doesn’t deal with your spending habits. Generally speaking Canadian’s applying for consolidation loans to pay back their debt end up in twice the debt they began with.
This being the other reason consolidation loans won’t help. Once individuals pay back their credit cards or lines of credit it gives them freedom to available funds, allowing the issue to repeat itself again. Usually individuals end up with their account maxed out again, as well as, the debt consolidation loan that they were issued to eliminate their debt. The most frequent phrases I hear as a credit counsellor is “I need to receive a debt consolidation loan to repay my debt”, “I don’t want to use credit cards again”. In theory this is wonderful but more often than not this doesn’t happen
Unless an individual is prepared to tackle their overall problem (i.e. their spending habits) they will not succeed with a debt consolidation loan. In actual fact this is one of the main reasons that the banks have stopped issuing debt consolidation loans. They have, for the most part, stopped this because they recognise that this is only feeding the problem and not solving the problem. If you truly want to deal with your debt, cut up your credit cards, stop access to any revolving credit, make your monthly payments to pay the debt down and track your spending. It is only through the tracking of your spending habits that you will truly understand the fundamental issues of your debt. In order to deal with your debt problems, you must first understand how you got there in the first place.
If you want to live debt free you must recognise your unnecessary spending habits and make changes to eliminate them from your life. If you were to ask me what lesson I teach my clients the most, it’s how to track their spending and identify unnecessary spending.
Greg Martin
Credit Advisor
Inspire Credit Counselling Services