The credit counselling Fantasy;
Written by Post on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 in Finance.
The financial counselling Story;
credit counselling in Canada has become a popular method of dealing with debt but may not be the right route for individuals to control their debt. In most cases Canadian’s will apply for debt consolidation loans to eliminate their debt and start with a clean slate. even though this takes care of the short term problem it oftentimes developes much larger problems down the road. There are two reasons why this happens.
First off, people are creatures of habit. By applying for a debt consolidation loan you are only covering up the primary problem, your habits. Although a debt consolidation loan will clear your initial debt it wont deal with your spending habits. Commonly Canadian’s applying for consolidation loans to pay off their debt end up in twice the debt they started with.
This is the second reason consolidation loans will not work. After Canadian’s eliminate their revolving credit it allows them freedom to unsecured debt, causing the trap to start over again. Usually individuals wind up with their unsecured debt maxed out again, as well as, the debt consolidation loan that they were issued to eliminate their debt. The most typical phrases I hear as a financial counsellor is “I want to attain a consolidation loan to repay my accounts”, “I never want to use revolving credit again”. In theory this is terrific but often times 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
Financial Counsellor
Inspire Credit Counselling Services












