Sunday 8 May 2011

Help!

There are somethings that may be hard to do because of understandable restrictions about what you can say publicly but some aspects about my work do give me an insight into what other people are going through.
From my vantage point I see people experiencing problems with debt which sadly is very common place in the UK presently.
Many people think it's just people living the dream beyond their means but in my experience and that of my colleagues, it's not.
Generally speaking most we encounter are people who do think about meeting the repayments before taking on such long term commitments but often what is the problem is a sudden unforeseeable change in circumstances such as losing your job, a reduction in take home pay for those who are paid hourly or discovering you're pregnant.
For some consumer based debt problems can come from errors and delays on the parts of others such as problems with benefit or tax credit payments that may take several months to resolve or a notification that say their tax was miscalculated and they want more money off of them.
Consumer debt problems can be very serious when they concern what are called Utilities such as gas, electricity and water or not paying your rent, rates to your Council or tv license and I cannot emphasize enough the importance in seeking help the minute you see you may not be able to meet the payments.
I had a client recently what had lost their job because their employer had gone into administration and whose partner to which they were due to marry also was likely to made redundant within the month. Fancy a situation where both of you are out of work? Serious stuff, eh?
Well one of things we do is give people advice about what money they should get from their employer when they leave and if they are allowed any time off to look for new work. We also look at their situation and the person concerned we suggested they made a claim for benefits for being out of work as they needed money to live off even though we'd all hope they were able to get new work soon and should their partner also be out of work then the calculation for what both could get would alter. As well by that point if they needed any help with debts then we'd offer that although at the moment that looked okay.
So you see it's a bit different than people may say at the bus stop or in the popular press.

1 comment:

GirlWhoShould (Lucy) said...

Its a good point. I was flicking through a trade paper which reported a rising number of accountants seeking debt help. A bad month can make all the difference.
Lucie xx