The Money Helper

“I need Help I’m in debt!” Said my friend as we sat down to talk. Let me go back and explain this a little more. This particular friend of mine has always been very generous and picked up the tab when in a bar or a restaurant and always been the first to help someone out if they found themselves a little short for the month. An extremely nice man who has a very good job working with computers. After being in a very sticky relationship for around 3 years he found himself deep in debt and this is how we ended up having a conversation that started with him saying “Help I’m in Debt!”How he got into this situation was not as important as how he was going to get out of it. He had found himself over a number of years being the life and soul of the party and where as before he was the one handing out help he was now desperately in need of getting help for himself. So how did I respond to my friend with his question “Help I’m in debt!”? Well I first told him he had to be completely honest with me and tell me exactly what he owed and what he was paying out each month, this was fairly hard for him because as he discovered certain payments he discovered more and more that not all of his debt was his fault but that of others and the financial institutions that he trusted with his money for many years.

My initial reaction to his statement “Help I’m in debt!” was “How the hell did that happen?” a reaction that most people ask themselves when they discover they have more debt than they can handle. So after the initial shock and sitting down and working out what was going out we looked at his outgoings. I lost count of the amount of times he said “Awwww man, really?” to which I would respond “You were the one that came to me saying Help I’m in debt, don’t shoot the messenger!”. Things like his ADSL line was a whopping 10MB line which was costing him $120 a month, reducing this down to 1 standard 1MB line saved him $100 a month.

We canceled his magazine subscriptions and agreed that if he wanted the information from the magazines then he would go into a shop look at the magazine for the titles of the articles then Google them on his nice new slower and much much cheaper internet connection.

He had a very nice car, a Lexus, and when I said “People that say things like Help I’m in debt don’t drive around in a Lexus” his face dropped but he agreed that the payments on the car were way to high and after a little shopping around he got a nice Mazda for a third of the price. And because he downgraded his insurance premiums dropped as well.

After going through EVERYTHING and we really did pick apart all of his activities as well as the money that was owed to him (I told him he couldn’t afford to be proud and the people he had helped out would have to be told it is time to start paying things back) his debts were reduced by 35% each month. We then started to look at all of the charges that his bank and credit card companies had dumped on their loyal customer over the past 4 years. Then by calling all of his creditors and asking them to explain each of the charges we managed to get a massive $800 taken off his total.

Now this isn’t possible for everyone who has the “Help I’m in debt” issue but it can make a big impact in those debts if you get up off your backside and do something about it today rather than keep putting it off until tomorrow. Action is important as is swallowing your pride and admitting there is a problem. I can tell you that my friend is now well on his way to being debt free and called me up to say he was taking me out to dinner, we ended up under a tree with a salad he had made at home! Another great money saving tip but this one he came up with on his own!