debt advice posts

When Francine "Franny" Bostick looks back at where she was six years ago, she shudders at the memory. She not only faced financial ruin, but also was on her way to a potentially catastrophic health crisis.

"My blood pressure was soaring and almost impossible to control," Bostick remembers. "Honestly, if I hadn't gotten help with our credit card debt I probably would have had a stroke."

At the time, Franny and Jim Bostick had accumulated more than $120,000 in debt on 13 credit cards. The amount had accumulated during more than a decade of spending beyond their means.

Bostick says they simply got in the habit of buying anything they wanted. "We spent money on eating out, new appliances, new clothes and gifts for our kids," says Bostick. "We went on vacations and used plastic to pay for everything."

I have debt, as do most of the people I know. In fact, those I know who are actually debt-free, all seem to be a lot older than I am. Wiser? Quite possibly in some cases; undoubtedly in others.

The big part of their debt-free status, though, seems to come from this one fact: They've all been in the game for a lot longer than I have.

So just where does debt settlement fit in the spectrum of solutions for those who find themselves in over their head, financially?

(We've talked about debt settlement before – this is where you hire a third party to negotiate with your creditors on your behalf, in the hopes you'll be able to settle for an amount that's less than you owe.)

In the lineup of options available, outside of the conventional ways people pay off their debts, we have settlement, credit counseling, consumer proposals and bankruptcy. Each has its own set of conditions and repercussions.

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If you're like any number of other people out there (this writer included), you have debt. If you have enough of it you may have noticed the growing number of advertising campaigns out there which have you, my dear target audience, locked squarely in their sights.

It's hard NOT to notice some of these campaigns – they're pretty aggressive. On Facebook: Ads promise to help you get out of debt in 36 months. The radio spots I've heard claim there's a "new government program" (Note: It turns out this is complete balderdash), and even though I'm signed up for the CRTC's Do Not Call list, I've received fair number of automated machine phone calls, again saying there's a new government program to help Canadians get out of debt: "Just press 1 now to be connected to a representative to see if you qualify."

Not only are the ads aggressive, their promise is oddly compelling, even if they do seem too good to be true.

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I just found out why debt is such a prevalent topic out there these days (aside from the fact that we all have some and that interest rates can't stay low forever).

There's a Statistics Canada number that surprised me when I read it: Between 1984 and 2009, real average household debt for Canadians more than doubled from $46,000 to $110,000.

That's a lot of hell interest to pay.