Filing a Consumer Proposal Changed My Life
A Client`s Story
Debt is a burden. It weights you down and keeps you from living your life. It makes you vulnerable. It keeps you from being able to take care of yourself. People underestimate the ways in which debt can keep you from living your life.
Few people understand that better than myself. Filing a consumer proposal (a negotiated interest free payment plan) was the beginning of a process that allowed me to start taking control of my life. This is my story.
And Here My Troubles Began
Most problems with debt start in university, and mine were no different. I had been dreaming of university since grade school and years of study were about to pay off. My teachers were so impressed with my OAC marks (Grade 13 in Ontario at the time) that they declared I could attend any school in the country. The world was my oyster. My young spirit soared.
My parents, however, were less than impressed. After years of encouraging me in my studies, without any other kind of explanation, they simply decided that my education wasn’t important. The cheques from all the part time jobs that I had handed them over the years, along with a university fund that they assured me that they had been contributing to, was suddenly gone. If I wanted to go to school, I was on my own.
I lived a marginal life of part-time jobs, lousy (sometimes dangerous) room-mates and an empty fridge. A cup of coffee was a treat. So of course, when a Mastercard sign-up booth appeared on campus, I thought it was a gift from Heaven.
For the first time in years, perhaps my whole life, I was able to enjoy some of the things I saw other people taking for granted. If I was hungry and wanted to go to the Subway, I could. If I needed to buy a book for my class, rather than photocopy it or try to make a deal with the prof about using another cheaper one, I could.
Haircuts, clothes that fit, cable TV. The full belly and break from constant humiliation (“Why aren’t your parents helping you? How come you didn’t prepare for this? You must have known it would cost money.”) was beyond price.
Except that it was not beyond price. The interest rate on that Mastercard was 28%, and when it got maxed out the Visa people came to town. The same pattern repeated and my debt load doubled. By then my BA was complete and I was able to stop draining the finances and enter the work force. Just not the Canadian one.
Unfortunately at this stage I had never heard of a consumer proposal or 4 Pillars and the credit card debt remained a threat to my financial security.
World (Cup) Debt
South Korea was the place to be for English teachers in 2002. The World Cup was humming in both Japan and Korea and the won (Korean currency) was worth more than the Canadian dollar. Not only did I have enough pay off my debts but I took vacations to Thailand, went shopping in designer stores and enjoyed all the high tech toys that Asia had to offer. After two years, however, I returned home to considerably less financial opportunities. But the credit cards were still there, and I continued the life to which I had become accustomed without the same steady employment. What had been a full time job with a middle class income in South Korea was barely enough to pay the rent in Vancouver (in Korea, I never even had to pay rent). This, coupled with income taxes that I couldn’t pay, put me back in the hole. Considerably.
By now, after ten years of running in the same spinning wheel, I was frustrated. I took another full-time job overseas that had a good pension and generous annual bonuses. Even though the Mexican peso was weak, the cost of living made up for the shortfall. I finally had some money to start pay my monthly bills, but I was barely keeping up with the interest rates. I had tried to get a loan independently to consolidate my debts but after years of missing credit card, utility and income tax payments, my credit wasn’t in very good shape. That’s when a friend of mine told me about Four Pillars and the option of filing a consumer proposal.
More than Financial Freedom
The kind folks at Four Pillars helped put my life on the right financial track. Without any judgement or embarrassing questions, my debts were reduced and consolidated into a single, very manageable interest free monthly payment through filing a consumer proposal. This similar to a bankruptcy in the sense that you need a trustee and your debts are extinguished but without the stigma and baggage that bankruptcy often involves. Yes, there is some paperwork and bureaucracy involved, which is intimidating, but Four Pillars walked me through it with grace, civility and sometimes even humour. They aren’t blasé or detached; they just really know what they’re doing.
The consumer proposal process is an expedient one, and it proceeded and concluded exactly how 4 Pillars described.
The empowerment this has lent me goes well beyond financial security. For the very first time, I am able to make my monthly payments like a grown-up and actually project a date that I would be out of debt. I had never been able to do that before, never in my whole life. And it gave me the confidence to solve other problems that I hadn’t even thought to confront when I was burdened with debt. Now I can look forward to previously impossible dreams like home ownership and investment.
So if you’re staring at a stack of bills and late notices and feeling helpless, don’t despair. You might not even understand the alternatives because you’ve never experienced them. Through filing a consumer proposal and paying off the debt interest free another kind of life is possible.
