Toby Ingham

A 56 year old teacher I’ll call Paul, has a strong sense of de vu about the current downturn in the economy. Paul was made redundant from the city in the 1987 crash. He says his redundancy came as a real shock to him. “One minute I was just flying, trading, there was loads of money about, and then all of a sudden – nothing. All the news now about the banks really brings it back to me”.

For Paul the real problems came later. “It was my own fault because I started to ignore the letters I was getting about unpaid credit card bills and council tax, and I slipped behind with my mortgage payments. I was completely unprepared to lose my job and I went into a state of denial. I got a redundancy pay out but I used it badly.”

In the end Paul was confronted by a letter from the bailiff. “At first I just couldnÕt believe it, but actually it woke me up. I went to see the council and they were very helpful about arranging for me to repay my debt in instalments. In a way, that marked the beginning of my recovery, when I started to face up to my situation”.

If money is a problem the most helpful thing you can do is to try to get a realistic sense of your situation. Commonly people tend to ignore the problems and turn a blind eye to them, but that just makes matters worse.

Although it can feel very difficult confronting something you’d prefer to ignore, in the longer term having a realistic grasp of the facts helps.

Paul says “I was surprised just how much talking about my problems calmed me down. They”d become this big taboo – as soon as the brown envelopes dropped on the mat I would put them straight in the bin – my wife never even saw them. When I started to face up to things it became easier. It was the beginning of me retraining as an economics teacher; I thought IÕd see if I could help other people find out a bit more about their money problems. No doubt about it, facing up to the situation is the best thing you can do.”