Kenyan currency. If you are drowning in debilitating debt you have to
come to terms with it. You have to acknowledge your situation.
PHOTO/FILE
Makena
came back from university in the UK three years ago. She had recently
gotten engaged and needed to plan her wedding and start her new life
with her husband-to-be.
She had also managed to secure
a job with a stock broking firm. She was happy to be home but she was
carrying one heavy burden. She had a lot of credit card debt that she
had accumulated buying things she could not even remember.
Repaying
this debt was going to take a considerable chunk of her new salary for
the next three years and obviously impact her ability to share in some
of the wedding expenses, but she just couldn’t bring herself to tell her
fiancé, Jim, about it.
Rather than be honest about
her financial situation she secretly borrowed from friends and family to
fund her portion of the expenses for the wedding – anything not to have
to tell Jim.
Makena told me that it would have been
easier for her if she did not have a job because that would be an
understandable reason. However, she could not bring herself to admit it
was because of debt.
Perfect investment gone wrong
Steve
is a successful banker. A year ago he took a loan from the bank and
invested in a restaurant business that a good friend of his was starting
up. Everything seemed to be adding up and he viewed this as the perfect
investment.
He regularly envisioned taking his
business contacts or friends to the restaurant as a co-owner. He had
already started talking about his successful venture.
Unfortunately
it did not do well as planned. However, Steve was not ready to face the
possibility that the business was failing. So he borrowed more money
and sank it into the business. Again it ran into problems and he again,
he did not resist when his friend talked him into putting more money in
the failing business.
As a result, today Steve’s
finances are in a mess. A lot of his salary goes towards repaying this
very bad debt. To save face and keep up his reputation as a successful
banker, Steve takes salary advances, borrows from loan sharks, and uses
his credit card to fund bits of his lifestyle. However, he knows he is
on a downward spiral and does not know what to do about it.
Perhaps
many of us reading this can relate to Makena or Steve. We have had an
experience or are going through a situation involving debt and can
relate in some way. Sometimes the hardest part of getting out of debt is
the mental association we have assigned to debt that keeps us from
being able to see possible practical solutions.
Like
Makena, fear of judgment from people who are close to us makes us hide
our situation. Makena’s conclusion of what Jim, her fiancé, might think
of her is making her hide her debt situation from him.
She
doesn’t know how he would react because she never talked to him about
it. She has now been able to look at that situation retrospectively and
realised that she didn’t open up about her problem because she was first
and foremost criticising herself for this debt and just concluded
everyone else would do the same.
Self-condemnation for a
past mistake will never help you. We can see this condemnation masked
as complete denial from Steve. Steve is behaving like a criminal trying
to cover up evidence of a crime.
To the outside world
he simply wants to pretend it did not happen. The reason he is in this
problem in the first place is because he never wanted to admit he made a
mistake. So he just kept sinking in more money hoping that somehow it
would work out.
It had to work out because he had
hinged his reputation on this. He is in debt simply because he ignored
the warning signs and refused to acknowledge that it just wasn’t working
and let go the first time.
To make matters worse, he
continues to be in debt because he is trying to save face and live a
lifestyle he really cannot afford.
Both Makena and
Steve are stuck in shame and that’s why they can’t see the solution. In
fact it is a way of running away from facing the solution because shame
always wants to hide.
Yes it is hard, but the more we
admit to ourselves and those around us who need to be aware, the more we
are able to deal with the debt.
I cannot guarantee that you will always get a positive response from those around you but you‘ll never know until you try.
Step in the right direction
Even
if you don’t get a positive response, you have at least stopped living
in pretence so it is still a step in the right direction. The people
around you garner respect for you when they see how you are dealing with
the situation, not running away from it.
When we are
hiding, it means we don’t talk about it so there is no way we can see
the solutions. We pretend not to think about it or be affected but you
know the stress, nightmares and even illness it causes.
If
you are drowning in this kind of debilitating debt, unlike Makena and
Steve you have to come to terms with it. You have to acknowledge your
situation.
You may have made mistakes but that’s OK as
long as you allow those mistakes to start teaching you a lesson today.
Steve did not want to learn the lesson so he kept making the same
mistake. Remember it is not the mistake that defines you but rather how
you deal with it. So start dealing with it. Yes, something will have to
change to get through debt.
You will definitely have to
do something different to get out of this debt. You may have to cut
expenses or you may have to think outside the box to generate more money
to pay down your debts.
You may have to deal with a
tough discussion with family members. You cannot see how to do this if
you are pretending it did not happen. The answer will never come if you
are hiding or covering up. The starting point of getting out of debt is
removing the shame of it.
Waceke runs a program on personal financial management. Find her at waceke@centonomy.com| twitter @centonomy
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