Dealing With Debt - If You've Got Problems, Kill Them While They're Little

I’ve been meaning to talk about dealing with debt for some time – but it seemed better to all of us to deal with other aspects of the problem of being out of work first. Getting a job and staying positive and at least relatively sane whilst you are going about it, is, after all, very, very important. The trouble is that redundancy and getting into debt often go hand in hand.

The most important thing to do about debt is to face it, and deal with it immediately.

This is a sort of ‘kill it while it’s little rather than waiting for it to grow up’ strategy – and it’s a good one, because it may allow you to avoid having Claims issued against you.

If you receive a letter demanding settlement of a debt then you need to respond to it right away. Your reply should:

• set out your financial situation in detail;
• contain a request that your creditor freeze interest;
• contain an offer to pay weekly or monthly instalments, however small;
• mention any changes that are going to happen that will affect your ability to pay;
• contain an initial payment on account – and those payments should be kept up week by week or month by month until the creditor either accepts or refuses your offer.

Here’s what may happen if you don’t respond to initial letters:

• If you owe money and can't pay it, and you fail to respond to letters demanding payment, then your creditor may issue a Claim or a Writ, depending upon the amount that you owe.


• If you do not answer the Claim or the Writ, then your Creditor may apply for Judgement.


• If the Court considers that the Claim or Writ is substantiated by the accompanying documentation, then it will issue a Judgment against you.


• When the firm of Solicitors acting for the Creditors receives the Judgment; it will notify you of it, and warn you that they may apply for a Warrant of Execution.


• If you don't respond to the letter notifying you that there is a Judgment against you, then Solicitors acting for your Creditor may apply for a Warrant of Execution and instruct a Bailiff or a Sheriff to seize your possessions immediately they have the Warrant. There are household and other goods that neither a Bailiff nor a Sheriff is allowed to seize – but that isn’t the point of this post, although it is something I’ll get around to talking about in the longer term.

Your creditor or its agents may well refuse your offer and issue a Claim or a Writ in any event in an effort to secure the debt - but your letter will evidence both your current financial situation and your willingness to pay what you can, and the Court is unlikely to ignore your letter or award larger instalments to the creditor.

If you receive a Claim or a Writ, you must answer that, too.

There is no charge for doing this. You'll receive an Admission Form with the Claim Form, asking you about your income and outgoings. On the form you can make an offer to repay the debt (or a lower amount if you think you owe less than the creditor claims). If you have written an initial letter attach a copy of it and proof of payment of instalments to the form when you submit it.

If you have not previously made an offer in writing, and explained your circumstances fully, now is the time to do it, because if you don't make an offer and the Court decides against you, it may decide that you must pay either the full amount or make monthly payments.

You have 16 days from the date of the postmark to send the form back to the Court. If you need help to complete the forms staff at your local County Court will be able to answer your queries. Make sure to keep a copy of the completed forms for yourself.

If you ignore a claim, or miss the deadline, the claimant can request Judgment against you without hearing your side of the story. This is known as 'Judgment by Default'. This can result in an Order demanding that you pay the money in full (plus costs) immediately. Your credit rating may also be affected.

After the Court hearing, the Court may issue an Order saying you must repay the debt. This Order is called a County Court Judgment (CCJ) and will either be for the amount agreed between you and your creditor. If you can't agree, then a payment will be set by the Court. If you have written a letter in the first instance, and paid instalments, this will obviously count in your favour.

If you then pay nothing, or don't keep up with the payments under such an Order, the creditor can ask the Court to take steps to make you pay, in which case you may have to pay more costs.

However, don't forget. If you genuinely can't pay, even by instalments, you can ask the Court to reduce the amount of the payments or suspend the Order.

Important: If you have Judgments from more than one creditor, the Court can combine your debts and make an 'Administration Order' - saying you must make a single payment every month to be shared by all your creditors.

When you have problems of any kind, it's very tempting to bury one’s head in the sand, and think that things will go away. When it comes to debt, that isn’t good strategy. If you have creditors who are pressing for payment, or creditors who have issued Claims against you, take my advice and take the bull by the horns and answer them.

Geoff - http://www.metlissbarfield.com/

Final Questions - And One More Letter

Once the interviewer (or prospective employer) has asked his or her questions, it will be your turn. Determine exactly what you want to know, and practice how you are going to pose your questions beforehand. It may be that the interviewer will raise questions that you hadn't thought of and obviously you won't be able to craft those questions, but some things are standard - what duties, what salary, and what chance of rises, bonuses and promotions.

Be very careful about how you approach the question of rises, bonuses, and promotions. Bald questions on any of these subjects are a bad idea. They can seem 'pushy', and they can lead the interviewer to believe that you are more interested in what you can get out of the job than actually doing it - or that you might be likely to leave if bonuses, rises and promotions fail to appear within a given time known only to you.

Bonuses, rises and perks are usually covered by an interviewer when people start talking about salaries. If they aren't, then frankly those are subjects that are best left alone. Promotion is, of course, another matter. Most candidates for any position need to know whether promotion is a possibility, and most employers are aware that few people really want a 'dead end' job. Be diplomatic - ask whether other people who have joined the Company in the past at your level have been promoted internally.

Most employers don't automatically let people know immediately that they have been successful - and many want to make a final decision only when they have finished interviewing all the potential candidates for the job - so your final question needs to about how long that decision is going to take.

Don't be afraid to ask it. All employers are aware that candidates are looking to, or have already, lined up other interviews. Consequently, the 'yes' or the 'no' tends to arrive in the short, rather than the long, term.

Don't take 'by the end of the week' as a sign that you haven't got the job, and that a 'Sorry, not interested, but Good Luck' letter will be on the mat tomorrow. You need to appear confident to the very end of your interview, and negative thoughts won't help you to do that.

Do thank people personally for their time before you leave - and do write a follow-up letter immediately you get home and post it same day if possible. It's polite and makes a good impression. It's politic (and it makes a good impression!) to say that you found the meeting interesting and stimulating. It's a good idea, too, to say that you would like the job - but only if you're really serious!

Geoff - http://www.metlissbarfield.com

Real Depression Can Be Very Dangerous

You may have read in the newspapers, or heard on the news, that the French Labour Minister Xavier Darcos is to meet the head of France Telecom to talk about the number of suicides among the Company’s staff.

There have been 23 suicides of France Telecom staff so far this year. The latest occurred last Friday when a 32-year-old woman leapt to her death at a France Telecom office in Paris – and there have been two abortive attempts since then. Last Wednesday, a 49-year-old man stuck a knife into his own stomach during a meeting in which he had been told he was being transferred. Yesterday another employee attempted suicide.

France Telecom has something like 100,000 employees, and the Company is therefore quoting statistics, and stating that most suicides are prompted by personal, not professional, causes. It has, however, admitted that the cultural and organisational changes required by the move from French public monopoly to a competitive multinational were ‘bound to cause stress’. Given the nature and extent of the protection afforded to employees of a French public monopoly, that statement could probably rank as one of the great understatements of the century. These people thought they had jobs for life - and then suddenly somebody moved the goal posts.

Some people handle stress very well and adapt very well to change – in fact some people thrive on stress, and see change as a challenge. Other people - very obviously - do not.

We talked about the importance of staying positive and exerting some measure of control over your life way back in May, and you might want to go back and look at those posts, and maybe start to work with some of the techniques we’ve suggested – but in the meantime if you feel that you're getting seriously depressed, then you should seek help immediately.

Any GP can prescribe anti-depressives – and they work quite well – and if you are seriously depressed then your local GP should be your first port of call. But talking things over with a sympathetic listener and getting some objective advice can work better than popping pills that dull the pain, but leave the causes of it bottled up inside. And GPs don't have much time to talk.

The Samaritans provide confidential non-judgemental emotional support, 24 hours a day for people who are experiencing feelings of distress or despair, including those which could lead to suicide. You can contact them by telephone, email, letter and face to face in most of their branches. Samaritans is available to anyone in the UK and Ireland. If you live outside of the UK and Ireland, you can visit http://www.befrienders.org/ to find your nearest helpline.

And there is something else to think about here. If you go to the Samaritans website; you'll see that they state that:

Everyone has it in them to be a Samaritans volunteer. To touch another person’s life when it really matters, either by discussing their feelings with them directly, or by keeping our branches running so others can. Say ‘yes’ to joining us, and we will be behind you all the way with the training and back up you need.

Our confidential, 24-hour listening service, which never judges people, is at the heart of Samaritans – and there are many ways to contribute. By working together with the shared desire to help people experiencing emotional distress, our 17,000 volunteers make sure that our 202 branches are well-organised and supportive places to spend time. There are plenty of social activities too!

Learning to help other people is a great way to stay positive and add meaning and purpose to ones life.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

Sometimes, when you go for an interview, you find yourself facing not one person, but a sort of panel instead. That can be very hard. You can really feel that you’re ‘on trial’ - and not being able to distinguish the Judge from the Jury doesn’t make that any better.

If you find yourself in that position, it’s very important to switch your attention from one person to another periodically and quite regularly so as not to exclude or ‘ignore’ anyone.

It's important, too, not to try to gauge the effect that you are having on any one person, because that can lead you to become ‘exclusive’. It's human nature to fix on a 'sympathetic' listener, but including everyone in a ‘conversation” is very important at any time, and is vital in these circumstances. The best interviews are (or become) 'conversations'.

For the same reason, try not to turn your back on anyone - and even if one person asks you a direct question, try to address your answer to everyone present.

I’ve been talking about practice. You can practice this, too: you really only need a couple of friends, or a couple of family members, and the questions that I’ve already provided to practice ‘panel’ interviewing.

In the meantime, here’s something else to think about. Panel interviews – in fact, lots of interviews - often start with the ‘what we do here is…’speech. The interviewer – and the panel if there is one - knows that speech off by heart. Actually, if you’ve done your research, most of it won’t come as any surprise to you either.

But some of it might - so don't spend the 'what we do here' speech time thinking about the questions that you think you might be asked.

Listen very attentively to the ‘what we do here is’ speech. In the first place, it’s a useful mine to dig out relevant questions of your own. Secondly, you might need to demonstrate that you have listened to, understood, and are able to extrapolate from "what we do here...".

And thirdly - all experienced interviewers know whether someone is actually listening. Or not...

Bill - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

Answers Raise Questions...

And so interviewers probe. Consequently, however well prepared and well rehearsed you are, you can't possibly hope to cover all the bases.

If you are asked a really unexpected question that arises from an answer, or the interviewer choses to approach that same question again from an unexpected angle - take the time to think before you answer. Nobody is going to worry too much about a delay of 6 or 7 seconds to get an answer to a question that comes straight out of 'left field'.

The real danger here is losing sight of the point of the question, and finding yourself floundering halfway through your answer. If that happens - stop, ask the interviewer to repeat the question, and then try to stick strictly to the point when you answer it.

Good way to practice? Get hold of a friend or family member to help you rehearse your answers to the questions we've dealt with over the last couple of posts, and prime them to throw in a few 'wingers' for you to answer. They won't find that difficult because answers raise questions - and you'll benefit from the experience of having to answer unexpected questions 'off the top of your head'.

Bill - http://www.therapypartnership.com

So Tell Me About Yourself...

Every interviewer wants to get as much first-hand, straight-from-the-horses-mouth personal information as possible from the person he or she is interviewing. Journalists want that information because it adds 'human interest' to a story. Job interviewers want it because they need to know something more about the potentially valuable human being that is sitting on the other side of the desk than can be gained from reading the CV that's sitting on the desk.

An interviewer might just say, "So tell me about yourself", but it's much more likely that he or she would go for leading questions, because leading questions are more pointed and more specific.

• What are your strengths?


• What are your weaknesses?


• What have you done that you are particularly proud of?


• What do you wish you had done differently?

An interviewer might also want to probe further into information given on your CV.

• I see from your CV that you're interested in (golf, stamp collecting etc). How did you get involved in that?


• I see from your CV that you're studying (French, accountancy, Contract Law etc). What made you decide to do that?

Questions, whether leading or straightforward, give you an opportunity to talk and to tell stories about yourself, show what you have experienced and what your interests are - to and illustrate that you are capable of logical, organised thought, because that's what talking about and telling stories about yourself well is all about.

It also gives you an opportunity to portray yourself in a positive light. But please don't forget that 'positive' in this context needs to include some negatives if it is to be genuinely 'positive'.

I have an enormous mistrust of people who - according to their own account of themselves - have no weaknesses, have never made a mistake, and have never regretted anything, or wished that they had done something differently. And any interviewer would, because life is full of pitfalls, and no human being lacks weaknesses, and has never experienced doubt or regret.

Don't hide negatives when you are asked to talk about yourself.

• Admitting that you have weaknesses shows character and maturity and is illustrative of the fact that you have actually thought about your weaknesses and have recognised them.


• Admitting that there are some things that you would have - or should have - done differently, shows that you are capable of learning from experience.


• Being able to talk about those things to an interviewer - who is, after all, a comparitive stranger - is indicative not just of maturity, but of honesty.

Which is not to say that you shouldn't prepare yourself for such questions and rehearse your answers. Preparation and rehearsal will give you the confidence to talk and tell stories about yourself really well. The insight you'll get out of it isn't a bad thing either...

Bill - http://www.therapypartnership.com/