Victoria 4 Pillars Consultant: A Fine Ally for Debt-Plagued Seniors

After toiling on the professional circuit for decades, retirement should be the time when you reap the fruits of your labor and live off the savings you made, if any. Life, however, may yet have some surprises in store, and you will need to cushion yourself against them with professional assistance. The Globe and Mail’s Guy Dixon discussed the plight of an elderly couple from Nanaimo, B.C., whose retirement plans were slightly derailed due to a recent incident.

Insiders within Canada’s financial establishment are already sounding alarms over a rising level of bankruptcies among seniors these past few years. The low rates for home equity, for example, make borrowing a tempting choice among seniors for certain purposes, but later get hit with the proverbial ton of bricks such as double-digit annualized interest. When you feel that the debt levels are affecting your financial and physical well-being, you need to seek your options through a Victoria 4 Pillars consultant such as Blair Greenwood.

Taking Stock

Assessing your debt situation requires a full check of your finances and your current sources of income. Dixon said the Nanaimo couple became in-house caregivers for two mentally-handicapped people while having day jobs at a telecom company. The problem was, they lost half their caregiving income when one of the patients died of illness after being in their care for 12 years. The bills piled up and the couple were only earning enough to make minimum payment.

The Tough Way Out

A leading 4 Pillars consulting expert can aid in various tactics to cut down the debt while increasing your cash reserves at the same time, which may be vital if you are retiring a few years down the line. One of the more common approaches is to list down all expenses for the month in a special ledger and try to identify which unnecessary expenses you can do without. This doesn’t mean, however, that eliminating Item X suddenly frees the money you spend for it onto Item Y that might be another issue for wastage. The main point is to save up as much as you can without sacrificing essential elements.

A structured debt repayment plan will help you identify which items you can pay off within a certain amount of time. That being said, the key is to keep the tempo going into servicing other debts. Accurate documentation will be further basis for improving your credit score.

Being saddled with debt in your later years can be a serious setback after all you’ve been through. It’s never too late to find a way out of the rut through solutions that veteran debt experts like Mr. Greenwood can help you with.

(Source: Seniors and debt – how to take back control, The Globe and Mail)