As a bankruptcy trustee in Canada with over twenty years of experience, there are four sure fire, obvious warning signs that you are heading for bankruptcy in Canada.
4 Collection calls all day and night: When you get behind on your bills, the bill collectors start calling. And calling. And calling. Of course it’s not an actual person who is calling you; it’s a computerized “robo-caller” that dials your phone number, and if you don’t answer they put you back on the list, and call you again in and hour. Any they keep calling. If you keep ignoring the phone calls they will keep calling, and eventually your creditors may decide to take you to court and garnishee your wages. At that point you may have no choice but to declare bankruptcy in Canada.
3 Unopened Mail: At least once every week someone arrives at my office with a stack of unopened mail. They don’t want to know how much they owe, because they know they can’t pay it. Try this test: look at your kitchen table, or wherever you store your mail: do you have a stack of unopened bills? If you do, that’s not a good sign.
2 “Robbing from Peter to pay Paul”: I meet with many people who are “up to date” on their credit card and loan payments. They have done a great job to never miss a payment. How do they do it? They take a cash advance from one credit card to make the minimum payment on another. Then, next month, they use their line of credit to make their credit card payments. One person described this to me last week as “financial gymnastics”, and that’s a good description. Unfortunately borrowing to make your debt payments isn’t helping; it’s only prolonging the inevitable.
1 The Hole is Too Deep: The final and most obvious sure fire sign that you are heading for bankruptcy is that your cash shortfall each month is so great there is no chance that you can ever catch up. You make $2,000 per month, but your debt payments are $1,500 per month, so when you add in rent and food and transportation there is no way to ever get caught up. The financial hole is too deep.
Is this you? Are you getting collection calls? Are you afraid to answer the phone, or open your mail? Are you robbing from Peter to pay Paul? Do you have a massive cash shortfall each month?
You may be heading for bankruptcy, or perhaps you need another solution, like a consumer proposal. Either way, debts don’t go away on their own, so now is the time to book a no charge initial consultation with a licensed bankruptcy trustee and consumer proposal administrator to review your options.
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to answer the phone again?
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