War On Debt

I have devoted almost 13 years of my life to helping people with their home budgeting and debt is almost always at the centre of the troubles people face.

I regularly hear stories of personal hardship caused by debt. Sometimes I wonder what people were thinking when they got themselves into the situations they tell me about and other times I get really angry when I hear how lenders have set what I consider to be debt-traps.

As far as I am concerned, debt is one of the biggest causes of stress in our society and therefore is one of the major contributing factors to all sorts of social problems including relationship breakdown and suicide. If I can help people ‘Dump their Debt’ it will give me a lot of personal satisfaction and at the same time will probably help save a few marriages!

My War on Debt
Recently I finished writing a book that brings together all of my experiences and knowledge built up over the years of helping people get out of debt. I have never written a book before but have known for some time that this was inevitable. With a bit of encouragement and a lot of late nights I finally completed it. I must say I am pretty happy with how it has turned out. Now I just have to decide if I will use ‘print’ or ‘electronic’ publication.

Either way it is time for me to declare war on debt!

And I need your help to do it!
Over the years I have heard all sorts of debt stories but I tend not to keep the details.

I’d like you to send me your Debt Horror Stories. I want to ruffle some feathers on this topic and I need some ammunition to demonstrate the sorts of unscrupulous things that have been going on. Also, I believe that we can all learn from each other so I want to use these stories to highlight to all of my readers the sorts of things to avoid or be aware of.

I know some people who have really juicy stories may be hesitant to send in their information. Let me assure you that nobody will ever find out who the stories came from (I always change names to protect the innocent). That is a golden rule.

I want to hear things like

How that lounge suite priced at $800 ended up costing $2,100 because of an interest free loan that went bad
how the repayments on 15 credit cards became all too much.

Maybe you had dealings with a lender who was totally unreasonable or perhaps the fees and charges that were never really mentioned at the time of borrowing turned what looked like a great deal into a nightmare!
Maybe the lender kept trying to entice you into more debt regardless of the fact that if you didn’t pay the debt off by a certain date you would end up having to pay penalties.

Maybe you used the mortgage watchdog software and found a huge miscalculation in the interest your bank charged you.

See if you can shock me! I want to hear all your horror stories. I’ll be putting the best stories on my website.

Please email your stories by 5:00pm Friday 3 July to admin@simplybudgets.com with the subject title: “My Debt Horror Story”

There is only one thing I will ask though. You must be able to provide me with evidence to back up your story; maybe a loan statement or a threatening letter from the lender; some hard evidence that you didn’t just make it all up. I will make sure that all identification is removed from the paperwork before it is made public - unless you are quite happy to have it be made public.

Should I Be Flattered or Angry?

After spending over 12 years helping people with their home budgeting needs and dedicating thousands of hours to that cause, today I discovered that the ANZ bank are using what I suspect is misleading and deceptive advertising tactics to try to benefit from my hard work and good reputation.

“Simply Budgets” is one of the most popular search terms on Google here in Australia when it comes to budgeting. If you search for “simply budgets” on Google you will see my web-site at the top of the search results on the left.

On the right hand side there is paid advertising.

When I searched today to see what would come up I noticed an advertisement that uses the headline “Simply Budgets”. This caught my attention because I had not placed such an ad. When I checked it out, low and behlod it was an ad from the ANZ bank.

I didn’t know what to think. At first I felt flattered to think that they recognised me as being popular enough to want to advertise using my name. Then I felt angry. They are ripping me off.

I own the trademark Simply Budgets. It certainly appears they are using my name in their advertising for the sole purpose of deceiving people into thinking it is my business they will find if they click on the advert.

What do you think? I reckon they should have enough money to pay for advertising using their own popularity; or maybe that is the problem - banks don’t have much popularity!

Let me know what you think because I am NOT impressed.

Warning about ‘Phishing’ E-mails

An e-mail appeared in my inbox the other day that did not have my name at the top and supposedly came from the Commonwealth Bank. It read like this…

Your account has been locked and placed on hold due too many attempts to sign on to your account with an incorrect password.

In order to unlock your account please go to our encrypted link below and logon with the correct details:

Strangely enough I don’t bank with the Commonwealth Bank!

The e-mail was clearly an attempt to scam naïve people into giving up their private bank login details. I deleted it as it was not hard to see it was what is known as a ‘phishing’ e-mail.

I think most people would have spotted this one a mile off (it even has a gramatical error with the word ‘to’ missing). It highlights the fact that you really have to be on your guard all the time. Some of the more professional attempts at phishing are harder to recognise so please be careful.

3 obvious clues to look for are:-

The ‘To’ address (your address) does not appear in the e-mail.
Your name does not appear anywhere in the body of the e-mail.
Gramatical errors are apparent

Regardless of what an e-mail might be about, as a general rule you should protect yourself by always typing the displayed address of  a link into your browser rather than clicking on a link (sometimes when you hold your mouse over a link it will show the true address it is referring to).

If you have received a similar e-mail please give details below for others to see.

9 Simple Steps to Absolutely Get Rid of Your Debt

Click a link next to “Podcast” below to listen to the recording from a Teleseminar I did about the 9 simple steps to absolutely get rid of your Debt, listen to the end.

Here is the direct link to DebtBuster which is referred to in this recording, have a read whilst you listen to the audio, definitely worth checking out.

http://www.simplybudgets.com.au/debtbuster/index.html

As for the free bonus mentioned, remember to email admin@simplybudgets.com.au after you have followed the instructions in the audio.

Would love to hear your stories, comments and ideas on the topics I raised, feel free to reply with comments below…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Australian Federal Budget

So the Federal Budget was a perfect example to all of us how NOT to run our household budgets.

Billions of dollars in planned deficit! For the rest of us, we wouldn’t be so crazy; then again we don’t have the ability to increase our income just by passing a few laws like the politicians do.

Did you notice that Wayne and Kev both kept referring to their future modelling of the economy. At least they have one thing right for sure. Looking to the future and making plans they will attempt to follow based on cashflow projections. That is exactly what my Simply Budgets software does but on a much simpler and smaller scale. It creates a picture of your financial future and gives you a plan to follow.

I will be in Canberra this Saturday running a CashFlow Clinic, teaching a room full of people how to budget. Maybe Wayne and Kev should come along too! I’m just not sure if they would be there to teach or to learn!

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