1 You wouldn’t put all your soup in a basket, so don’t put all your debts in one
One easy payment, the ads say, as if a little light tidying were the solution to chaotic debt problems. Faced with insurmountable multiple debt, most people try to borrow their way out. This is like mending a leaking bucket by joining up all the little holes to make one big hole. Repeat this several times until you realise it doesn’t work.
2 In multiple debt land, time is geological
When I told my first client I would offer 31 pence a month off a debt of £12,000, she gasped. It would take 3,225 years to pay it off. “Don’t worry,” I said cheerfully. “Just think about it as being in debt for the rest of your life. Be positive: governments will fall, continents will shift, cities will crumble and be rebuilt, but your debts will remain standing throughout.” This, it turned out, was an insensitive way to explain the situation to my client. My bedside manner improved over the years.
3 It is legally permissible to laugh at bailiffs and drop milk bottles on their heads from upstairs
There’s case law to prove this. Bailiff law is like vampire lore. Bailiffs can come into the house only if invited over the threshold. Once inside they take an inventory of goods that they can return to remove. The courts can leave a bailiff on your premises to check you don’t move anything. This is called close possession and a bailiff has to provide his own flask and sandwiches. Bailiffs are not allowed to take away “wearing apparel in use”, so balance your plasma TV on your head and say it’s a hat. In one case, a landlord gained entry to a flat by jigsawing a hole through the floor from below. This was held to be lawful entry.
4 Debtors are expected to roll cigarettes from the hair of their dead pets
A bailiff hammering on your door doesn’t usually encourage you to stop smoking, but if you include fags in your financial statement, creditors will be as angry as if you were employing two personal pastry chefs and a private pole dancer. Creditors dislike lots of things, mainly things that you spend money on instead of giving it to them, things like pets and costly middle-class pastimes such as horse-tasting, dance-upuncture or aromabingo – anything that makes them think that you are having fun while they sit up at night writing your nightclub bills into a fat ledger.
5 The principles of debt counselling are that there are no principles
The debt counselling method is to maximise income, sort out emergencies like disconnection and eviction, then contact non-priority creditors – the credit cards, catalogues and door-to-door loan companies. Non-priority creditors don’t like debt counsellors. No one likes to be anyone’s non-priority. The technical way to describe the relationship between your client and his non-priority creditors is “F*** ’em, look after yourself, they’ll survive.”
6 It’s sometimes a good idea to borrow money off one card to pay another
This can work for a short time but never works for long. It’s like trying to stand still by running down the up-escalator at the exact same speed as it rolls in the opposite direction. You can do it for a while if you get the timing right, but it takes a lot of concentration and energy, and in the end it’s easier to get off and stand still.
7 Multiple debt problems can be fun
Most of my clients were cheerful optimists who lived life to the full. This meant that it wasn’t at all unpleasant to sit down with a succession of debtors and talk about sorting out their problems – there was laughter and joy sometimes.
8 You have to pay a fee to go bankrupt
It costs more than £200 – and the court won’t accept a credit card.
9 People who sell Christmas hampers door-to-door are not your best friends
Before I was a debt counsellor I thought a brimming Christmas hamper was a sign of great luxury and abundance. But I discovered that door-to-door peddlers of this sort of thing also deliver extortionate loans at annual rates of over 100 per cent. And, although these companies aren’t illegal loan sharks who decorate their walls with your kneecaps, they can be very persuasive and like to come up your path on giro day.
10 A giant magnet with Acme written on the side clamped on to your meter won’t reduce your fuel bills in the end
But plugging into the street lamppost supply might help. I met a client who had learnt how to fiddle her electricity token meter by fitting a Benson & Hedges cigarette packet into the slot (other brands are available, but it’s the metallic coating, you see) and striking the end with a gas cooker igniter. This sent an electric surge through the meter and added loads of credit. She showed her neighbours and it was free power all round until the electricity company found out. When I visited she had car batteries running the lights, and a power lead snaked out of her window into her neighbour’s house for the heating. Back in the days of coin meters I had a client who used to make 50 pence pieces out of ice; when the inspector opened up his machine it was always empty, except for a damp patch. But if you steal fuel, your supplier will estimate how much they think you stole and charge you for it.
11 County court judges like debtors more than they like solicitors from the bank
The average county court judge hates solicitors but loves normal members of the public like you. This is because he used to be a solicitor but he’s never been a normal member of the public, so to him you are exotic. And it is usually a he. A judge will find every way he can to humiliate the solicitor. Take advantage of this by pointing out grammatical errors in the solicitor’s papers. Never wear a suit to court – the judge will ask you with a friendly smirk whether it was from Next Directory, which is one of your debts (Next Directory is always one of your debts). One of my clients wore the mascot outfit of his local football team to his hearing as evidence of the extra job he’d taken on.
12 Credit companies want you to owe them money. They like it. It makes them happy
As long as you aren’t really poor, this is how credit companies make their money. Creditors like people to be in debt. More interest, more charges. But they don’t like it if you take liberties and pay nothing at all. Their ideal customer is someone who borrows regularly, messes up now and again to incur a few penalties, but has enough dying aunties to pay it all off.
13 You can buy stuff on credit – as much as you like – and they can’t take it back
In the old days we had hire-purchase, or HP, also known as the never-never, or the drip. HP was invented so Edwardians could buy sewing machines, pianos and moustache wax. Nowadays, you just use shop credit or plastic and the stuff is yours. In fact you can buy stuff and sell it to pay off your other debts (though beware of this – if you go bankrupt, it will be considered an offence and you could go to prison).
14 A garnishee order does not involve salad
A garnishee order means a creditor can take money out of your bank account. They find out about your bank accounts by ordering you to attend court for an oral examination. This is not like what happened to Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man. Nevertheless, the best way of avoiding this is not to go. If you don’t go, and you keep not going, when they get round to it they will hire a van and call on all the houses of all the people who haven’t turned up for stuff in the past, arrest them and take them down to court. The best way to avoid this happening leads me to the next point.
15 Never be available at home to personal or telephone callers
If credit companies can’t get hold of you, they give up. The statute of limitation says that if a creditor has been out of contact for six years, a debt can’t be enforced. This means you should never reply to a letter. Ignore them all. Treat ’em mean and it doesn’t keep ’em keen – they just lose interest. By the way, this does not apply to all debts – check with an adviser first because...
16 You can lose your house if you don’t pay
I know your house is no palace, with its built-in foot spa and Uncle Joe’s Liver Pills painted on the gable end, but these people have no taste.
17 The quiet ones are the worst
Beware those creditors who send measured and polite threats – they probably mean it. The louder and more persistent the threats, the more desperate the creditor is and the weaker his position. One creditor was so desperate for leverage he acquired an office on a street called High Court and wrote these words in red at the top of every letter. When one of these desperate creditors rings you, tell them they are being put on hold and play the piano accordion down the phone. Piano accordions are available by credit agreement at most large music stores.
18 Your local council hates sending people to prison for not paying council tax, so you can take them to the edge on this one, just for fun
But some creditors are tough. The Inland Revenue is Uma Thurman out of Kill Bill. If you don’t pay them ahead of everyone else, they will shove a hand down your throat and yank out your heart. They are taught this by martial arts experts and it is performed under medical supervision. It plays no role in getting people to repay their tax debts, they just like how it feels.
19 If someone rings you up and says they want to hire a bouncy castle and you agree to hire them a bouncy castle even though you know nothing about bouncy castles and you then continue to trade as the bouncy castle hire man who used to live at your address, and who turns out to owe lots of money in back taxes and VAT and who, to all intents and purposes, you have now become, you will end up in court for fraud.
This happened.
20 Life is beyond some people’s means
A debtor is someone who hasn’t got enough money for the lifestyle he or she chooses. Most frequently this is a lifestyle most people call normal life – like having a phone, a telly, some clothes, heating the house and running the water. What should we do, kill them all?
David Gaffney worked as a debt counsellor for 12 years in Manchester and Birmingham. His comic thriller about multiple debt problems, ‘Never Never’, is out now
