Bankruptcy day -16th Oct

dojoman

Great post DI :T:T:T:T:T

rossireps

good post di
even though my husband leaving didnt help my situation,he never held a gun to my head to spend money i didnt have.

alastairq

ust to add my 2 pence worth, Whilst others like Kepar use the words Fault and blame to describe their own actions (which is ok for them to use them about themselves) i prefer to use the word responsibility as i feel that it removes the sense deliberateness which I don't believe is the case with most bankrupts. Nonetheless whilst not being deliberate in the majority of the cases i have seen, and i have seen thousands from the most blameless to the most culpable and criminal, the bankrupt is at least partly responsible to a varying degree for the situation they end up in. only a small minority that i have seen have no responsibility at all, ie there was nothing they could have done to avoid it. Ill give a couple of examples to show what i mean. (and much of this applies to people wjo have not yet gone bankrupt but are one career changing event are way from it). I see many people that say but i had a good credit score and i always paid my bills on time. That may be true but when you look at their finances you see that they were each month spending a liitle bit more than they earned and using credit to make up the difference. So each month they were a little bit more in debt then they were the month before, until one day either they couldnt earn any more of like in the financial crisis the banks stopped lending any more. Now that isnt deliberate at no time did they plan not to pay their creditors back. But it was unsustainable to carry on and therefore they should take some of the responsibility for their situation.

Another one i hear is well i was always on a good wage until i had to take a pay cut, that may be true but if you were on a good wage what was the need to have £50,000 of debt why could they not have just spent the good wage they had, the person has left themselves exposed by having that debt hanging over them, so whilst in the end there was nothing they could do when they took a pay cut, they have to shoulder the responsibility of leaving themselves open financially to changes that do happen occasionally.

I agree with the two scenarios above, but would add that, in these hard times it is too easy to look back with hindsight with regards to 'responsibility'??

Over the past decade-and a-half, prior to the economic crashes and downturns, there was MASSIVE state-sponsored, and commercially-sponsored encouragement of the feel-good factor.

Sponsorship that cost billions of pounds in advertising, peer pressure, social pressure, you name it!

The objective?

To win us all over to the good life!

To encourage us all to effectively over-spend, as it wouldn't matter!

And it worked..and worked well. [Would we have the advertising and public relations industry we have today if it didn't??]

And..if the financial industry hadn't been so irresponsible.....and the banking crash and property market hadn't taken such a deep and sudden tumble....would we still be talking about such personal financial irresponsibility today?

I think not!

As an example, using DI [if it is not minded?].....those who worked for the Insolvency Service, some ten years ago....would have considered they had...if they wanted...a 'job-for-life'....with a modest but capable pension at the end to retire on.


I know I did.[still do,as it happens....but for very different reasons than ten years ago!]

There really wasn't anything out there which was telling us to the contrary.


Ordinary people....[who inwardly seek security and comfort in their life]..........were and are not cynical enough to withstand the pressures applied.

It is many a generation gone now, who...in the backs of their minds, were conscious of worrying about 'where the next meal will come from'....


I agree we are all..in some way..responsible for our actions....but it must be remembered, we are all victims of influence as well.

And if the freely-available credit hadn't been so 'freely-available', then perhaps many more individuals would not have found themselves trapped on the slippery downwards spiral that is modern debt?


[and yes, I think modern [personal] debt is actually a very different sort of beast in origin, to debt of old.]

Lou67

Whilst I do think that D.I. has a point on a couple of things; I find the whole sentiment of the post somewhat naive and unrealistic. This 'well it's your own fault you got into this situation' attitude that he advocates (as do some others on here,) may be true in some cases, but it's remarkably condescending. It's people who say this, that would say to a woman suffering severe post natal depression 'well it was YOU who chose to have a baby; DEAL with it.

People aren't stupid, and they don't need to be told by people that it's their OWN FAULT they got into debt. People KNOW that! (Although IMO, the banks have to take SOME of the 'responsibility.' Whether the 'bankrupt-bashers' like it or not.)

The vast majority of the people who went bankrupt never ever intended to do so, and fully intended to pay back everything when they first borrowed it. Most people who are suffering severe financial difficulties, have always been hard-working and decent people who pay their way, and to have this finger-wagging 'well you brought it on yourself' attitude, (like SOME people have,) talking to people like they're naughty little children, is both condescending and insulting.

The majority of people in debt and who went bankrupt are the victim of this enormous recession; not some stupid morons who can't control their spending, and many are the victim of job loss, marriage breakdown and ill health: some even got to the point where they could not return to work at all. Some of the biggest companies ever, that were around for a century went under, despite trying to keep their heads above water.

So did all of those companies (including dozens that go under every day) bring it on themselves through stupidity and being reckless? Some companies went for many many decades... It's the financial situation that the country is in that is the main reason why lots of companies have gone under, and also it is the reason for MANY peoples' debts. Yes there are a few that are irresponsible, but there are more people who are a victim of the recession and job loss and marriage breakdown or ill health and so on...

Seriously, I bet if you took EVERY adult in this country who did not have SOME kind of credit, the remainder of people would fit onto a football pitch! Well maybe not LOL, but there are certainly a lot more more IN debt of some kind, than those who are not! So on the whole, I found D.I's post unrealistic and condescending, and I am glad I dealt with people with different attitudes when *I* went bankrupt.

And FTR, yes we did have no choice but to have our house taken, but we decorated it and did the garden and kept making sure it was OK even after the bankruptcy, until it was taken, to make sure the building society got a decent price for it, whereas many people would have trashed it. The building society even thanked us for leaving it nice as they got a good price for it.

I bid you all good day. I am now off the the museum for a nice sunny afternoon with my family. :j I shan't be coming back onto this thread, as I have said all I want to say.

alastairq

Another two-penn'orth?

We are all guilty and responsible...for the naivety we have all displayed in the past.

Firstly, for believing [or should I say, not wanting to disbelieve?] that the good-life bubble wouldn't burst at some point.

Ask any 'house-owner' why they 'bought' property in the first place? [or..ask yourselves?]


I'm willing to bet there was rather a lot of 'hope' behind the decision to buy?


Ask anybody who took out an endowment mortgage in the 1980's, why they did so?

Promises?

In the past, most of us would have relied upon advice and counselling from 'professionals' in the finance industry.

Simply because, the complexities of the financial packages we were being encouraged to sign up to were in fact, pretty much beyond our comprehension.


we were all 'responsible' for our actions.......but what were the influences over our decisions at the time?

And, what were we very convincingly told were the prospects for the future? [Told to us by the very professionals we rely upon in the first place?]

Yet, look what happened to the endowment mortgage market 15 years later? [and 15 years is probably a time span beyond what most younger folk care to look?}

In the 1980's, how many of you could, or would, have believed what actually, eventually happened? [be honest, folks?}

[I was a 'lucky' one....I underwent a timely divorce, which rather sorted things out!]

So, do we consider those who got 'burned' by the endowment mortgage boom to be fools, or irresponsible?

Maybe...with hindsight....?


To be fair, the subject of 'responsibility' can be taken further.... someone petitioning for BR is in fact, fully living up to their responsibilities [to their creditors]!

Where the moralists' arguments fail lies in a misunderstanding of what BR really is.


Where we do have a responsibility , lies with how we learn from the catastrophe's that we undergo.

[How we learn from our experiences is a topic very close to my professional life]


The danger is if we prefer to lay responsibility entirely at another's' doorstep.

If we convince ourselves that the blame lies squarely with another party...exactly what are we going to learn from our experience?

Pretty much nothing!

If we all recognise our own contributions to the events, then we can learn...and take steps to mitigate such situations in the future.

Unfortunately, the lessons we needed to learn were all pooh-poohed ten years ago!