How to help a friend?

maisiegirl

Hi, I've been reading the site and forums for a while and have managed (with all your help) to sort out my own finances. I'm lucky I found the site and only have a small debt, it was more about budgetting for me, but I need your advice on how to help a friend.
I've shown her this site after her having a dim LBM.
So far she has:
Completed the budget planner
Started a spending diary (don't know if it's still going)
Started daily clicks
Got a clubcard
Got cheaper car insurance and cashback

I will get her to post her SOA for you to look at.She has remortgaged to consolidate several times.

And after all that I'll get to the point.

I've just had a text from her.She has no money in the bank and DDs due to come out and thinks she has a gambling problem.
I've googled 'gambling addiction' but there are loads of sites so any experience/recomendations on how I can help would be great. I know she has to help herself but she is scared and has been trying to ignore the situation. I just want to help and point her in the right direction to get professional help.

Thanks for reading this far I didn't realise how much I can waffle.

fiddling_flower_petals

Sorry Maisiegirl no advice re: gamblng addiction, hope your friend appreciates and recognises a "Very Good Friend" for you help and advice so far.

She may need to accept help from GA or similar as this is an Addiction and needs to be treated as one

maisiegirl

Thanks but I don't feel like a good friend at the moment.I gave her the daily clicks info and thats how she found the online bingo etc sites.

Bayblue

Well, she has online access so surely the best you could do for your friend would be to give her the details of this site, no? That way she would have access to all of the advice and information here as well as your ongoing encouragement and support.

maisiegirl

She does have the detail of this site and has it bookmarked. I hope this is her true LBM then she can get advice from all you kind knowledgeable people.

CCCS_Sarah

Hello,

Sounds like she good to have a friend like you helping her out. There is a couple of different places she could look into for the gambling i.e. Gamblers Anonymous 0870 050 8880 www.gamblersanonymous.org.uk.

It’s a hard one with debt and gambling because to get out of debt you need to work to a budget but if you have a gambling addiction then the temptation is always high to ‘dip into the budget’. So the first thing that really needs to be addressed is the gambling and bringing that under control.

With the debts – this is something I can help with. If she has lots of direct debits coming out of her bank and the money is not there your friend needs to cancel the non priority direct debits – these would be unsecured loans, credit cards, catalogues etc. If she does not have enough for the full payments she needs to be making token payments of an amount she can afford to pay even if its £1!

It’s so important that she keep’s her priorities up to date these would be things such as Mortgage, Council Tax etc because the implications of not paying these are a lot worse.

If your friend has any debts with her bank, she will need to open a basic bank account with a Bank where she has no debts – this is just to make sure all her money is safe.

The list above is something that will help in the short term and once that is under control she would need to look at a long term plan to clear the debts. It would be hard to advice on this via the forum but CCCS do have a free online debt advice facility called Debt Remedy. Debt Remedy will ask your friend to input her income and expenditure, debts etc and the system would let her know a long term plan to clear the debts. This link will take you to Debt Remedy.

Good luck and let me know if I can help with anything else

Sarah

maisiegirl

Thankyou so much for the info and links.There is a questionaire on the gamblersanon link so I'll get her to do that and she can take it from there.
Off to search for info on basic bank accounts, I know it's around here somewhere.

Again thankyou all for you help.