Finances - by Darylynn Starr Rank
February, 2005

Everybody who gets confused by the topic of money, credit, debt, savings, spendings, retirement, bankruptcy, mediation, arbitration, and so on, raise your hand.

Now anybody who gets nervous, anxious, afraid, upset, annoyed, angry, panicky, uptight, worried, and so on, about any of the aforementioned topics, raise your other hand. 

I can’t type. Both my hands are in the air…

So much has changed. Money used to seem much simpler. Actually was much simpler, I’m pretty sure. I remember our first budget when my husband and I were students. Cash divided among eight or ten envelopes took care of our financial situation. Really! But not anymore.

The difficult and complex financial situations people find themselves in these days (especially at the end of a relationship) is the area Doug Wellbanks, former Director of Debtor Assitance, Orderly Payment of Debt, and Debt Collection, specializes in.

Imagine you’re one of those deeply unfortunate couples who bought your dream apartment only to find out it was one of BC”s infamous ‘leaky condos’. It’s one of the few (thank goodness there aren’t many) that can’t be fully repaired. You have two young kids who are highly sensitive to mold (I think, in fact, we all are!) so you absolutely have to move out as quickly as possible. And of course, no one is going to buy your lovely, leaky apartment.

So you’re deep in debt, a huge wet albatross around your neck, with a new place and new mortgage, and you start borrowing even more to pay it all off. Getting deeper in debt as you go. You’re distraught, angry, and scared. You struggle to cope, but in the end you do what many of us tend to do, you take it out on each other. And finally your marriage falls apart. 

Then begins even worse economic stress. Trying to come to terms with the multitude of money factors involved in a divorce. Setting up two separate households. Lawyers. Mediators. Child support. But the creditors are coming after you anyway (even though the law says child support comes first, before everything else! Isn’t that cool?) “You owe us the money,” they say. “You have a moral obligation to honour your debt with us,” they say. And you feel guilty. Heck, creditors actually get training in how to make us feel that guilt. Then they add the parting shot, “We loaned you this money in good faith!” 

Doug Wellbanks questions whether it all was actually in good faith. He talks about the destructively negative quality of many creditor/debtor relationships. “Behind every bankruptcy is a creditor,” he noted. What a thought. 

Financial disasters can be waiting around shockingly surprising corners. Leaky condos, illness, downsizing, divorce (the expression used to be ‘a married woman with children is just a divorce away from welfare’ – things have changed, thank goodness, but still…) 

Learning more about the increasingly complex economic world we live in could  have a huge payoff (pun utterly intended).

Did it ever occur to you that it might be a bad thing when banks granted you that beloved line of credit? It never did to me. 

But, as my lesson for today, I’m going to think about it.

Take care all.

Darylynn Starr Rank (psychologist/writer) works part-time for Family Services of Greater Vancouver as a group facilitator. Her articles appear bi-weekly in The Record (New Westminster) and the Richmond Review.

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