Many can be helped, some can’t...

Press, 13 April 1978, Page 17

Many can be helped, some can’t...

The Household Budget and Advisory Service has been hel. ing families and individuals in Christchurch with budgeting problems since 1968.

The service, which is run from the Citizen’s Advice Bureau headquarters in Gloucester Street, went into abeyance at the end of 1973. But within a year it was set on its feet again, with a once-only grant from the City Council.

In January, 1975, Mrs J. Hickley, the service’s secretary and organiser, was appointed on a part-time basis and has put in 20 hours a week since then. She sees between six and 36 people each week. Most of • , ’.em come with a

handful of bills and no apparent means of paying them.

In just over three years working for the service. Mrs Hickley has found that the people who call in or ring up for budget advice fall into four categories:

1. People who are not in financial trouble but who find the/ need a bit of help to make budgeting easier. They require advice only and comprise about 45 per cent of the service’s clients.

2. People (15 per cent) who are in financial difficulty but whose need is not great. They are given advice, more detailed than for those in the first category, and they are -*:’e to

put’ this advice into practice on their own.

3. People (20 per cent) who have debts and who cannot cope on their own. Their income is way below the amount required to meet ' their commitments, and they have to reassess their entire manner of living and decide what they can do without. Once their individual budget has been worked out, their commitments have been reduced or their income has been increased (usually by the wife going out to work), their fint.nances are put under the control of a volunteer field officer working for the service. All the family’s income is banked,

and the only cash they have access to is a set amount each week to cover transport and personal spending. 4. People (20 per cent) whose circumstances are beyond the reach of the service. They just do not have enough money to cover the huge wad of debts they have run up, not even by paying them off over a period of years. Last year, of all the people in Christchurch who turned to the service for help, 40 had to be turned away because they fell into this category.

“Me of them were one-income families who were simply over-com-mitted,” Mrs Hickley says. “Even jus’ by buy' a

house or a lot of furniture they had put themselves into a position where they just couldn’t meet their debts.”

Mrs Hickley blames society for their plights. Advertising and social convention demand that a young couple should . o- e into a new house of their own and fill it up with a lot of new furniture. “I blame the advertisers who tell people they can have something for no deposit and for only a few cents or dollars a week,” she says. “It’s that word ‘only’ that gets me.” One family had come to her with hire-purchase commitments of $5l a week. Most of it consisted of weekly payments of ex-

pensive household appliances and furniture, and they had just kept on buying more and more on hire purchase without realising what they were committing themselves to on a weekly basis. Most of the people who turn to the service for help are single-income families earning between $7B to $95 a week net. All are over-committed in one way or another. Many of them have to give up their car in order to meet their debtors, unless it is absolutely necessary to get them to work. “A car is a luxury these days,” Mrs Hickley smothers have had to give up other luxuries that

they always took for granted. And most have found it necessary to have a second income in the family. Mrs Hickley says that there are many ways families could economise, saving themselves heartache later. More use could be made of gardens for produce, ,and less .emphasis should be placed on the need to have home ownership and all the furniture to go with it. “In some ways it’s better to rent than tie yourself up with mortgages and high interest payments,” she adds.