CRASH PROGRAMMES

Many years ago when another enthusiast and I started the Family Budgeting Service Inc., we were heavily involved in trying to get people out of the financial cart . Time and time again I would go out with a budget form to a couple’s home, listen to all the reasons why the heavens had fallen in – how it was everybody’s fault but theirs – and how it was impossible to repay the multitude of debts and hire purchases.

How I kept my cool in some of these ridiculous situations amazes me. But I would cajole and persuade until finally we would arrive at a small surplus of income over expenditure. I would then add up the total of all debts, divide by the available surplus which duly produced the wonderful news that they would be clear of debt and say five years.

Always that would be too long a time-span. They would start off with good intentions but eventually fall by the wayside. After a few of these failures, I injected a bit of steel into my soul. I would arrive on their doorstep, make tracks for the kitchen table, turn the telly off, set them down in front of me and fire questions like a machine gun. In no time I would have all the information without having to listen to the historical diatribe of woes. I would then say, “You got yourselves into the cart but just as quickly you can get yourselves out again – would you like to go on a crash program?” Invariably they would say yes. I would strike while iron was hot and show them how to curtail all extraneous spending and live on an economy diet. That would enable us to produce such a good surplus that many times the time-frame would be reduced to a matter of months.

The interesting aspect was that when a crash program was instigated I didn’t have one failure because the light at the end of the tunnel was more visible and attainable.

When I graduated to using computers they enabled me to mellow because it somehow wasn’t me telling them what to do, but the results on the screen revealed what was necessary to produce the desired action. Often one partner would say to the other, ”Is that what’s wrong with our finances,” as if suddenly all was revealed in a blinding flash. Invariably he would continue, “I’ll have to work some overtime, or you had better get a part time job.”

When they had run out of steam, I would offer the advice that it’s fifty times easier to reduce overheads than generate more income. Then we would go through the pruning process on the screen and at no time the shortfall would be turned into a generous surplus.

Finally the crash program to get rid of all the debts could then commence in earnest knowing that provision was made for every item of necessary expenditure for the ensuring twelve months.