“Fred and Ginger” are a married couple with two teenagers at home. They first started meeting with an LSS Financial Counselor in 2014 through the Financial Choice benefit offered through Everence®.
They came in because they have been using credit cards to replace lost income when Fred lost his job and took early retirement due to health issues (he was in his early 60s). Because of taking early retirement he could not earn more than $15,000 a year on top of Social Security and their card balances had exploded to upwards of $65,000.
When they met with their Financial Counselor the first order of the day was to look at expenses: they were about $400 in the hole every month.
They set to listing priority expenses and deciding what could be reduced or cut out completely. There wasn’t much as they were living quite frugally; it was the $1700 in credit card payments that was pushing them into the red each month.
They enrolled in a Debt Management Plan and saw their interest cut in half and their payment was reduced by $432 per month. Three years later they are over two thirds of the way to paying down their debt, with just $25,000 left to go!