Debt Consolidation Vancouver

I’ve always been an indecisive person.  I become enamored with something for a short period of time until I soon grow restless and in search of the next thing.  School turned out to be no different.  First I studied chemistry but I soon realized what a giant mistake that was (so boring!) so I moved on to philosophy and when I lost interest in that I moved on to psychology.

That is how my mountain of debt began, with school.  A year here, a year there, dancing through different disciplines and trying to find my niche. Post secondary education is a very expensive place to find oneself. After three years I was no further ahead and I had completed nothing.

Oh, and I had a load of debt and no skills to land me a decent paying job so back to serving in a restaurant it was. Only now I’m in my late 20’s and it is even less fun.

I’m not proud of it or anything, but I was what they called, a “super senior” in university. Not because I was the star basketball player or anything of that nature; rather, because it took me 6 years to graduate instead of the usual 4. Now let me explain myself… I’m not a dumb guy, nor am I a slacker. I am, however, extremely indecisive. I started out undecided as a first year, and then after a summer abroad in Rome, I decided that my life calling was to be an art curator. One Art History class later, I realized how wrong I was. Third year, it was journalism because I figured I’d be a great news anchor – after all, it’s like being an actor but without having to memorize lines. You can imagine how that went. Finally during fourth year, when all my friends were scrambling to complete their requirements and score internships, I found my calling. Business. And more specifically, accounting. Surprising even myself, it came quite naturally to me, and I liked the feeling of being good at something (for once!). Only problem was, I figured this out kind of late, and had to spend 2 extra years to get my degree. Great news for my career, but not-so-great news for my student loan debt.

Last week, my friend Vicky asked me for advice. She had just gotten laid off at work, and was freaking out because she was receiving all of her monthly bills, and had no clue how she was going to pay them off. I could tell she was real upset, right when I picked up the phone and heard her voice. And boy, did I know how she was feeling. After all, when Mark and I first fell into financial trouble, we even considered skipping town. But I knew Vicky, and I knew she would never even think about defaulting on her debt – after all, she has a little one to consider.
At first, I guess I was surprised that she would think of me to reach out to, of all people. But then I remembered that nobody really knew about what Mark and I had gone through in our younger days, except for my family. I realized, at that moment, that I had to be there for Vicky, 100 percent of the way, just like my sister was there for me, in my time of need.
The first thing I suggested to her was to call my debt management consultant at Full Circle and get his advice on how she could consolidate her debt. All I can hope for is that she’ll be able to get all her bills and debt under control, just like Mark and I did, and be able to live stress-free again.

At Full Circle Debt Solutions, we’ve got lots to be proud of. We’re proud to be Canadian, we’re proud to call Vancouver home, and we’re proud of our clients, all of whom have taken control of their debt. But what we’re most proud of is our team of debt management consultants.

As Canada’s largest independent group of licensed debt management professionals, they will walk you through every step of debt consolidation, even tailoring consumer credit counseling programs to your needs. By contacting your creditors to negotiate debt payment plans that are more manageable for you, our debt management experts help you get rid of those annoying calls from debt collection agencies.

So if you find yourself knee-deep in bills, give us a call. We’ll set you up with an expert from our team right away. We will help you reduce your interest rates, and cut down your monthly payments so that you can, once again, take control of your debt.

When Mark and I first moved in to our new apartment in Calgary, it was not all sunshine and roses. Both of us had been struggling a bit with our finances, trying to keep up with rent, bills, and student loans. So it was sort of a no brainer for us to live together so that we could split our living expenses.

But just when things started looking up, Mark lost his job at the architecture firm and had to go into freelance consulting. Our cash flow reduced to a meagre trickle, what with my pay as a legal assistant and his inconsistent employment. Add that to the trail of personal debt that had followed me from Vancouver, and we were in serious trouble.

That’s when the fighting started. And it was always about money, even if it wasn’t explicitly expressed. As you can guess, passive aggressiveness was usually my weapon of choice. Despite the fact that my finances were in a worse state than Mark’s, I picked fights over just about anything – not putting the toilet seat down, his gym membership fees, and the flavor of ice cream he’d buy – everything was fair game.

During one particularly ridiculous argument, while bickering about the recyclability of a pizza box, Mark’s pressed his lips together and his grinning eyes caught mine. In that instant, it dawned on me how crazy we had become, and I burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

Looking back at those days now brings a smile to my face, but only because we decided post-pizza box, to do something about our debt. We called Full Circle, and one of their debt management consultants guided us through the process of debt consolidation. We reconfigured our monthly bills to one low monthly payment and never looked back.

relationship saviour?

You know, before we called Full Circle, Mark and I were really in a tough place when we were living in Calgary.  As you know, Mark had lost his job at the architecture firm and was doing some freelance work that didn’t seem very promising.  I was an out of work art-school graduate with student loans to match. Our income was unstable, to say the least. And our debt? Out of control. To make matters worse, we were getting calls from debt collectors who would call incessantly to pester us about paying up.  They were a tricky bunch, calling from different numbers so that we wouldn’t know who was calling. Eventually, I took to screening out calls from unknown numbers completely. It didn’t matter that it could have been my mom calling me from her friend’s house, or my sister calling me from work. I wasn’t going to pick up!

There I was, working at a call centre with these other half-wits and misfits.

It turned out my set design education was only good for that – set design. And seeing how I hated all the nonsense that surrounded the career that I loved, here I was, back at Square One.

There was one major difference though. After art school, and trying to fit in, and borrowing against my credit card to make ends meet on minimum wage – I was more in debt that I had ever been in my whole life. When I realized that my minimum payment on my credit card was $100. And none of that – not one cent – was going towards the principle, I knew I was in big trouble.

I wasn’t about to ask my parents for money. They had just moved and they were in no position to raise their baby daughter all over again. If nothing else, they had faith in me, so I had to tough it out.

I had faith.

I saw sets in everything I did. I’d look across the cubicles and picture ways in my mind as to how to redesign them to catch a more elegant slant of the mid-day sun from the north-facing window. I’d envision managers in bowler caps and zut suits and my co-workers with bar codes for faces, mindlessly droning on into black phones about relentless, inane crap I could care less about.

It was a rotten job. So I started waitressing again, as well. I was living with my grandma now. And I couldn’t feel any worse about myself. I was in debt. I saw myself as a failure as an artist. And I was waitressing, again, after all this time and vision and passion and hurt – and every month my Visa hit me with a tax that meant nothing but ownership. I was now a slave to debt – and at $100/night in tips, and $12/hour at the call centre, there was no way – ever –that I would crawl out of this hole.

I needed a better job. I needed a way to earn twice what I was earning.

Debt was killing me.