With campaigning for the General Election now well and truly under way, the spotlight on the amount of personal debt is lying on the shoulders of the British public is only going to increase. With reports in the mainstream media detailing in great length the extent of the country’s problems, there is clamour for a change in attitude towards our current over-reliance on credit.
Without doing so, we are warned, we are faced with the very real prospect of spending our lives battling debt in one way or another – something that is the cause of much stress and anguish for a huge number of people, especially here in Scotland. Whether it is credit cards, bank loans or borrowing from payday lenders, it seems it is a problem that is just refusing to go away.
Although there have been small measures to try and curtail this downward spiral, it is felt throughout the political spectrum that not enough is being done to help people tackle their financial difficulties in the proper manner. While a cap on the charges that can be imposed upon a borrower by payday lending companies has been introduced recently, ‘still the public drowns in bills, with little respite in sight’, according to shadow business minister Stella Creasy. While the public can wait for changes to be put through Westminster or Hollywood, for many of us our problems are much more pressing and require attention sooner rather than later; the need for evasive action on debt has rarely been greater in the modern era.
The bill itself will provide a small piece of respite for those in financial difficulty, but it is hard to see how big an impact it will have later down the line. Interest rates are now capped at £15 per day, and defaults have been set at a maximum of £15.
On top of this, customers can now no longer be charged twice the amount they originally borrowed – a move that prevents small debts snowballing out of control. While this is all well and good, it doesn’t necessarily provide the structured support required to beat serious financial problems.
As the shadow minister said in her statement, the cap needs to be lowered ‘to have real bite’ – until that point (a point that may indeed be a long way off), we need to work towards resolution positively. With the credit industry under pressure to adhere to ethical practice, the opportunity that the securing of a protected trust deed provides to Scottish residents is something that could have a serious impact on any financial predicament. Instead of leaving your loans and debts in the hands of creditors eager to put the boot in before stricter regulations come in place, protecting your debt and structuring your repayments will allow you to regain control over your finances and start to move forward out of the red.
Here at Trust Deed Scotland, we are a team of experienced personal finance experts who specialise in helping people get their lives back on track.
While we are aware of how suffocating money troubles can be, we are also aware of the invaluable benefit our service can provide for people struggling with money.
For more information on what a Scottish Trust Deed entails, what is a Trust Deed and how Trust Deeds work and whether it could provide a way out of your current financial predicament, please contact one of the team today.