Forget about Small Business Saturday

A Mixed Blooms spoof showing that it's important to ignore the Mom and Pop’s and to shop at MEGA MARKET instead!

Mike LeClear on the Honor Yourself First Show

"When people are overwhelmed by debt . . . I typically recommend they make two appointments:  One with a legitimate credit counselor, preferably affiliated with the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.  Another with a bankruptcy attorney."  - Liz Pulliam Weston, MSN Money (2010)

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Personal financial problems have been linked to reductions in workplace productivity, embezzlement, depression, marital problems, and even murder/suicide.  With feelings of desperation and helplessness, people will grasp at any shred of hope, and deceptive and fraudulent debt relief companies take full advantage of our vulnerability.

When there is financial trouble there is seldom a single "good" solution, one must simply decide upon the least damaging among the various alternatives.  For an overview of common alternatives that people consider, read the Federal Trade Commission's "Coping with Debt".

In the below 30-minute video, Mike LeClear, Director of Counseling for FinancialHope Counseling and Education, a National Foundation for Credit Counseling member agency located in northeastern Indiana, is interviewed on a local broadcast, the Honor Yourself First show.

I recommend this discussion of credit counseling not only for someone in debt, but for every financial educator, social worker, front-line supervisor, HR professional, union representative, and parent and grandparent.

 

Though there are effective, reputable counseling agencies such as FinancialHope out there, they are outnumbered by the unsavory ones, and it's very difficult to tell the difference in advance.  For a referral to a reputable organization, click on "Kurt's Picks" toward the upper right of the screen under "Pages".