Is Personal Finance Too Easy To Come By?

A report from the BBC today has outlined the findings of a report by the Griffiths Commission on Personal Debt. They want an end to aggressive marketing techniques for credit products, saying debt is too easy to come by.

A representative of Sterling Trust UK Ltd expanded on this and added the following; statement; "In years gone by banks and responsible lending institutions frowned on what they called "Loan Sharks." These are basically people who have few or no morals and flout the law for financial gain.

Over the last few years, due to the phenomenal rise in the amount of credit and proportionately in the amount of adverse credit i.e. lending to people who have missed, reduced or defaulted on payments previously; the divide has narrowed. Banks have looked on enviously at the huge profits made by lending to people with poor credit ratings and decided that they were missing out on a highly lucrative slice of the market.

The upshot of all this is that under extreme pressure from their shareholders to increase profits, banks and other lenders have relaxed lending criteria. This has led to the cost of borrowing plummeting and the ease of access increasing, helping to fuel the current credit crisis. In the meantime however, the banks have all recorded record profits because of all the real costs of borrowing such as overdraft and other charges. So don't feel too sorry for them.

At the same time we have seen a greed and panic fuelled escalation in house prices, which has long been forecast as unsustainable and unrealistic. For the average man (or woman) in the street who has one house and use it as their main residence, they never make any money on their property.

If you don't believe this, imagine the following scenario and then tell me how you would make money! Imagine for a second that you live in a semi-detached property. It matters not whether it's a house, bungalow etc, or what the location is. Your property is number 2 and the adjacent one is number 4.

For any reason you care to imagine, you decide you want to move from number 2 to number 4. The prices are identical as are the properties (just a mirror image) the mortgage payments and everything else. With legal fees, searches, moving costs etc it costs you £5 - £10,000 to move. I defy anyone to show me where there is a profit in that....

Unless of course you are from the Inland Revenue (Stamp Duty and other taxes), an estate agent (sale fees, valuation fees etc.), a solicitor or conveyancer (legal costs), or a mortgage lender (no need for explanation). It then becomes maybe a little bit clearer why they are the very ones prompting, cajoling and encouraging us to leap for the rungs of that slippery property ladder. This might seem a cynical view, but unfortunately there is an awful lot of truth in the analysis and that same truth is now beginning to dawn in millions of impoverished households around the UK.

People need to forget about any feelings of embarrassment, stigma, misgivings etc and if they are struggling with debt, reach out for help. We are able to offer an olive branch that is easy and painless to grasp. Because we are a charity and have no charges whatsoever we can help people that are often unreachable. Our site does all the work so people can manage their debts themselves with confidence.

For further infomation just log on to www.sterlingtrust.org.uk


Free debt help charity that enables anybody with an unsecured debt problem to manage and control it themselves. Simple to use but very powerful and totally free from charge. There are 3 simple steps to debt freedom, take the first one now!