This marks month two of our series in which we feature a United Way Partner Agency’s client experience, demonstrating the impact that donations to United Way of Sheboygan County are making.  This month’s client experience comes from Family Service Association’s Budget and Credit Counseling Program, also known as Consumer Credit Counseling Services of Sheboygan.

Since the 2008 financial collapse, the economic recovery has left many people behind.  The USA today reported that one out of three consumers have less than $1,000.00 in savings, making them vulnerable to the next unexpected event.   Regardless of income, anyone can be financially vulnerable.  Vulnerability can come from lack of financial education resulting in poor choices, or life transitions such as death, marriage, unemployment, medical issues, etc. Many people have unmet financial goals, such as inadequate savings for retirement, credit card debt or student loans.  The following is a typical story of how clients can turn it around, if they seek our confidential financial services funded by our United Way.

Years ago, Marilyn’s adult life started as normal as it could be.  She owned a home, had a good paying job, was in a happy marriage, and had a son in whom she was very proud.

However, like most normal lives, a wrench had to be thrown in the mix.  Marilyn’s husband came back from deployment and suffered from depression due to his injuries after serving in the Navy.  He became angry and turned to alcohol to medicate the suffering going on inside of him.  He spent the last of his days at the VA hospital and when Marilyn’s husband died of a heart attack and she was left alone to raise her 9 year old son.   

Not only was she left a single mother but she was left with a mortgage and many debts.  As the years passed Marilyn had to make a hard decision.  She had a house she could not keep up while the mortgage was falling behind and the creditors were overwhelming.  So Marilyn made the decision to file bankruptcy and gave up her home.  This eased the financial burden for a few years until her son came of college age and wanted to study at a university.  Marilyn insisted on helping her son get through college and wanted to support him the whole way through.  This created more debt and without his extra help the debts starting piling up again.  Marilyn found herself turning to payday loan stores, credit cards, and also fell months behind on her rent.

This is when Marilyn heard about Consumer Credit Counseling Service (CCCS).  She knew she had income between her job and veteran’s benefits, but she just could not seem to make the ends come together.  She scheduled an appointment with a credit counselor, and together they went through a spending plan. Marilyn had plenty of income but the interest rates on her credit cards, payday loans, and a lack of budgeting structure were sinking the boat! 

CCCS was able to get Marilyn set-up on a debt management plan (DMP) for five of her credit cards and save her an average of 12 percent of interest of over $200 a month!  They then turned to her payday loan and gave them a call to see if they were willing to work with the agency and the DMP.  The payday loan store would not work with the agency but was willing to drop Marilyn’s interest from 135% to 107%.

Finding this unacceptable, CCCS called Marilyn’s financial institution, and explained the circumstance to the loan officer.  The next day Marilyn was able to refinance the $2000 payday loan that she had been paying $294 a month on for three years to a loan with at 6% interest and the payment was only $98 a month!

Marilyn then came in for a follow-up appointment to work out a weekly budget to help give her more structure on how to spend her money.  In working out the weekly budget they were able to get her caught up on her back utility bills, her rent, and also get one small payday loan paid off in two months!

With guidance from Consumer Credit Counseling Service, and with a little structure in her budget, Marilyn’s future looks much brighter.  “I would recommend these services to anyone,” Marilyn said, “I will share my story if it means that it could help someone else.”