| Christians Against Poverty |
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Debt can have a dramatic impact on people’s lives, as Emma and Chris found. Emma shares their first-hand experiences  of poverty, and how they found hope and a solution. I had to stop working due to postnatal depression. We had a number of loans but there simply wasn’t enough money by the end of the month. When we tried moving money around on different credit cards it just got us deeper in debt. It just felt like the end was nigh. Some days there were up to 45 phone calls an hour. It was really scary. We genuinely thought that the bailiffs would come and empty our house of everything. Chris and I hardly spoke to each other as we knew the subject of money would come up and we knew it was affecting the kids as well. When the Christians Against Poverty centre manager came for the first visit, she took away all our financial paperwork. We were in tears as we talked through what we were going to do, and we felt like we were back in control. We understood that God still loved us, would forgive us and would not judge us for our debt. The next week, she returned with a budget for us. It was just great as CAP sorted out all our payments for the most important things like our electricity, gas, council tax and so on. They also negotiated with the credit card suppliers to reduce the monthly payments to an amount we can afford. Now, we’ve been on our first holiday in seven years and we’ve been able to decorate the downstairs of our house, and all paid for from our savings. If the children have school trips, we have saved up for those as well. We have been working with CAP for a year now and we will be debt-free in three years. The CAP centre has been the biggest blessing. It’s like you’ve got a whole new family there to support you through the process – like a ready made heaven. Christians Against Poverty is a national debt counselling charity with 125 centres all over the UK, based in local churches. If you’re struggling with debt, visit www.capuk.org or call 0800 328 0006 |
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