Do you realise that 90% of your salary is going to paying your debt, leaving you with only 10% to survive — and you still have to buy food, electricity and water?" Asking that question of "Miriam" was Freddy Kamutiba, DebtBusters’ top financial consultant, who took her call this week on the floor of DebtBusters’ huge call centre in Cape Town.
I’d been invited to listen in on several of these calls; calls which had clearly taken those on the other end of the line a lot of courage and commitment to make. Like many who are horribly over-indebted, Miriam hadn’t really interrogated her numbers: all she knew when she made that call to the country’s largest debt counselling company was that "my debt has got too much"...
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