Globe and Mail Update Published on Monday, Jan. 18, 2010 3:31PM EST Last updated on Tuesday, Feb. 09, 2010 9:50AM EST
Mid-January is a time of broken New Year's resolutions, dark wintry weather and a stack of holiday credit card bills.
Already shouldering a record amount of mortgage and consumer debt, many Canadians are going to be in for a rough couple of weeks. Early indications are that Canadians are starting 2010 with a spending hangover and now its time to pay the piper.
"January is already a depressing time of year and getting those bills make it an even more blue and depressing time," says Credit Canada's Laurie Campbell. Despite that, she believes this is also a great time to recommit to making good financial decisions, including taking steps to aggresively tackle those post-Christmas bills.
On Monday, she provided us with these five tips on how to pare down holiday debt.
Ms. Campbell is the executive director at Credit Canada, a non-profit credit counseling agency that offers counselling to the financially distressed. She began her career at Credit Canada in 1990, moving to progressively more senior positions. She was responsible for the agency's education department, which presents seminars on money management and credit related issues to over 10,000 people each year, and was instrumental in the creation of Credit Education Week in 2006, now a national event.
Ms. Campbell joined us for an online discussion on Tuesday Jan. 19 about how to tackle those holiday bills and dig yourself back out of the debt hole. Click on the Cover It Live box below to see your questions and her answers.
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