Two maxed-out cards, a line of credit and an overdraft on a bank account. That's how far Scott went to keep from asking Mom and Dad for financial help. The 48-year-old Toronto man had gone to his parents in the past for fast money. But, he says, grovelling to them one more time was not an option.
“I just couldn't go and ask them, and that was just me,” he says. “It was just embarrassment.”
Scott, who declined to share his last name because most people in his life don't know about his financial struggles, says pride and ego has made requests to loved ones a last resort.
He's just one of many Canadians who say they would rather pick up another credit card, open a line of credit or take out a second mortgage than ask their friends and family for dough in a financial emergency, a new global survey of 15 countries has found.
While Canadians tend to have more savings than those in other nations (we ranked fourth out of 15 for being able to come up with cash in a pinch), we're almost twice as likely to exhaust other options before hitting up friends and family – 13 per cent would in Canada, compared to less than 7 per cent in most other countries, including the U.S. and the U.K. Twenty-eight per cent of Canadians would rely on credit cards compared to 20 per cent in the United States.
The survey, which assessed the financial preparedness of 14,693 respondents, including 1,132 Canadians, was conducted by U.K.-based TNS, a social research firm. The findings shed light on the connection between Canadians' money and our sense of self, experts say. Mounting debt troubles are often linked to pride, a desire for independence and a very Canadian unwillingness to impose.
“I think people may have some reluctance to admit to family members that they can't scrape together $2,000 in an emergency,” says Rhonda Grunier, vice-president of TNS Canadian Facts, the Canadian arm of the research firm. “They don't necessarily want their family members knowing the details of their financial situation, so that may cause some people to be reluctant to take that approach.”
People headed for financial ruin often strain to keep up appearances in order to maintain their loved ones' respect, says Jeff Schwartz, executive director of Consolidated Credit Counselling of Canada.
“Turning to a financial institution or a bank to obtain credit when it's available is sometimes emotionally easier than it is to [approach] family and friends,” he says. “It takes that fear of looking like a failure out of the equation and it allows them to keep their financial skeletons, so to speak, in the closet.”
It's also a matter of control.
“Most people really don't want to feel indebted to family or friends,” he adds.
Canadians have attached a huge amount of self-worth to money, says Laurie Campbell, executive director of Credit Canada, a not-for-profit credit counselling agency in Toronto. “The shiny car in the driveway, the nice clothes, the nice house – all that crap that we've associated as status symbols revolves around money,” she says. “So if you have to go out and ask family or friends for money, boy, that's a pretty embarrassing place to be.”
We're also socialized, as a nation, to be self-reliant and independent of others, and tend to care more about what others think, perhaps more so than Americans, says Miranda Goode, a professor of marketing at the University of Western Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business.
“The big fear for a lot of people is they don't want to burden their relatives, she says. “But the individual part of it is you don't want to demonstrate that you can't handle things on your own.”
