Doing an intervention for someone who is addicted to debt

At what point do you intervene when you can see that someone that you care about is heading for serious financial problems?

Do you sit and wait until they come to you?

Do you offer advice and hope that they will heed it?

Do you organize an intervention?

In my mind an intervention was always done for some form of serious addiction – drink or drugs. I now see that I have been too narrow in my thinking. An intervention for someone who is addicted to debt can be just as important as if that person was on drugs.

I’ve never ‘done an intervention’. Sure friends and family have come to me for help in the past and I outlined my experience of one such time in my article ‘The pain of debt’. But I have never actually taken the initiative and gone and intervened where I have seen there was a problem.

Why not?

Well to be honest the saying ‘people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’ always comes to mind. It would be very easy for the person that I am trying to help to turn around and say to me that I wasn’t so hot when it came to my own financial situation. But that is the whole point – the fact that I haven’t been so ‘hot’ in the past means that I have lots of painful experience that I could share to help them avoid making the same mistakes.

I suppose it is the fear of rejection that prevents me from doing it. When I blog there is a distance between me and the reader – it is not face to face and as much as I respect my readers the closeness that I have with family and friends would make it all the more difficult to give advice.

Then at what point?

The question I have to ask myself is what would it take for me to intervene to prevent someone from going over the edge financially?

Honestly I don’t know. I could say that if I saw a friend or family member seriously upset about their situation but too proud to ask for help then I would intervene but I would always let them try to solve their problems themselves. If I felt that they were truly struggling then I would intervene.

But I didn’t know.

In a lot of cases people keep their financial problems to themselves and maintain a façade of normality. A lot of people don’t want to be seen as weak or unable to cope so they internalize their problems and hide them away. For example any bills that come in the door go straight into the bin or in more dire circumstances they may take on even more debt to maintain the show.

In these cases it is very hard to know if someone has a problem. In a lot of cases like this it is only when the sheriffs are calling is it acknowledged that there is a problem.

In situations like these there is not much you can do. I suppose the only real thing you can do is be on the look out for warning signs. If you suspect a friend or family member is having financial difficulties then I suggest that you let them know in an indirect way that you are there to help them should they ever need it.

Have you ever ‘done an intervention’?

I would like to know if any of the readers have ever had to confront a friend or family member about their spending. I am curious to know how they tackled it as I am having difficulties trying to imagine how to do it properly. Please leave a comment in the comments box if you have ever had to confront someone about their spending.

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