This week’s Financial Planning Talk on Money Management left the audience with new ideas about budgeting and dealing with debt. The talk was delivered by Andrea Tabb & Phyllipa Chadwick of the Isle of Man Office of Fair Trading Debt Counselling Service and Sue Gee of TLC. This is the third in a series of free talks initiated by TLC Business Solutions and Thornton Associates and supported by the Department of Economic Development. Andrea introduced the topic by presenting some statistics on personal debt in the UK and Isle of Man. “A few years ago, it was unusual to see people with debts of over ?1,000. Now this is common, with some people having debts of over ?500,000.” She continued to explain how many people can easily fall into personal debt and the variety of factors that make this happen: “It is a fact that there are more credit cards than people in the UK making spending money so much easier. Often people with money problems are in that situation because of a major unexpected expense such as divorce or the death of a loved one. It can easily happen to anyone.” To encourage people to think about their spending habits, Phyllipa asked the audience to write down the figure that they would expect an average family of four to spend at Christmas. Then they were asked to itemise their own individual expenditure from last Christmas. Most were shocked to see the difference in the two amounts they wrote down, that they had in fact spent much more than they had thought. Andrea went on to say that the average spend per head at Christmas is ?820, revealing the simple fact that without budgeting, it is easy to get carried away at Christmas. Andrea left the audience with a few simple tips: “Don’t carry a card with you when you shop. You’re likely to spend far less if you have a budgeted amount of cash in your pocket rather than a card. Don’t borrow to pay back debts as this could lead into a debt spiral, which will make it even more difficult to pay back as time passes. Make a budget sheet of all your expenses and subtract those from your salary. It’s a lot easier to see where you can make cuts when you write it all down.” Sue Gee from TLC commented on the talk: “This topic is incredibly important to everyone. We can all spend more than we earn, so there is no reason to feel ashamed or shy away from the subject. If you budget properly and keep track of what is going in and out of your bank account, it will be much easier to stay on track and avoid going into the red. The importance of financial planning is something that I learned through experience and I feel very passionate about passing this knowledge onto others.” The final talk of this series will be delivered by Sharon Sutton from Thornton Associates on the subject of retirement planning - pensions. This talk will take place on the 6th April at 5:15pm at the Claremont Hotel. The aim of the talk is to address some of the myths about pensions, how very important it is to plan and to inform about the various types available. To reserve a free place, call Janet on 664789. Ends