Poll finds debt weighing heavily on minds of Canadians

Dec 30, 2019 | 11:05 AM

PRINCE GEORGE — A new end of year poll by CIBC has revealed that debt is weighing heavily on the minds of Canadians.

It finds that almost four in five of us rate it as more important than building our savings. It also found that 71 per cent of respondents say they avoided borrowing money this year.

The same number say they are concerned about the rising costs of household goods going into 2020 and about 55 per cent fear an economic recession next year.

Debt repayment led the list of concerns for the tenth year in a row which is not a surprise to a licensed insolvency trustee in Prince George.

“Not surprising. There’s a lot of debt in the country,” says Melody Desmarais with Beverley & Associates. “We’ve been spending more money than we’ve been earning for a lot of years. The last couple of years we’ve enjoyed some lower interest rates but they’ve started to go up.”

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As for advice on how to conquer your debt, Desmarais says it starts with making a budget.

“Budgeting is never high on anyone’s priority list but it does take some work and some efforts. But you can budget your way out of these kinds of things,” she says.

“You just have to be careful with you’re money, where you’re spending. You can’t be reckless. Wants versus needs. Do that assessment and purchase what you need versus what you want. And to deal with the debt load you need to be able to budget a substantial amount of money to put onto that debt to reduce it.”

by Canadian Press with files from Greg Fry

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Poll finds debt weighing heavily on minds of Canadians

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