Gambling Debt Case Studies

Bouncing back from the brink of disaster - why DCM Money Solutions makes the difference

 

The names have been changed to protect identity

January 2005 :

Jim is a 35 year old computer programmer with a wife plus 2 young children. His job is pretty boring and a young family means going out is now a rare occassion, indeed even the regular Friday night poker night with friends has disappeared. To make life a bit more fun, Jim turned to the internet for a bit of excitement, and joined one of the online poker websites.

The temptation offer was a £100 of free bets to use and self control made this last quite well. In fact after a week he was actually nearly £200 up.

Then it started to go wrong. After a bad week at work and stress levels pretty high, Jim relaxed with his new found friend - the internet poker room. It was whilst playing late into the night that the game stakes got a little higher. Suddenly the money in the account was going fast. But Jim was oblivous to this, after all - his new friend wouldn't let him down and he'd been doing really well the past few weeks and was getting very confident about the site.

Jim remembers the night very well. It was 3am and he'd hit his daily limit of what he could spend (lose) and went to bed £200 down.The £200 had gone from his bank account he shared with his wife. She knew he played poker online and trusted him to be sensible, he normally was.

 

Tiredness from stress clouding judgement

The next night Jim was determined to get the money back and lept to his PC when everyone else went to bed. He was still tired from the night before but the buzz kept him going. The buzz didn't bring him much luck and his bank account was now £500 lighter.

Being tired and not thinking clearly may have helped Jim's demise to financial trouble as he set up a new bank account in his own name to hide the debts. His credit rating was good and he got a £2000 overdraft without problem. That lasted about a month. Coupled with the fact he was now using his credit card for cash transfers the problem was starting to get serious.

From a health point of view the stress of the debts was taking it's toll. Jim was getting grumpy and irritable. His performance at work was suffering and people were starting to ask questions. Back at home he was only happy at night when people were going to bed and he could get to his PC to try a new tactic to try and get his money back.

 

More borrowing, including a new mortgage

These events continued for about 6 months, by which point Jim's new secret double life had racked up nearly £25,000 in debts across a number of credit cards, overdrafts and even managed to secure another mortgage in his name only on the property without his wife knowing. His life fell apart when the phone started ringing with creditors wanting to speak to him. His wife had no idea of the scale of the problem until eventually he broke down and came clean.

The shockwaves almost ripped the family apart. The house was in danger of being repossessed and the phone calls were getting more and more frequent. Jim couldn't see the wood for the trees, believing that the big win would be around the corner, even spending £50 on lottery tickets and scratchcards in belief it was his turn to win.

 

Help at last

Jim's wife picked up the phone and contacted DCM Money Solutions. One of our money counsellors came round to see them and explained all the options available to them. The priority was to get Jim some help to stop this getting worse and even happening again. By this point the matter was very serious, Jim had been diagnosed with a severe gambling addiction, his job was hanging by a thread and his marriage ready to hit the rocks. The whole matter was too much for Jim and his wife to handle and the fact we came to visit them, took time to understand the problem and organised things properly possibly saved their marriage (dealing with creditors is a task that requires experience and mental strength, something that is difficult to muster when stressed)

The gambling counselling really helped. It made our life a bit easier too so that we could handle the credit card companies and banks in the knowledge that Jim wasn't going to sneak out some more credit somewhere. Within a few days we had done our bit. The phone no longer rang with creditors chasing payment, Jim was getting the help he needed and they still had a roof over their heads. It was quite a complicated case in the end but we found a solution.

It would be 5 years before Jim was debt free. But his repayments were affordable and he had a little left over to spend on the things that mattered - his family.

Update:January 2007

Jim had a relapse 18 months into the plan but his wife was quick to contact us. They missed a payment in their plan but our counsellor managed to avoid any long term damage by using our skill and experience and they are now back on track to be debt free in October 2010.

 

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We deal with thousands of cases. Each one is different, each one needs to be handled individually. Our trained money counsellors are there to work with you and get you out of debt. We can even guarantee when that day will be.

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