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What is debt?

Debt is a confusing word, to most people "being in debt" is a serious state of affairs and normally implies your income is not enough to let you meet your financial obligations on time, or you have little left over for yourself after paying off your creditors (people you owe money to).

Everyone is in debt, but to different degrees, so the guy earning £100,000 a year and living in a mortgage free £500,000 house still has "debt" in the fact that he owes money for things like household bills - point is he can cope and pay his dues on time.

Real harmful debt is where your borrowings or owings exceeds what you have (assets) and your income is not enough to meet the costs of serving those dues. As such you would be called "insolvent" and that is a serious state of affairs and one that is not easy to get out of.

You can have loads of assets, usually in property thanks to huge property price increases and be "asset rich" but cash flow poor and as such are still "insolvent" when you cannot pay your debts as they fall due even though the total debt may be a small part of what you own.

Debt is not new, but in recent years people have taken on more liabilities they can afford, even in the good times. Faced with changes like loosing your job, becoming ill, or higher interest rates, funding repayments of mortgage and loans can become more difficult and eventually impossible.

Through the pages of this web site you can learn to accept you have a debt problem, and how serious it is. Perhaps you may learn it is not as bad as you thought, and you can reverse the problem. Be warned, that delaying putting new methods into action or "burying you head in the sand" (ignoring the problem) will only make it worse.

The TV and newspapers are full of advertisements for remortgages, debt management firms, credit repairers and others offering to solve your debt problems. Truth is you can do it yourself and get quicker, cheaper and better results - Down with Debt web is unbiased, it works for you and tells you as it is, in sound practical terms, down to earth in easy to understand language.

The truth may hurt and getting motivated to act to solve your debt problem is not easy - but it will not hurt as much as loosing your home, having bailiffs take away your car, your TV, your furniture.

Some people with debt problems turn to drink, beat up their partner in frustration or consider suicide, take the easy route and turn to  Down with Debt and get your problems and their solutions into perspective. It's not too late today it may be next week, or even tomorrow.