Doing It Your Way Embracing Debt And Dying
An Exploration of Seniors, Debt, and the Journey Beyond In the sunset years of life, the weight of debt intertwines with the complexities of health, family, and mortality. The struggle…
An Exploration of Seniors, Debt, and the Journey Beyond In the sunset years of life, the weight of debt intertwines with the complexities of health, family, and mortality. The struggle…
“Do you not understand she’s dead? What part of dead don’t you understand?” West said. “There’s no one to pay this bill.”
What if you were nervous to open up your mailbox because you would be reminded of your deceased child?
Personally, I can’t even imagine this scenario; however, a parent featured in a recent news story was going through this every day when Bell Canada was attempting to collect a debt owed by her deceased daughter. Sadly, Christine West of Ontario lost her daughter, Katie, to suicide in December of 2011. Katie’s cell phone with Bell Canada had an outstanding balance of approximately $215, and for three years the company attempted to collect it, even though she had passed away and Christine had provided proof Katie’s death certificate to Bell (numerous times).
We get a lot of great debt questions from our readers. In this post we’re going to share some of the best and most common debt questions we receive, along with our answers, so read on to find out what everyone wants to know!
The old joke about the sure things in life used to refer to death and taxes. I think we need to add consumer debt to this list. Certainly if one considers the irrefutable fact that Canadians have borrowed more and more money each and every year – from $20 billion in the 1970s to the current outstanding consumer debt of $516 billion today. Debt is just as predictable as death and taxes.
I’ve been asked to talk about debt and dying, a topic that affects more and more people today. It’s too bad that an aging population must contend with debt in…
November 28, 2012
What do seniors need to know to be financially literate? This is an excellent question, not just for the financial literacy month of November, but one that the BC Centre for Elder Advocacy and Support and the Canadian Centre on Elder Law tried to answer in their detailed publication entitled Financial Literacy 101.