H for Hormones

Since I began this diary back in July, we have touched on all the normal reasons people fall into debt – illness, job loss, depression, death, divorce – the list goes on. One case which was completely different to any other I have experienced, however, occurred when I was called in to help a woman who had become indebted as a result of her hormones.

The lady in question, Lindsey Pierce, was a professional nurse practitioner based in Leeds. She had a responsible job, steady income, husband and lovely young daughter. Throughout their marriage the couple had lived frugally, had a clean credit rating and were both working. They had a mortgage, but not an excessive one, having bought a repossessed house for a knocked-down price and painstakingly refurbished it themselves.

It was when Lindsey fell pregnant with the couple’s second child that her hormones took over. Within a period of between one month and six weeks she managed to accrue £50,000 worth of online gambling debts. She ran up a huge credit card bill, and then took out two further loans in an attempt to pay them off. Lindsay also didn’t tell her husband. In fact, when I turned up on their door step I realised that she’d only told him a day before I got there.

The best advice for Lindsey would have been to remortgage and pay off her debts that way, but because of the personal loans she had taken out no-one would lend to her at a reasonable rate. We decided the best course of action was to put her on a debt management plan and I was able to get her back on an even keel.

What was astonishing to me was how Lindsey had been so affected by her hormones that money – which she had previously been responsible with and good at managing – so quickly got out of her control once she started gambling. Everyone goes through blips in their lives, but Lindsey’s was extreme and is something she and her family will be paying off for a long time to come.

She is now six months into her plan, she has returned to work after the birth of her second child and the regular debt payments now just seem akin to a second mortgage. Luckily for Lindsey, her hormones subsided and she was able to get her life back on track.

Meeting Lindsey and hearing her story really made me realise that there are so many more unusual reasons behind debt than the ones we focus on, and reiterated, more than ever, that debt can be a trap any one of us can fall into, for any reason.