“I’m on maternity leave, my husband is a simple engineer at a research institute, he earns 55,000 rubles.”
In Russia, every third resident of the country lives on debt, counting infants and very old people. Many hang two or three loans around their necks. And one in five borrowers miss payments. We listened to the sad stories of people who took out several loans — they told how they were trying to pay off.
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Olga is a St. Petersburg resident and has three children with her husband. After the birth of her third, her grandmother kindly provided her three-room apartment in the very heart of the city on the Neva for the large family to live in. And she herself moved to a residential area in a “one-room apartment”, inherited from her late husband.
“You won’t believe it, back in my student days, while working as a waitress, I swore not to take any loans. I promised myself that I would rather work three jobs, but never a loan. In the end, everything turned out exactly the opposite,” Olga began the story.
“I’m on maternity leave, my husband is a simple engineer at a research institute and receives 55,000 rubles. Two years ago, he secretly took out a bank loan from me: 500,000 rubles for a period of five years. We wanted to open a small bakery not far from our house.
We found a premises, hired staff, and for the first four months everything seemed fine. We slowly paid off the loan every month. But at some point the bakery stopped generating income. The profit per month began to amount to only 40,000 rubles. But the loan needs to be closed. I’m even embarrassed to talk about it, but I had to start paying off the debt with child benefits. I simply withdrew money, went to the bank and thus repaid the loan — 18,000 rubles a month.»
Parents, according to Olga, did not help her family: “Mom and dad immediately said that it was only our fault that we got into this mess, and we had to get out of it ourselves.”
“To be honest, I don’t know, what was driving me then, but I thought it would help. And she turned to a microfinance organization for “help.” I took out one loan, and a month later I took out a second one to cover the previous one. Taking into account the loan and two loans, the debt increased significantly, reaching 700,000 rubles. We managed to pay off part of the amount by selling our old car.”
Olga realized that she had fallen into bondage only when collectors began calling her and her husband every day. “Surprisingly, the collectors asked in a fairly polite manner to repay the debt as soon as possible. They weren’t rude, didn’t use foul language, didn’t threaten to take away property. But calls from them came constantly.
As a result, my husband and I turned to the police to protect us from debt collectors. But it all ended with the drawing up of the act. The police said that there are a lot of such cases now. And no one will deal with this in detail. We had no choice but to go to the prosecutor's office. And also — to no avail. The application was accepted, but they said that they could not help in any way — this is an official debt collection agency with a license that operates legally.”
Olga had to print out her last stash — a bank deposit that she had opened before marriage. “Reluctantly, I had to part with my hard-earned 100,000 rubles. It's a shame, but what to do?!
There is no money at all. The bakery had to close. But we continue to pay off our loan and microloan debts. My friends lent some to my husband, and my friends lent some to me. All you have to do is pay for utilities and food. I don’t even remember when I bought myself any clothes. Fortunately, all that remains is to pay only 150,000 rubles — and you are free.
My husband and I contacted the bank with a request to provide a deferment. We are waiting for a decision. In the meantime, they brought my grandmother to live with us. And they started renting out her apartment for 25,000 rubles a month. To slowly close the loan with this money.”
Another “credit addict,” Pavel, a Muscovite, retired with the rank of colonel after 25 years of service. “It all started when our family car, which had served faithfully for 10 years, began to break down almost every week. And I decided to take out a loan for a new car in the amount of 600,000 rubles,” the former military man tells his story. — My wife was against me taking out a second loan. We haven’t paid off the first one yet — 400,000 rubles. They took him to renovate their dacha.”
At first, Pavel paid both loans regularly, without delays, old savings helped. But after leaving work, payments began to be delayed. “I wrote a statement saying that everything is difficult with my finances. I asked the bank for relief, but I was refused: for two loans I have to pay a total of 50,000 rubles a month.”
During this time, the man tried different methods to solve the problem. He borrowed from relatives, sold family jewelry to a pawnshop, sold two bicycles, a garage, and a lawnmower. Finally got around to refinancing with the bank.
“By refinancing, I reduced my monthly payment, but the interest didn’t go away. There was a time when I had no money at all to close the loans. I once fell behind by a full 60 days. And the bank already wanted to start suing me.
As a result, I got two jobs at once: as a security guard in two different organizations. I've never been on vacation before. Sometimes I spend my time repairing computers and phones. It’s not for nothing that I studied to become an engineer. And I close loans with most of the money I earn. Once, even the bank offered me a promotion: they forgave all the penalties for full payment of the debt per month.”
Pavel’s goal is to close the loans as quickly as possible. “Now we actually live on my wife’s small salary and her pension. Everything I earn I give to the bank. The plans are to sell a new car.
The savings are all gone, and the debts are through the roof. I have a year and a half left to pay. I always feel, to put it mildly, not entirely comfortable. For myself, I understood one thing: I’ll pay off, and no more consumerism and no more loans!”
Inna, a 35-year-old resident of Krasnogorsk near Moscow, I found myself in a difficult life situation due to sanctions. She worked for a marketing company founded by the British. The management decided to close down the business in Russia. Employees were laid off within three days.
At that moment, the woman had a credit card in her hands, which sometimes helped her reach her paycheck. At that moment, its availability did not seem to be a problem: the card had an interest-free period, it was always possible to repay the debt before interest accrued.
At first, Inna thought that she could cope with the situation, and began to look for work. However, there were cuts everywhere in the marketing and PR sphere.
By May, the money ran out, Inna decided to take another card, for a larger amount, to repay the loan. After another month, it became clear that this money would not be enough.
There was no need to expect help from the family: Inna’s parents died long ago, there were no brothers or sisters. Friends and acquaintances themselves had loans and were wondering how to deal with them. Hoping that a job would soon be found, the woman decided to take a third loan, and it was also approved. Now the total amount of debt our interlocutor has is about half a million rubles.
— When I realized that my interviews were not leading to any results, I started taking part-time jobs in warehouses as an order collector for marketplaces. There are places where the organizations themselves help employees in their clinics to issue medical records, and you can even work with them at the checkout.
—Depends on the customer and the shift. One large chain store even pays for training: 500 rubles for two hours. But I go to work from Krasnogorsk, and will spend more time on the road there and back. So it’s better to go out for a full shift, even immediately after training, where pay starts from 2,500 rubles.
I try to take the best offers: in the warehouse of one of the marketplaces, a shift costs 4,100 rubles. On the one hand, it’s pleasant to work there: everything is in order, you just need to walk around and collect incoming orders. There is more confusion at other warehouses. But, on the other hand, there are very strict rules: when going to work, the shift manager takes away everyone’s phones, and it’s very difficult for me to be without communication for 10 hours.
And besides the half-hour lunch, you are allowed to take only two breaks 15 minutes each. I smoke, and I feel uncomfortable working at this pace.
On average, the cost of a good shift starts at 3,800 rubles. But they need to be monitored by applications and sites: they are quickly taken apart by others who want them.
— If a person is willing to work seven days a week, he can get a significant income. One of my colleagues worked 10 hours on a schedule of six working days and one day off. He boasted that he earned 90,000 rubles in a month. My personal record is 86,000, which I received in August, although I still need to pay taxes on it. At the same time, my schedule was easier; I prefer to work three days every other day. It’s just that in August there were a lot of well-paid shifts.
— Most often, yes. Sometimes the applications have an electronic wallet, the transfer goes there, and then you decide for yourself where you want to withdraw your salary. This was done for convenience, since among the workers there are many who have loans, fines, and unpaid alimony.
— Yes, they used to bother me a lot, but now I ignore them.
— When I worked in marketing, I even wrote articles on the topic of personal bankruptcy. Such advice now seems cynically sweet to me. I would like to ask: did the experts themselves try to talk to these bank employees? But I have this “pleasure”: there is rudeness, rudeness, humiliation over the phone. They will ruin your mood for the whole day.
I picked up the phone once when I was going for an interview. I arrived at the meeting place almost in tears, although I warned the employee of the collection department that I was going for an interview right now to solve the problems.
Collectors see only the amount of my debt, they don’t care about any other circumstances! I have a feeling that they don’t even communicate with each other. As soon as I alone explain: I am doing everything possible to pay off the debt, the next day another employee of the same bank calls, and he needs to repeat everything all over again.
They swear at me, as if I’m some kind of drunk and I’m wasting my money away. In general, communicating with the bank in my situation is not a pleasant experience. Besides, banks themselves deceive.
— One day I got a call from the collection service. The employee assured me that if I deposited 10,000 rubles on a credit card, they would give me a deferment on the loan. I did so. But no one gave me a deferment, no matter how hard I tried to prove that the bank employee promised it to me. Now I no longer fall for such offers.
— Nobody will give me credit holidays, since there should be no arrears on loans. I applied for them as soon as I realized that the situation was getting out of control, but it was already too late.
As for bankruptcy, if I can’t pay off the debt within six months, I will decide to file the documents for this procedure. Now I have drawn up a financial plan and am trying to find a job in my specialty: in my professional field, salaries are always good, and I can get rid of debts in a matter of months. I haven’t lost hope yet.
The debt of Russians to banks reached 30.22 trillion rubles, the level of debt in the 1st quarter of 2023 was 41% (ratio of average debt to income). “Just a quarter ago, this figure was at 35%,” notes Sergei Elin, head of the audit and consulting group AIP. “There is a clear upward trend.”
People who find themselves in credit bondage must provide first aid to themselves. “Analyze what brought you to this situation,” urges the founder of YURL Group Semyon Nikolaev. “Study your financial habits and try to change them to avoid a repetition of the situation in the future.”
But what about in the present ? According to Diana Sorc, a lawyer at the International Confederation of Consumer Societies, the debtor needs to take the following steps.
1. Make a list of income and expenses to understand where the money goes. Very often (especially for borrowers who work for themselves and receive money irregularly), when calculating, it turns out that the income allows them to pay off loans painlessly, but since the money arrives in small parts and irregularly, people simply get lost in current expenses.
< p>2. See what expenses can be reduced. For example, sometimes when analyzing expenses it turns out that there are some subscriptions to electronic services that are automatically charged, although you have not used these services for a long time. Or you can somehow reduce the consumption of water and electricity (by replacing lamps with energy-saving ones, for example), buy products in bulk, use discount coupons and save money due to this. You can sell unnecessary things and use the money received to pay off loans.
Setting a spending limit for one day helps a lot. If you have a number in your head, you can buy groceries today, spend the amount intended for 3 days, and then not buy anything for three days. And if you suddenly manage to save money (for example, you were visiting and didn’t spend your daily limit), this money can also be used to repay the loan.
3. Make a loan repayment plan. We must try to make minimum payments on all loans. You also need to choose one loan (preferably with the highest rate), to repay which you send all the money freed up from cutting expenses (or unexpected income). This will allow you to repay the loan ahead of schedule, then the total debt burden will decrease.
4. Sometimes banks offer loan restructuring at a lower interest rate, and some banks offer to combine several loans into one, increase the repayment period and thereby reduce the monthly burden on the budget. Here you need to be very careful when reading the terms of the contract. It is possible that the percentage will be less, but various additional payments will “eat up” all the benefits from such a merger. But sometimes this strategy works.
5. Applying to the court for bankruptcy through debt restructuring may also be one of the ways to reduce the debt burden. This method is suitable for those who can pay but want to reduce their monthly payment. From the moment the bankruptcy procedure is opened, interest and penalties no longer accrue on loans. That is, if you owe, for example, 50,000 rubles. + 17% per annum, then from the moment the bankruptcy procedure is opened you will only owe 50,000 rubles.
But you must understand that during restructuring you need to pay off your debts within three years (regardless of the loan term). Also, during bankruptcy, you can conclude a settlement agreement with creditors, and then the schedule and terms of repayment of the loan can be any.