The Issues With Joint Debt (part 5)

Talking with each other and making progress

Moving on from communicating with your spouse or partner, we will now address the ways to talk with the entire household when working to reduce joint debt or become debt free.

After you have opened the lines of communication with your spouse or partner about debt issues you are having, your next discussion will need to be with the other members of the household. Others members of the house hold may be aging or live0in parents, roommates, children or any other dependant. Remember that at this stage you are asking for support with your debt reduction efforts.

A great way to approach this situation is to perhaps start the conversation with something like this – your father and I have been concerned with the household debt and keep it positive the whole time. Maybe you took a family vacation during the summer vacation from school and have had issues with paying it off. Whatever the case, remain positive and never place any blame. Just work on getting the issue fixed. Do not waste your valuable time and energy placing blame and being negative. If you are negative, the household will be less likely to try at all to get debt under control. If the other members of your house hold are old enough to understand, give them the respect they deserve by showing patience and explaining the issue in detail. Do not patronize them.  

Suggest a time when the whole clan can get together at the same time to go over a solution. Include everyone’s opinion and make all of the people that are affected feel included.

Try enticing each member of the household to come up with two ways that they think the family could reduce debt. This is a great way to include all family members and come up with several different outlooks. Think of this as a great way to assess where each family member is coming from and what level of understanding they may have about debt in general. Just be sure that these ideas do not include what one member of the household thinks that another should do – no pointing fingers. You must come together with ideas that everyone can take part in. You could say something you believe you personally could do – that way there is no blame game going on at the round table!

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