Barbara
Taking out a Progress Loan helped Barbara, 55, break out of a downward spiral of struggling to pay the bills. Barbara, a disability pensioner, was caring for her two grandsons – one of them confined to a wheelchair – when her fridge blew up.
Earlier, at 38, Barbara had a stroke, which paralysed the left side of her face, temporarily affecting her speech. Fortunately, she was still mobile. With therapy her left arm strengthened, and she has completely regained her ability to talk.
‘I’d been late paying my bills and declared bankrupt’, she says. ‘You couldn’t get a personal loan from anyone, but I needed a new fridge. I was robbing Peter to pay Paul. I couldn’t pay the bills.’
Then she saw brochures in a Brotherhood Community Store about a loans scheme established by the Brotherhood and successfully applied for one.
Barbara repaid the loan and, although making ends meet is still a challenge, she says the experience helped her gain some independence. ‘It was costing me more to keep repairing the fridge than to buy a new one’, she says.
Since repaying that original debt, Barbara has taken out two loans from the Brotherhood’s joint program with ANZ, Progress Loans, initially to pay for repairs for her car.
Progress Loans helps people on low incomes obtain loans between $500 and $5000 (over $3000 for cars only) that help with the essentials of daily life. It also helps them to better manage their finances and build confidence in dealing with banks and other mainstream financial institutions – rather than going without or resorting to credit cards or fringe lenders.
When Barbara can, she makes extra payments to repay the debt more quickly. As well as the disability pension, she receives family tax benefits and a carer’s allowance because she looks after her grandsons, and says that receiving some form of payment every week makes it easier to ‘stretch the dollars’.
The Brotherhood’s loans programs have given Barbara the ability to borrow small amounts with manageable repayments, allowing her to invest in household assets that also include a TV, a washing machine, a computer and a desk.