A Chapter 13 Can Influence an Individual to Start Budgeting their Expenses

If you get rid of a credit card, you may get rid of the “Let me just swipe this and I can buy that fancy thing” mentality, and you actually have to pay cash. We find that people are much less willing to part with cash than they are willing to swipe that credit card; it just makes people more conscious of what they are buying and how much they are paying. When you get to the end of that grocery line and you know that $150-odd grocery bill comes up and you have to pay that $150 with cash and you know that money is coming out of the bank account, you may rethink some of those non-essential purchases versus just handing somebody your credit card. You have an immediate concern rather than to worry about it next month. We have found that sometimes it can be a good thing when people say “I can’t have my credit frozen for that long,” but then they choose to do it anyhow.