One of the problems with expanding consumer debt that never seems to get mentioned is that it appears to accompany expanding waist lines in Canada. With what we’ve been able to dig up through some quick tertiary research is that although the relationship is not a perfect +1.0 correlation it’s pretty darn close.
Should you be experiencing negative changes in the payment behavior of your customers CASE can help! As a collection agency with offices in Edmonton, Calgary and the GTA we can apply our best professional efforts in order to make your past due accounts receivable a top priority.
In a 2014 article that appeared on the CBC found here it indicated that obesity rates have tripled in Canada in less than 30 years from 1985 to 2011. If you then take a close look at the graph showing the growth of household debt from 1970-2014 on page 3 of this Fraser Research Bulletin and you eyeball the 1985-2011 period on the graph it appears to be a little more than a triple over the same time period.
Why is this? Is it simply coincidence? We don’t know for sure, nor have we had the luxury of time and resources to have studied the data or researched the causation. But give us a break, as a debt collection agency operating in Alberta we’re working overtime right now to recover outstanding debt for our clients during this part of the economic cycle.
However, our gut feel tells us it has something to do with discipline. More precisely lack of discipline. For example, the inclination to charge the purchase of a new flat screen TV complements the proclivity to jumbo size a mega gulp soda to go along with that sleeve of powdered donuts. Both are entirely unnecessary. But they go hand in hand. Saving up for a flat screen and resisting the jumbo size option takes the sort of self-restraint that seems to have become absent from our debt saturated society.
Of course, our federal and provincial government (AB) with their projected $30B and $10B budget deficits respectively are failing to inspire their portly citizenry. Similar to credit card debt the promises and indulgences continue to stack up each month and each year, driven by the belief that we have somehow, by some crazy cosmic decree, been granted magical entitlement and deserve everything we have not worked for.