Support when the world comes crashing down
Geoff and Val after Geoff’s operation (Credit: Photo by Shairon Paterson).
Moneycare stepped in to help Val and Geoff when they faced illness, coped with deaths in the family and had debt collectors at the door.
For Val and Geoff, married for the past 14 years, life seemed good. They were a close couple, enjoyed the area they lived in, and both worked full-time – Val as an accounts clerk and Geoff in manufacturing dispatch.
Then, in September 2012, Geoff collapsed with a subarachnoid haemorrhage, a class 5 aneurism and several strokes.
“Geoff’s sickness just absolutely rocked our world,” Val says.
Today Geoff has speech difficulties, decreased concentration and short-term memory loss and can no longer drive or work. He is unsteady when he moves and has little use of one arm.
Val explains it was a particularly stressful time in her life, saying: “My mum had died in the March, Geoff collapsed with his aneurism in September, he was in hospital all October and my dad died in the November”.
Once home, Val had to become Geoff’s full-time carer.
“Geoff was always very active, but he now has brain damage and his short-term memory’s not that good and I have to remind him how to do things,” Val explains. “I have to always keep my eye on what he’s doing, because he gets very unsteady on his feet.”
Val says the couple had always paid their bills on time, but once their income stopped, the bills began to mount up with startling speed and intensity.
While the couple were trying to get Centrelink disability payments for Geoff in the first months of his illness, they began to be bombarded with letters of demand, phone calls and even debt collectors at their door.
Val had to move the couple to a new area, into a cheaper rental home. And she struggled with a sense of shame because she could not cover all their bills.
“I just felt not being able to pay the bills was out of character for us. I felt fully stressed and as though I was a second-class citizen,” she says.
Told about The Salvation Army’s Moneycare service, Val contacted a financial counsellor at a Queensland office. They went through their paperwork and contacted all their creditors to say that Moneycare would be the only contact point from that time on.
By the end of the first month, the calls stopped.
“It was a time of horrible stress, so that was a big relief and we could just concentrate on trying to get Geoff right,” says Val.
Moneycare helped the couple apply for a hardship discount on a utility bill and negotiated with creditors. Val says, “Straightaway one of the credit cards companies completely wiped Geoff’s debt. We never expected them to do that – it was just amazing.
“The other thing Moneycare did was hold off the car payments until a little inheritance from mum and dad came through, which was just enough to pay the car off.”
With ongoing medical treatment at the hospital and Geoff unable to walk any distance Val says life without the car would have been incredibly difficult.
“Without Moneycare, we probably would have had everything taken from us by now,” Val says. “As far as I can see – that’s how I was looking at the future – in an empty home with no furniture because I would have had to sell it all to pay bills.
“It was just amazing what they could do – it was like having a ball pumped up to the highest limits and suddenly you can just let it go. It was a big load off our shoulders.”
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