Alex McDermot works for a charity called Citizens Advice Bureau and is an expert on helping people with financial problems. I asked Alex how do people get into financial problems in the first place? And he says there are many different reasons. Sometimes it might be because they’ve fallen ill, and they’re not able to work as much as they used to. They might have lost their job, or their partner might have left them, so they might have had a reduced income that way. But it’s also true to say that some people have borrowed a lot of money that they just simply can’t pay back. So for Alex, it’s important that he educates people and helps them to plan their finances. We’re trying to work with people to sort of work out how they can manage their budget, live within their means, save for the future, and where possible make sure that if they do need to take out credit, then they can afford to pay it back in the long run. So it’s very much about educating people more about how to deal with their finances. But sometimes we have to get credit, for example getting a mortgage or getting a credit card for emergencies. The important thing to remember here is that if we do need to take out credit, we need to make sure we can afford to pay it back in the long run. Being in debt is very very demoralising and a lot of people’s mentality and attitude will be to try and ignore the problem or try and borrow their way out of it. But really, they do need to take a positive attitude to this, get the help, and to set up affordable repayments and not have to borrow any more money.