A formal Bankruptcy or Consumer Proposal is not always needed to deal with short-term financial difficulties. If you are in financial difficulty, there are numerous options that can be explored, among them:
Increasing your income
Take on a second job for a short period of time, or take in a boarder.
Reducing expenses
Review your budget to see if there are expenses that can be reduced, or eliminated altogether, even for a short period of time.
Converting assets
You may have some bonds or stocks that you haven’t thought about for awhile, an underused extra vehicle, or some other assets that can be sold.
Consolidating loans
Talk to your bank about consolidating all of your debts into one loan, with one monthly payment.
“OPD”
Orderly Payment of Debts is a program administered by Money Mentors and acts similar to a consolidation, where you make one monthly payment to Money Mentors and it distributes the funds to your creditors. Interest is reduced to 5%.
Informal proposal
You may be able to propose settlement offers to one or two of your creditors, which will enable you to handle the remaining debts.