When Joseph Daniel-Hoste goes to work, all he thinks about is going broke. Not him, his clients.
Joseph is interim executive director at Crossroads of Michigan, a nonprofit that helps impoverished residents get food, clothing, job training, and medical services. Yet as he helped others struggle to overcome debt, he was slowly sinking into debt himself.
“Like many people, it was slow and incremental,” he says. ”You know, the occasional splurge, the occasional project, and you tell yourself, ‘I’m just going to charge this and then pay it off.’ Eventually, the credit card bills are just insurmountable, and suddenly all I could afford was the minimum payment.”
Two solutions that definitely didn’t work
So what did Joseph do? Something he knows he shouldn’t have: “I opened another card.”
“I think the key for me was the incremental aspect of it,” Joseph says. “It wasn’t a fall off a cliff. It was a slow, downward walk. And suddenly I’m in the valley and in over my head, working on a nonprofit salary.”
Next, Joseph applied for a debt consolidation loan.
“But that wasn’t a viable option for me,” he says. “My credit score had taken a big hit because of all my credit card spending. My credit usage was too high. My debt-to-income ratio was upside down.”
With a low credit credit score, Joseph couldn’t get a low-interest loan. He had one other option, and it was “a turning point.”
Calling Consolidated Credit
Joseph knew a Consolidated Credit client who raved about the program. But he resisted making the phone call for one reason. One emotion.
“The biggest emotion was the shame, to be perfectly honest,” he says. “Shame that I had gotten myself into this mess.”
That was ironic for two reasons.
First, “I run a nonprofit with a million-dollar operating budget, and I keep it above water. But I can’t keep myself above water?”
Second, Joseph runs an anti-poverty program, where he constantly tells his clients there’s no shame in their situation.
“The stereotype of poverty is really wrong,” Joseph says. “People who live in poverty are some of the hardest-working people. No one wakes up in the morning and says, ‘I want to live in poverty, I’m going to live off the system.’ I see people every day who are desperate to get out of the cycle.”
Now he had to get out of the cycle himself. He lauds Consolidated Credit for making that easy.
“When I finally called, I wasn’t prepared for the personal support that I received,” he says. “I came to Consolidated Credit with a heavy heart – and around $10,000 of debt. The process was straightforward and compassionate, with a team of dedicated professionals who understood the emotional and financial strain I was under. They listened to my concerns with empathy – and provided a clear plan.”
That free debt analysis with a certified credit counselor turned his life around.
“Once I was on the phone with the counselor, their first order of business was to make sure I wasn’t embarrassed and to reassure me I hadn’t done anything wrong,” he recalls. “I hadn’t failed at being a grown up. In fact, quite the opposite. I was facing my problem.”
Where he is now
That was three years ago. Last year, he bought a house. He graduated from Consolidated Credit’s debt management program two months ago.
Since then, he’s been applying the lessons he learned while in the program.
“I’m keeping my budget under control, and I’ve added that to my mortgage payment,” he says. And I’ve knocked $79,000 off of the interest of my mortgage!”
Jonathan is also passing along the education he received to his clients.
“One of the things that I see every day at work is the reality that many of us are one missed paycheck or one bad choice away from being at my agency,” he says. “So we are beginning a program of educational seminars where we can take these financial concepts and bring them to my clients!”
And it’s all because of Consolidated Credit.
