submitted by Vanessa Caruso
The total US consumer debt as of a year ago was $2.42 trillion. A trillion has 12 zeroes – it’s a million million. Two years ago, the penalty fees from credit cards reached an all time high at $20.5 billion. As if the weight of consumer debt wasn’t bad enough, we’ve paid over $20.5 billion just to keep it!
For several years, some people at Circle of Hope were throwing around the idea of doing something about all this debt, locally and actually, with real people, real sharing, and real hope. I’m proud to say that the Debt Annihilation Team (DAT) is nearing its one-year anniversary of annihilating debt and accessing abundance in Christ.
The purpose of the DAT is to offer practical solutions to the slavery of consumer debt by building community trust, sharing, and providing capital, in order to annihilate consumer debt in our community. Our inspiration is Romans 3:18: “Do not owe anything to anyone besides love.”
The DAT consists of Group Members (with consumer debt), Personal Finance Coaches, Group Administrators, and the Team Leader. After an intake process, we chose 5 people from all of our four congregations with similar levels of debt to be part of the first Debt Annihilation Group for a period of time, using the seed money and an agreed upon strategy to pay off one another’s debt. Here’s what you should know:
November 1, 2010:
5 of our friends
9 lines of credit
$22,744.76 total in consumer debt
September 30, 2011:
5 of our friends
$7,99.94 seed fund from the Compassion Fund and our network-wide “Test” in early 2010
5 lines of credit
$8,223 worth of payments made by group members to their own cards and each other’s
October statements will total only about $9,000 in debt
That means we’ve annihilated $13,744 in 11 months!
After all of the debt is paid off, the group members will be freed up to practice generosity and trust while giving back to the Seed Fund, in order to launch another group of Debt Annihilators.
Although this is inspiring, counter-cultural work, it hasn’t always been easy. Here are a few things we’ve learned along the way:
- “What you dream alone remains a dream, what you dream with others can become a reality.” (Edward Schillebeeckx)
- Money and debt always get to core identity issues, and God’s Spirit can be part of that discussion.
- We will face resistance in this process, but when we push deep enough, there’s always a lesson, and grace for a new behavior pattern.
- Shame with debt is often connected with expectations or dreams that have not been realized.
Lastly, I’ve learned that “annihilate” is hard to spell. It was never part of my vocabulary before, and now I write it on a weekly basis. The only way I’ve been able to get it right is by saying, each time, “ANNI, HI you’re LATE.” I look forward to the day when I don’t have to scold Anni anymore. Until then, let’s keep annihilating debt!
It was one of those nights you “kind of had to be there.” One of our cell leaders said, “It was valuable to me to observe people’s reactions when I invited them to this event. Many people were quite shocked: ‘Are you kidding me? You are actually going to spend time thinking about that?’ and then they were intrigued that we, as a people, spend time thinking about things like this. Very valuable. ” About 120 people had an opportunity to find it valuable. Many have said they did.
