What began with a few innocent overdrafts grew into an unexpected journey through credit debt disaster and back again for Patrick Kilpatrick.  

Like most of us, Patrick is fairly conservative when it comes to spending.  He’s a bargain shopper, often choosing the economical option and rarely, if ever, using credit for frivolous extras. “My parents had some debt issues, and so they preached to me about credit cards,” he recalls.  But despite their efforts to warn Patrick about the allure of easy money, he eventually fell prey, beginning with a line of credit on his first banking account. “I didn’t overdraw it often, but I never went back and paid it off, so it stayed there. I’d pay my minimum, but it just grew over time,” he says.   

By the time he started college, Patrick’s debt had already begun to pile up.  Using credit to make ends meet when student loans fell short, he found himself graduating with three nearly maxed-out credit cards.  While he knew the debt he was accumulating was a bad thing, as he moved into his first apartment and made plans to marry his college sweetheart, he continued to turn to his creditors for help.  “Neither one of us had wealthy parents, so we put most of the wedding costs on credit.”

It wasn’t until Patrick and his wife began to look into buying a home that the reality of their debt burden began to sink in. “We knew that with the amount of credit debt we were carrying we wouldn’t be able to afford a good mortgage payment.”  That’s when Patrick began to take notice of ads for debt consolidation, which sounded like exactly the kind of help he needed.  So he made a few phone calls to companies, but was discouraged with their offers. “Some of them just sounded shady, and the rates they were charging were pretty high,” he says. 

But luckily, as it turns out, Patrick knew people who knew people.  A friend put him in touch with John Wills, President of Consumer Credit Counseling Service of the Savannah Area (CCCS), a non-profit that has been helping people take control of their finances since 1965.  Through debt-consolidation and budget counseling, CCCS helped Patrick turn his financial woes around.  “The key is education; they are all about educating people how to manage their credit,” says Patrick.  After learning to develop a comprehensive budget and committing to no longer using his credit cards, Patrick is paying off his consolidated debt at drastically reduced interest, negotiated on his behalf by CCCS.  He will now be debt-free in 4.5 years - more than three decades sooner than he would otherwise - and will save over $30,000 in interest payments.

Grateful doesn’t quite seem to capture how Patrick feels toward CCCS and their commitment to helping people like him achieve sustainable financial independence.  “They do so much for the consumer; it’s not a quick fix, it’s a plan.”  And from what he tells of his experience, you can be assured the best way he could show CCCS his appreciation is to remain in control of his financial well-being – which is truly the gift that will keep on giving.

United Way of the Coastal Empire is proud to support the Financial Literacy Counseling, Debt Management and Education program of Consumer Credit Counseling Service of the Savannah Area.  For more information about these services, please call 912.691.2227.