What debt does to a Tuesday

Alice is a friend. That is a name I gave her to protect her privacy.

She started the conversation, which matters, because I would have left it alone. I asked permission to share her story here and I promised she would read it before anyone else did.

She borrowed once, a year ago, from a licensed lender, and she paid into that account every month and believed she was servicing the debt. She checked the balance after twelve months and it sat where it started. The interest had absorbed every payment.

She had paid a year of money and still owed every kina.

That was the month she stopped trusting the arrangement. She spends her evenings drafting a letter to the lender, working towards one payment that closes it.

A lender can tell you what a loan costs. Alice can tell you what it costs on a Tuesday, and those are two different figures.

She told me her trouble sleeping has cost her health and thinned her patience, and that it started after she checked that balance.

Richardson, Elliott and Roberts pooled studies covering nearly 34,000 people, and found people in debt more than three times as likely to have a mental health problem.

Those surveys measured people once, so they show association and leave cause open. A 2020 review of nine studies across Asia found the same pattern. Every Pacific island nation sat outside it.

I found Pacific Islander adults in a 2023 American survey, where financial hardship tracked with anxiety and depression. We turn up in the research when we live in America. I went looking for the PNG figure and found the gap instead.

The World Bank last reviewed PNG consumer protection in 2018, and recorded formal lenders charging up to 3.5 per cent a fortnight. At that rate a balance left alone doubles in about ten months. I offer that as illustration rather than Alice's loan.

The same review found PNG lenders setting their own disclosure practices, and complaints handling slow and ineffective. So, Alice drafts her letter alone.

Money is still the last thing people say out loud, and I know that shape from the inside. I kept what I owed to myself for years, and Day 1 was the first time I said any of it in public.

Alice carried hers privately until that Tuesday, and told me she assumed she was the only one this far behind. I hear that assumption more than any other and I recognise it, because I made the same one.

Here the taboo runs the other way round. In Port Moresby people discuss obligation openly, naming a haus krai contribution, school fees and a wantok's request at the table.

A bank balance stays private. A loan balance stays more private still. Alice names what she owes her family but keeps the loan balance to herself and it haunts her bedroom at two in the morning.

Alice thinks PNG needs a free debt counselling line, to help other Papua New Guineans sitting up at two. Financial Counselling Australia runs the National Debt Helpline, where counsellors work only in the caller's interest.

If you are carrying something, tell me what it costs you on an ordinary Tuesday. Just reply to this email.

I will keep your name out of it, if you like, and give you the chance to read the piece before it runs. So you decide what gets published.

Best

Amanda

P.S. What’s your view on today’s newsletter? Did I miss something out that you’d like to share? Write to me, [email protected]. I may not get back to you, but I will try to read what you send in.

Wild Money is general information only, drawn from my own experience and research. It isn't financial advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell, hold or manage money in any particular way. What worked for me won't necessarily suit you. Please seek advice from a licensed financial adviser before making decisions about your own money.