Consumer Proposal FAQ
Common questions about consumer proposals
It’s important to first understand that a Consumer Proposal is a way of consolidating all your debts and offering to pay your creditors a smaller percentage of what you owe them. It’s a legal agreement you make with the help of a Licensed Insolvency Trustee and is a federally regulated program. It also has several advantages over a bankruptcy, whereby you get to keep all your assets, freezes interest charges, stops collection calls, and stops any legal actions made against you.
Consumer Proposal FAQ
When you book a free consultation with one of our Licensed Insolvency Trustees, we’ll discuss all of the debt-relief options that are available to you and whether or not a consumer proposal is the right one for your unique situation. If you are a Canadian resident or citizen and owe less than $250,000, you probably qualify for a consumer proposal.
Canadians are carrying a tremendous amount of debt today and most can be included in a consumer proposal, which will substantially reduce the amount you owe and how much you pay each month. These types of debt include credit card debt, CRA debt, student loan debt, personal loans, payday loans, lines of credit, etc.
Inflation in Canada is on an upward trend—the cost of everything continues to rise. If your household bills have been increasing, stress around crushing debt repayment is likely growing as well. While a consumer proposal will not reduce your regular ongoing household expenses, such as groceries and utilities, it may reduce your debt payments (loans and credit cards) by up to 80%. And those are the payments that tend to come with very high interest. Most of our clients experience a great deal of relief after filing a consumer proposal as the family budget becomes much more manageable.
Credit counselling is an important (and non-negotiable condition) of filing a consumer proposal in Canada. You will learn how to begin to rebuild your credit, and how to prevent accruing more consumer debt in the future.
After your licensed Insolvency Trustee notifies your creditors that a consumer proposal has been filed, they have 45 days to respond. During the approval period, creditors are not permitted to contact you, all communication must go through David Sklar & Associates.
Most forms of debt may be included in a consumer proposal except for your mortgage and car loan. This means you will continue to make those payments as normal. You will not be required to surrender assets when you file a consumer proposal.
Your credit report is a history of your relationship with your creditors and your debts. This history is used by the creditors to gauge what level of risk there is in advancing new credit to you. The combination of the history, the amount of credit you hold and the level of risk is what allows each creditor to generate your “Credit Score”. The higher your score, the better the chances of receiving new credit at lower rates.
If you are in need of a Consumer Proposal or a Bankruptcy, your credit history is likely to have already been affected to varying degrees as a result of missed payments, collection actions or simply the total amount of credit that you have available, even if you are not using it.
Depending on which comes sooner, either 3 years after you finish making payments to complete your consumer proposal or 6 years after filing.
Student loan debt has long been a problem for Canadians. Add in a pandemic that continues to cause massive uncertainty around employment at a time when inflation rates are soaring we have a perfect storm for debt stress.
If you’re struggling with your student loan debt and it’s been seven years or more since you’ve been a student, we have some good news. It is possible to say goodbye to that unmanageable monthly bill and the robotic collection calls that go with it.
There are two debt relief options we suggest for taking control of your student loan debt situation: filing a consumer proposal or declaring personal bankruptcy.
As tempted as you might be to apply for a debt consolidation loan to eliminate your student loan debt, we strongly recommend you explore other options. A consumer proposal is a less expensive form of debt consolidation and it’s interest-free. Ironically, many of our clients come to us for debt relief from their debt consolidation loans!
Learn more about how we can help you find student loan debt relief with a consumer proposal.
Learn more about how we can help you find student loan debt relief with a personal bankruptcy
Only you can decide if a consumer proposal is worth it for you, but we urge you to consider the facts! With a consumer proposal, you will have a manageable monthly payment based on your income, expenses, assets, and what you can afford. Ultimately, a consumer proposal is a fair debt-relief option for all parties while giving you a fresh financial start.
Our favourite question of all?
“Why didn’t I do this years ago?!”
Book your free consultation today!
Learn about some of the consumer proposal experiences of our clients:
Advice on Consumer Proposals
Getting into debt is easy. Getting out is a different story.
But it's still possible!
Did you know there is a Debt Program federally regulated by the Canadian Government, designed to help citizens avoid claiming bankruptcy? This amazing program can only be administered by a Licensed Insolvency Trustee (LIT).
If you’re struggling to make your payments every month and creditors won’t stop calling, we can help.
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Our team of Licensed Insolvency Trustees in Ontario can help you get out of debt and in control of your own financial future. We’ve helped thousands of people and we can help you too.
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