Living On Debt? Your Bill Is Now Due

What surprises Marcus Leech the most is how fast it all fell to pieces. Six months ago he was working as a computer security expert at Nortel Networks in Ottawa, earning about $127,000 a year. He knew the telecom giant was on shaky ground. But with three decades of experience, Leech was sure he could land another good job if need be.

So when his wife, who had stayed home to raise and educate their three children, went to school to become a pharmacist last August, Leech thought nothing of tapping his line of credit for the $9,000 tuition. Nor did he fret much when he took out a mortgage of around $280,000 for a new home in Smiths Falls, Ont., or when he borrowed thousands to replace the family’s two aging vehicles.

In all, the family piled on more than $400,000 in debt in the last few years. “When I was young if you got heavily into debt it was a very serious issue, but now it’s just seen as normal,” he says. “If you’re an average middle-income family with two or three kids and only a single income, debt is the only way to keep the family going.”

Then, last November, the hammer fell. Nortel told Leech, 46, that his last day would be Jan. 11. At first he took solace in the fact that after 20 years at the company he was due a generous payout of around $100,000. But three days after clearing out his desk, Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection, killing any prospect of a severance cheque. All Leech got was $11,000 in vacation pay, which is all the family has had to live on since.

Read the rest of the Maclean’s article.