Bankruptcy For Women On The Rise

Bankruptcy among women has seen a large rise in recent times and is being blamed on the taking on of high mortgages and credit cards that are being used to keep them up to date with a lifestyle that they can ill afford to have. Another contributing factor is that it is commonly known that a woman’s income will fall short of that what a man earns.

The rise in women who have declared themselves bankrupt has risen by almost half in the past five years or so and it is only just recently that this sort of research has been done on women alone and it has come as a bit of a shock.

What’s more shocking is that when this research was carried out, it came to the fore that some women owed in the region of 40 credit cards at any one time, with debts along the road of £100,000. All this debt and on earnings of £25,000 just goes to prove that credit is so easily given to the consumer as credit cards and personal loans are banded about with ease and ultimately the customers fly by night fashion in which they abuse them.

Today’s women have a bigger financial independence now than they did have in say the 1970’s, were it would have been very rare to find that a woman had filed for bankruptcy. With more women now having their own means of income and relying less on a man being the sole bread winner, women are now liable to take more risks with their financial status, than they would have been able to do only a few decades ago.

Today’s credit card market, has also got to take a fait proportion of the blame for this increase, with one main fault being the introduction of the 0% free interest periods, that have led to people trying to maintain they’re debt by shifting it from one deal to the next, to save on paying the interest on the debt (Rate Tarts), but only succeeding to move the debt on and not clearing it.

It has also been noted that women feel as if they can’t change their lifestyle habits in the same manner in which a man can, when it comes to dealing with their debts and with a woman having an income of that lower than a mans, though the gap is rightly shortening, they will find it harder to reduce the amount of debt that they have.