‘You’ve got to pay the money back’

Thursday, December 15, 2011

MILFORD – Credit card debt in the United States averages $16,400 per person. If one were to make only the minimum per-monthly payment, it would take 54 years to pay off that debt.

That was among the pieces of information that members of Greater Milford Outreach learned last week when speakers from the Legal Advice Referral Center and New Hampshire Legal Aid spoke to the group at its meeting in Town Hall.

The information about credit cards came up when Filippa S. Viola, the Legal Advice Referral Center’s director of outreach and multilingual education, was talking about the group’s financial literacy classes, one of several programs it offers to low-income people. Those classes emphasize the five core competencies that are stressed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury:

• Spending – budgets and how to optimize variable expenses.

• Saving – pay yourself first and survival strategies in tough times.

• Earnings – individual development accounts.

• Borrowing – credit, the scams therein, and the strategies for building good credit.

• Protecting – issues of identity theft.

Viola talked about the problems people run into when they have multiple credit cards, something that looks enticing at first.

“The problem is, you’ve got to pay that money back,” she said.

She also talked about AARP’s network of volunteer income tax assistance centers that, she said, are staffed by retired tax attorneys and former CPAs, and how valuable they are to seniors who are on fixed incomes. They use the same software as the Internal Revenue Service, she said.

“They’re just fabulous,” Viola said.

And she warned against setting up withholding to get big tax returns at the end of the year.

“Why should the government hold only your money?” she asked rhetorically. “You should hold your money.”

Viola was one of three to speak to GMO last week. Also from the Legal Advice Referral Center was Jeffrey M. Goodrich, a lawyer with the service’s Low Income Taxpayer Clinic, and Michelle Wangerin of NH Legal Aid.

Wangerin said when it comes to legal aid for low-income people, “the need in New Hampshire is great.”

But recently, Legal Aid closed its Nashua office and now people who were seen there need to go to Manchester. She said Legal Aid handles strictly civil cases, including those involving health care, and, under its homeless prevention project, landlord-tenant disputes for people in public housing or in Section 8 housing. Criminal cases it refers to the Public Defender’s Office.

Goodrich described LARC as “basically a legal hotline” that gives advice over the phone, but rarely does direct representation. Rather, it refers people to either law firms that do pro bono work, or to New Hampshire Legal Aid.

And they will deal with evictions from private housing, he said.

“If you’re being evicted, call,” Goodrich said.

And he told GMO members, “When in doubt, always err on the side of sending (people) to us.”

Viola added that if people don’t qualify for legal services because of their income level, LARC would send them to “the proper place.”

“When they call us, we don’t hang up on them,” she said. “We find some place for them to go.”

And, she said, LARC deals with as many as 1,500 calls a week.

The Legal Advice Referral Center can be reached at 1-800-639-5290.

NH Legal aid can be reached at www.nhlegalaid.org. Greater Milford Outreach can be reached at 672-9876.

Greater Milford Outreach is an organization for anyone interested in exchanging ideas for better serving children and families in the Greater Milford area. GMO seeks to create a network among area human services, schools, court systems, parents and community members. For more information, contact Libby Wehrle-Anderson at 672-9876.