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It all started with Yannick H. * at 5,000 euros.
Not for the smartphone or the game console, but for the stroller and a cot, the first son was just born.
Then the installments for the car, 317 euros a month.
Another loan to pay off the first one.
And another one.
"Buy first, then pay, 0 percent financing, that yells at you everywhere," says Yannick H. on the phone.
At some point he divorced his wife.
Another move, change of job, more loans.
The 40-year-old now lives in Cologne.
2020 should be his year, finally: He had completed further training and wanted to start over as a freelance media designer and sound engineer.
Orders were received and it was fully booked by July.
But then Corona came.
At first, only the big events where he was supposed to take care of the sound were canceled.
Finally everyone.
The investments in the studio, all the equipment, for nothing.
Only the debts remained, the old and the new.
H. is desperately looking for a new job, starts at a company in Düsseldorf, commutes an hour there and an hour back every day.
It doesn't matter, the main thing is that money comes in again.
It is enough for the rent and the bare minimum.
But it's not enough for the rates: "At the moment there are three institutes that call me an average of eight times a day," says Yannick H. He blocks the callers.
Doesn't open the post anymore.
The creditors and the debt collection companies are demanding around 60,000 euros from him.
"At some point I just lost the overview. And then put my head in the sand using the ostrich method."
There are many people like Yannick H. in Germany.
Around 6.9 million are considered over-indebted.
That means: With their income they can no longer service the installments for the current loans.
Last resort: consumer bankruptcy.
It affects more men (12.5 percent) than women (7.65 percent), slightly more East Germans than West Germans (10.3 percent to 9.9 percent).
The overview:
The numbers are alarming enough.
But old.
They refer to 2019. Everything before Corona.
How many over-indebted people are there today?
How has Corona affected the debtor's situation?
What sums are we talking about?
There are no official figures on this.
The Federal Statistical Office collects the data once a year from the many regional and municipal debt counseling agencies that pass on the figures voluntarily.
And now have everything else to do but count cases.
Is the corona crisis driving more people into over-indebtedness?
A survey by Creditreform Wirtschaftsforschung and Boniversum, which SPIEGEL has received in advance, now helps to answer this question.
The credit agency, which also creates the debt atlas every year, surveyed 1,055 consumers between the ages of 18 and 69 at the end of August.
The information was compared with a study from 2016 in order to trace a possible development.
Do you fear payment difficulties due to Corona?
Have you deferred loan installments?
And what expenses do you forego?
The result: 37 percent of households are financially worse off than before due to the corona crisis.
One in five complains of financial losses of 30 to 50 percent.
Eight percent of those surveyed said they had lost more than half of their income.
The consequences: 28 percent fear that they will soon run into financial difficulties due to the corona crisis and have to go into debt.
Eleven percent of households have deferred installment payments for current consumer, real estate or car loans in the past few months.
This was legally possible until June 30th.
As the Creditreform figures show, the instrument was used frequently
.
An indication that in many households there was no longer enough money in front and behind.
And the subjective feeling of suffering from debt stress has also increased, albeit to a small extent: if ten percent of those surveyed in October 2016 stated that they were more often under stress due to debt, this figure was one percentage point in August 2020 gone up.
"Should people have to forego parts of their income in the long term, we expect a sharp rise in over-indebted consumers," says Patrik-Ludwig Hantzsch, head of Creditreform economic research.
And not only in socially weaker milieus - the survey also shows that over-indebtedness is increasingly affecting the middle class.
More unemployed people, more short-time workers, more over-indebted people - this is also feared by Roman Schlag from the Association's Debt Advice Group (AG SBV).
During the lockdown period, many of the municipal debt counseling services were closed, many debtors would not have dared to come out, but first waited.
In the meantime the demand is high again, in some regions the consultants are no longer able to keep up.
"The use of our online consultations alone has increased by 20 to 30 percent during the Corona period. This is not simply done by email, but via a data-protected portal on the Internet," explains Schlag.
The bankruptcy paradox
Yannick H. now also goes to debt counseling.
The regular appointments help him to budget better, to get along with what he has.
And above all: not to incur new debts.
However, that will not be enough for a comparison with the creditors.
Yannick H. will have to go into consumer bankruptcy: an orderly procedure in which the claims of the creditors are met as far as possible.
The debtor only has 1178 euros left, everything above this attachment limit goes to the creditors.
After a certain period of time, there is no debt.
New beginning.
For Yannick H. it should start in October.
As for so many: Because then a new law is likely to come into force.
The consumer bankruptcy will then no longer last six years, but only three years.
This leads to a statistical paradox: in the middle of the crisis, the number of consumer bankruptcies stagnates in many federal states and is even falling significantly across the whole of Germany:
Less debtors?
No, on the contrary.
Unemployment is rising because of Corona, and it is one of the most important causes of over-indebtedness, along with divorces and serious illnesses.
Entire industries are on their knees, tourism, gastronomy, the economic downturn is affecting both large and small companies.
And they send their people on short-time work.
Or just put them in front of the door.
So it is more of a postponing effect: those facing consumer bankruptcy are now waiting for the moment when the bankruptcy period shrinks to three years.
Get out of debt sooner.
The flood of applications is therefore more likely to set in after October 1st, when the law is supposed to come into force.
The shortening of the insolvency period has nothing to do with Corona, the federal government had to implement the requirements of the EU.
But the new regulation comes at the right time, believes debt adviser Schlag: "The shortening is definitely sensible and helpful."
But he is worried about all the self-employed and employees on short-time work who are currently struggling with the consequences of the Corona.
Because usually only Hartz IV and welfare recipients have a legal right to debt counseling.
"Corona has just shown us that more and more people from the middle class are also struggling with debts - for example when short-time work is suddenly ordered and hundreds of euros are suddenly missing from the household budget," says Schlag.
Yannick H. still has hope for this crisis year 2020. He has just married for the second time, his childhood sweetheart.
He cares a lot about his son, who is now going to school.
And Yannick H. has a new job in prospect, this time in Cologne, less commuting, more salary.
"When the personal bankruptcy starts in October, I'll just have to grit my teeth for three years and restrict myself," he says.
"But I'm in the mood for a new start right now, I'm excited about everything that lies ahead of me. And I'm looking forward to my new life. Without debts".
* Name changed
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