Anna, a domestic helper from the Philippines, had managed her finances well until she took out two loans over the past few months for a friend she described as being \u201clike a mother to me\u201d.<\/p>\n
The 37-year-old, who asked to be identified only by her first name, now has to pay creditors about HK$9,000 (US$1,149) a month \u2013 almost twice her salary \u2013 leaving her extremely stressed about her debt.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy friend said she needed the money and asked if I could borrow from banks under my name, saying she would pay back the loans, but I was wrong to believe her,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am really hurt about this \u2026 I told her, you really put me in trouble, you put my job at risk. But she just says \u2018I\u2019m so sorry, I didn\u2019t mean it\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anna said the debt had taken a toll on her mental health, but she was prioritising her children\u2019s needs over repayments, even as banks continued to chase her.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe school told me my son has borderline depression because they kept asking him for payments, which I failed to give. That really breaks me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy situation really gives me depression. I just take it in a positive way and submit everything to God.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anna, a domestic helper from the Philippines, had managed her finances well until she took out two loans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[60001,72,189661,189660,1322,176498,113,189666,189665,240,61,60,189663,1666,189664,189662],"class_list":["post-434669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-anna","tag-business","tag-companies-registry","tag-credit-data-smart","tag-debt","tag-domestic-workers","tag-economy","tag-enrich","tag-financial-services-and-treasury-bureau","tag-hong-kong","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-money-lenders","tag-philippines","tag-shadow-chow","tag-suzanne-gendron"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}