Dear Emmanuel,
Friday, June 13, 2025, marks your 37th year on Earth. And per our tradition, I should be wishing you “Happy Birthday” with joy and celebration. Unfortunately this year, that greeting doesn’t quite fit. Your 37th birthday is far from happy.
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You hold a degree and a stable job as the Financial Accountant for a reputable agro-processing firm. You’ve been married for 11 years and have four children—aged 11, 9, 6, and 4—who are all in school. Life wasn’t perfect, but it was stable. The family had enough, with a little extra to share. Friends and relatives often turned to you for help. Do you remember how happy you were to always support them?
Then, life took an unexpected turn.
Today, your finances are in ruins. You are buried in debt to the tune of GHS 800,000, or roughly $76,960. And the worst part? You have no assets to show for it. Your debt-to-asset ratio is 1:0—total debt, zero assets.
So now, let’s ask the hard question, “How did we get here?”
In 2022, you made an investment decision that failed catastrophically. Instead being honest about what happened, you tried to shield your partners. Don’t you think these partners who are mostly your friends and colleagues at work would have understood? It was an investment, loss is part of the expected outcome.
Well, you didn’t give them that chance. Rather you took loans to cover their expected returns. You paid them interest and benefits as if everything was fine, just to protect your image and integrity. You did everything but tell the truth.
You kept borrowing to preserve a lie—an investment that no longer existed. One loan led to another, and soon you were going under.
The compounded interest, unpaid loans, and the misused funds you desperately poured into trying to “fix” the situation have all ballooned into the mountain of debt that now crushes you.
Unfortunately the tragedy isn’t yours alone to bear. Your wife and children who never signed up for this—now bear the weight of your choices. Every morning, you wake up scrambling to pay school fees, cover rent, buy food, and handle medical bills. But how can you provide when your entire salary is already spoken for—gobbled up by aggressive creditors before it even reaches you?
Loans. Loans. Loans. Your phone is packed with more loan apps than you can count.
Each day begins and ends with threatening calls and emotionally abusive messages from creditors. You live in fear, shame, and exhaustion.
So again I ask, “What is there to celebrate about this birthday?”
If there are degrees of depression and emotional torture, you have climbed through all of them to the peak.
The life you once dreamed of has collapsed. You were so full of vision and promise. But look at you now. Only two things continue to grow in your life: your age and your debt.
Why not just stop borrowing? Because you can’t. You can’t even survive a day without another loan. Every attempt to fix this has failed.
You look to the future and see nothing but bleak darkness. It feels like you’re at the end of the tunnel, but someone has taken away the light.
Emmanuel, you have to come clean. You can’t keep living a lie. Please, make a decision before your next birthday.
We cannot greet another year living in this cycle of misery, guilt, and pain. As I write this, I am overwhelmed with fear, grief, and uncertainty.
What will happen to your once-loving marriage when the truth comes out? What about those innocent children who have no idea what their father is battling?
The light is fading, I know. The hope is crushed, I know that too. But as long as you have life, you can’t give up. Don’t forget about the vision and purpose that once gave your life meaning? If you lose it, then you lose everything.
When you finally stop this lie, may the earth be merciful to you. Above all, may the Heavens be help you out of this mess.
Yours truly,
—Emmanuel
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Hmmm, you’re just sharing mine but I would say I don’t have a nuclear family or I’m unmarried but in debts. Aside this financial challenges that makes it hard to help my Dad, aunties who helped me through school to be working now and earning a decent salary, I have a health issue of which my resources have been unable to ascertain what it is. So we’re in serious dark times but as I always say and how you concluded, “once we have life, there’s hope.” Let’s keep our dreams alive and pick each day at a time. The thing is, because we’re men, we don’t really share our predicament with people. But speak to someone. Speak to your wife if she’s that understanding type, she would listen to you. My case, it’s only my younger sister who knows about my plight and the woman I’m in a relationship with. Perhaps a listening ear is what will keep your mind at ease first before you start solving the accumulated debt issues. My health is not my own since I can’t really control it and that’s what scares me. The thing is, I’ve been to Korle Bu and another huge public with the little money that I have to seek answers but nothing is working. I’m in pain always with my indebtedness but I still have hope that there’s life in us. My brother, shin up and keep on keeping on. This can’t be the end of the road for you. You debt will be cleared and your nuclear family will know that you were there for them regardless.
This is me, in fact everything about this Story is almost photocopy of my story.
Am Enoch(not Emma), I will 36 in June 14( not 37 on 13th june) and i made very terrible decision in 2022 that has cost me everything
Maybe one I will share my story
Hmmmmmm!!
Loan apps and putting up appearance are terrible life suckers.
Life always gives a second chance but can only come when you come clean.
May God grant you the grace to come clean as the starting point of your recovery