An alliance of different organizations calls for free debt counseling for everyone in financial need.

It would be "especially important in times of massively rising living costs to ward off imminent over-indebtedness in private households through early advice," explained Ines Moers from the Federal Working Group for Debt Counseling.

According to the information, so far only recipients of social assistance have a secure claim.

The municipalities decide who else has free access to advice.

Employed people, students or pensioners are often left out.

Government should act quickly

The Federal Working Group for Debt Counseling, the citizens' movement Finanzwende and the Institute for Financial Services (iff) are campaigning for the right to free debt counseling for everyone.

“Regardless of whether you are a self-employed baker or a hairdresser: Anyone who needs debt advice must be able to get it free of charge,” demanded Michael Möller from the Finanzwende citizens’ movement.

The three clubs are calling on the federal government to take action quickly.

Currently, more and more people are getting into financial hardship through no fault of their own due to the sharp rise in the cost of living.

Almost six million are over-indebted

The credit agency Creditreform recently counted almost 5.9 million over-indebted people in Germany.

We speak of over-indebtedness when the debtor is highly unlikely to be able to pay the sum of his payment obligations over a longer period of time - or in short: the total expenditure exceeds the income.

According to Creditreform, the energy crisis has not yet led to a wave of insolvencies among private individuals.

Creditreform fears that as the burdens last longer and the economy deteriorates, private consumers are at risk of more defaults.

In a survey published in mid-November on behalf of the credit agency Schufa, a good third of the approximately 1000 respondents (35 percent) assumed that their income would not be sufficient to continue to maintain the standard of living.

Half of consumers (50 percent) said they had saved money in the past six months.