According to an alliance of the Federal Working Group on Debt Counselling, the citizens' movement Finanzwende and the Institute for Financial Services (iff), only those receiving social assistance have a secure right to free debt counseling so far. Employed people, students or pensioners are often left out.

The alliance now wants to change this and is demanding free debt counseling for all people who are in financial distress.

"Especially in times of massively rising living costs, it would be important to ward off impending over-indebtedness in private households through early advice," explains Ines Moers from the Federal Working Group for Debt Counseling. demands Michael Möller from the citizens' movement Finanzwende.

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.

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.

Is there a wave of bankruptcies?

According to Creditreform, the energy crisis has not yet led to a wave of bankruptcies among private individuals. However, Creditreform fears that as the burdens last longer and the economy deteriorates, there is a risk of more payment defaults among private consumers.

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.