Dealing with Over-Indebtedness : Approaches in Selected Developed Countries and in Poland

The idea of the article is to present a review of solutions, preventive and/or remedial in character, applied in several developed countries that had to deal with the problem of the over-indebtedness earlier than in Poland. We assumed that the development of the financial knowledge and responsible decision-making process in respect of the debt needs to be backed by ongoing efforts at every stage of the financial life of households (what is called the life cycle approach) as well as by the appropriate forms of communication.We have done our best to make sure that the picture of actions taken to deal with the over-indebtedness was accurate. We cannot rule out that new initiatives and solutions have appeared in the wake of the crisis that are not discussed herein. The article has two main parts, beyond the introduction and conclusions. In the second part we review definitions of the notion of over-indebtedness which identify the problem. The latter one presents a review of the solutions applied in various countries to combat the over-indebtedness, as a backdrop for a Polish experiences in that respect