Car­ol Quash

At 26, Thea De Roche was drown­ing in over $250, 000 in loans and cred­it card debt.

To­day, ten years lat­er, the own­er of T De Roche Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices is get­ting ready to launch Fi­nan­cial Re­set: from Bondage to Break­through, a pro­gramme and a plat­form through which she will teach peo­ple how to get out of debt.

“It will be an on­go­ing arm of T. De Roche Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices that we will launch in April … It’s go­ing to walk par­tic­i­pants through the eight prac­ti­cal steps that I took”, steps that were among the most dif­fi­cult she has ever had to take, but which were ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary in or­der for her to get back on a sta­ble fi­nan­cial foot­ing.

“It’s go­ing to be on a plat­form where peo­ple can pur­chase the var­i­ous pack­ages, be­cause we have sev­er­al pack­ages for every dif­fer­ent in­come lev­el, based on what their lev­el of sup­port re­quires.”

De Roche said the pro­gramme will in­clude sup­port from peo­ple who have been through the iso­la­tion that over­whelm­ing debt caus­es, and she is work­ing on get­ting fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions on board to pro­vide sup­port in oth­er ar­eas, such as pos­si­ble loan con­sol­i­da­tions.

De Roche, an AC­CA-ac­cred­it­ed ac­coun­tant by pro­fes­sion, be­gan her ca­reer as an ac­count­ing tech­ni­cian in train­ing at the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) when she was 20 years old, and be­gan work­ing her way up the lad­der. But she de­cid­ed to make a ca­reer switch.

“I walked away from the ac­count­ing pro­fes­sion for five years, and I was do­ing make­up full-time and I had a spa. But when COVID-19 hap­pened and in­come lit­er­al­ly went through the win­dow, that was when the debt lit­er­al­ly took a hold of my life be­cause I couldn’t pay for any­thing.”

She be­gan send­ing out ap­pli­ca­tions in the hope that she could get back in­to the cor­po­rate world. But hav­ing been out of the sys­tem for five years, she got no call backs for ac­count­ing po­si­tions.

“And I de­cid­ed to go in­to in­sur­ance. So I start­ed work­ing at Guardian Life of the Caribbean, and from talk­ing to busi­ness­es about in­sur­ance, I re­alised there was a need for fi­nan­cial plan­ning and fi­nan­cial ad­vi­so­ry.”

In Ju­ly 2021, she reg­is­tered her busi­ness and start­ed off by pro­vid­ing busi­ness reg­is­tra­tion, pay­roll and book­keep­ing ser­vices. Now the busi­ness al­so of­fers man­age­ment of ac­counts, work­ing cap­i­tal man­age­ment and busi­ness con­sul­tan­cy.

“One of the things that we spe­cialise in is help­ing busi­ness­es start from the ground up and help them launch and con­tin­ue with them as they grow. We of­fer busi­ness starter packs that give busi­ness­es a full start—we reg­is­ter the busi­ness, we han­dle all of those le­gal mat­ters, we even help them open their bank ac­counts, get BIR reg­is­tered, NIB reg­is­tered, stamps, re­ceipt books; we do every­thing.”

She said that be­cause the jour­ney back to fi­nan­cial free­dom was so gru­elling for her, the mem­o­ries mo­ti­vate her to help her clients avoid the pit­falls in which she had found her­self.

“One of the things I said to my­self dur­ing that jour­ney was that when I get out of it, I want to be able to as­sist busi­ness­es in this jour­ney.

“It was so lone­ly, it strained a lot of re­la­tion­ships be­cause of the con­stant ask­ing for help, the con­stant bor­row­ing, and there’s no def­i­nite time to pay back be­cause there was in­con­sis­tent in­come.”

It took dis­ci­pline, struc­ture, pa­tience and faith to get her back on her feet. And al­though her faith played a ma­jor role, she un­der­stood the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion.

As a mem­ber of the Abun­dant Love Taber­na­cle, she ap­pre­ci­ates the prin­ci­ple of giv­ing, sow­ing and tithing. But how could she give, if she didn’t have?

“I gave, but I knew that in it­self would not get me out of debt. Some­times we can over-spir­i­tu­alise things and think on­ly cer­tain things can hap­pen. But if I didn’t change my spend­ing habits, if I wasn’t dis­ci­plined as to how I would al­lo­cate my funds, or how I would struc­ture things and put a plan in place to get it sort­ed, it would not have worked.”

She said she will al­ways be grate­ful to her pas­tor and the mem­bers of her church be­cause that was where she got the men­tor­ing that gave her a struc­ture to be able to get out of debt.

“I couldn’t get any con­sol­i­da­tion loans be­cause of the mess that I was in. No bank want­ed to do any busi­ness with me. So, I had to lit­er­al­ly pay dol­lar for dol­lar.”

In No­vem­ber 2022, she was fi­nal­ly debt free and on her way to fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty, grow­ing and build­ing as­sets. The T. De Roche Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices is lo­cat­ed at Gulf City Mall with two em­ploy­ees.

“So to move to there from a place of be­ing in to­tal sham­bles is a bless­ing right there.”

Ear­li­er this month, De Roche used her Tik­Tok plat­form to tease the Fi­nan­cial Re­set: from Bondage to Break­through project, prompt­ing an avalanche of re­spons­es from peo­ple who are in­ter­est­ed.

“Hun­dreds of peo­ple are email­ing, What­sAp­ping, call­ing, DMing about it … So far, what we’ve been see­ing on so­cial me­dia is just us prepar­ing our view­ers, prepar­ing peo­ple for what is to come.”

She said the project is de­signed for peo­ple who are at that point where they are at the end of the rope and need sup­port.

“Be­cause, you know, there are some peo­ple who can be in the sit­u­a­tion, but they’re not fed up yet. So they’re still mak­ing care­less de­ci­sions. This pro­gramme is for peo­ple who are ready and will­ing to do what it takes, be­cause there’s go­ing to be some hard steps; there’s go­ing to be some things that they need to cut, some things that they need to ad­just. And it’s on­ly for the peo­ple who are ready and ma­ture in their mind to make that tran­si­tion out. It is not a quick fix; a mi­crowave sit­u­a­tion.”