This year has been a perfect storm for financial stress.
With three interest rate hikes, rising cost of living, and a Middle East war driving up fuel prices, more Australians are falling behind on their debt repayments.
And that has led to a 12 per cent spike in the number of people calling the National Debt Helpline.
In fact, an additional 20,000 people contacted the organisation for debt advice in the year to August, taking the total to 187,905.
About 15,000 of those were directly related to debt collection.
Adding to the stress is the fact that debt collectors are increasingly using artificial intelligence (AI) to ramp up their efforts to claw back money from debt-ridden consumers.
One woman was sent repeated legal threats, trying to force…