This is kind of weird and quite hard but it feels good to be writing it. My husband and I are very happy in life except for one small area - we are around £45k in debt. This is all on personal loans and credit cards. I find it hard to see how it's happened but it has. We're not big shoppers, we don't go and blow huge amounts on designer gear but slowly and steadily over the years we have built up this massive debt. We have spent our adult life living on credit and now it's hard to live any other way.
For the longest time we have carried on in a kind of denial, always intending to sort the problem out but never actually pulling it off. It just seems to get worse. Now we are happy in ourselves and know what is important to us in life and we need to stop the debt now. How do you even begin with a debt that large? It breaks my heart to think of spending the next 10 or 20 years struggling to pay it off.
We are very aware that we are reponsible for the debt, but if only it wasn't made so easy to do. Even now we are barely coping each month and there is still thousands of pounds of available credit to us. How crazy is that? I have been looking at sites that offer to help you out by arranging lower payments and getting some of the debt written off but that seems like an easy way out. It's almost as though we don't want to admit it to anyone but want to try and pay it off bit by bit and hope it will eventually go away. The reality is that we are barely making the minimum payments, are living off the credit cards and sometimes are having to withdraw cash to pay into our bank account to keep afloat. Yuk that sounds soooo bad when I read it back. It is the only thing in my life that I am ashamed of and that makes me feel sad.
It have been great getting this all off my chest and I would be glad of any advice. I do feel positive about the future but it is hard at the moment and I want us to end up wiser and debt free(asap). I think Spendaholics is a great programme and it's so good to see others coming out the other side. It let's you know your not alone and that there is hope.
