What Caused Your Debt in the First Place

tesuhoha

I know im being a bit nosey but I thought it might be interesting to find out how we all got ourselves into this situation with the debt. Was it just uncontrolled spending at the shops, losing a job, breaking up with a partner or something else. My excessive debt was caused by sending my kids to private school. My son went to a grammar school but last year failed all his GCSEs so i am currently paying £1115 a month so that he can retake some of his GCSEs and do some AS levels at a very expensive local college. There was nothing else on offer at the time for him. I am also supporting my daughter through university paying her fees and rent. We have hardly any money and are paying off debts of £17,000 but it is a terrible struggle. Both children went to a private primary school and my daughter had a means tested assisted place at her school so we ended up paying fees. We wanted them to have a good education but if i could go back i would do it differently. Both of them have turned out selfish and ungrateful and the boy is lazy. We are deep in debt and dont have much of a house. We could have done a lot better with our money. After this year if whether or not he fails his AS levels we wont be sending our boy back to the same college. He will have to do A levels elsewhere. We are going to think of ourselves now.

amosworks

A great quote I recently saw here: "Living the champagne lifestyle on a lemonade budget"

Yeap, I blew my money on sex, drugs and pop music. D'oh

tesuhoha

A quote I saw once if my memory serves me correctly: If life gives you lemons, make lemonade!

KittyKate

Well, I went to a regular nursery, school and college, and though my parents helped as much as they could when I was at uni, they certainly didn't get into debt for me. All my debt now is uni fees which I intend to pay back myself. I certainly understand and appreciate the value of money which is the most important lesson you can learn.

I have friends my age and older who go out and spend their wage and never plan around the corner. I'm not perfect, but I manage to save and only buy bargains (thanks to here!!)

tesuhoha

We were foolish cos we wanted our kids to have what we never did.

*zippy*

I used to be very careful with money. We had a low income when we first married as both only young and still training, I watched every penny. We bought a nice house when we were 18, put down a good deposit we had saved about 30%, we had no debt or overdraft and we went abroad every year etc

After my DD was born I got a cc, I can remember feeling so excited, I really loved it, I could have anything I wanted and that was it. In the begining most of the money was spent on the kids, toys and expensive clothes and also as our income increased I relaxed and stopped watching our spending. The cc was in my name and I was earning £60 a week and they kept upping my limit until it was nearly £10K :eek:

I read money saving tips on here and I think I used to do that, I really don't know how I changed so much.

tesuhoha

i bet in a lot of cases the debt started when the kids came along (not that i blame them personally)

*zippy*

tesuhoha wrote:

i bet in a lot of cases the debt started when the kids came along (not that i blame them personally)

Yes as well as added expense and often a drop in income, advertisers have convinced us that you need to buy all this stuff to give your kids the best start in life.

I am so glad I have stopped spoiling them, its taken 6 months and we still have a way to go, but they have started changing for the better.

shazzer22

My debts came from taking a year out before going to uni, I was earning fairly decent money for my age and was offered a credit card which, by the end of uni had a £10k limit and was pretty much max-ed.

My mum and dad were never any good with money, and now that they have split up I've been helping my dad sort out his debts too. It was never engrained in me to look after money, just spend it!

I think my debt comes from being around people who earn at least three or four times my income and thinking that I can keep up with them, clothes, eating out, holidays etc. Now I know I just can't but I don't resent them, I just let them pay when they offer now!

mintymoneysaver

Mine pretty much came from a once in a lifetime holiday to Florida.We had cash for the holiday, but put park tickets, meals etc on the credit card so it was over £3000 when we came home.It ended up over £4000 by putting Christmas and stuff on it as well, and not having much to put back off it each month.
Apart from that I would say I have alway been pretty good with money, so I'm just back to the way I was now, but even more frugal!

tyllwyd

Our debts have increased after moving house - the house cost about the same as our previous house to buy, but it was in a very run down state and we completely underestimated the cost of doing it up, plus buying another car because we now needed to do a school run, plus a bad investment that cost us £4000. And I'm self-employed, so we (well, me mainly) didn't appreciate how much more difficult it would become to work with two children as compared to one, plus childcare, plus losing a couple of my regular clients for reasons beyond my control, so the expenses have come very close to cancelling out the benefit of me working.