Straight into debt after school.

Alfie983

I just realised that I have been living on credit ever since I left school, straight out of school and into student debit. I guess this must be a pretty common story, anyone else been living on credit all of there adult lives?

DanielleNic87

I have lived off credit since i left school! But my debt wasnt from going to uni. It was just stupid spending. My 18th birthday present to myself was a credit card! I have learnt the hard way. Which means not being able to buy a place of my own, until i pay off my debt! :-(

debtdesperado

yep - since I was 18 I have never been debt free (in my thirties now)... determind to be debt free (apart from mortgage) by 35. Next goal will be to pay the mortgage off by the time I'm 45...

Am NEVER getting a credit card again...my maxim now is, if I can't afford it this month, I can save. If I can't save up enough in the time I have to buy it, the solution is not a credit card, I can't afford it - tough!

r1chscott

Hi there,

I was recently going through my old credit card statements (for posterity and trying to figure out what the hell I'd spent all this money on!) and found the very first one from HSBC taken out 2 months after my 18th birthday, fast-forward to my LBM in June 2009 after 13 years and 41K of debt and there you have my adulthood of living on credit.

I've spent the last 8 months really cracking down on my debt, I've managed to pay off £11.5K, but looking through the statements and seeing all those little payments of me living way beyond my means was so infuriating!

I have the same goal as debtdesperado - to be free of debt by the time I'm 35 (although I hope to be able to do it more quickly and have saved a deposit for a house by then!) and have made the same promise that if I can't afford it without credit then I'm not having it!

I like Martin's idea of having basic financial management lessons in school, I didn't have a clue what I was doing, although I guarantee that if I have children, they will be very well educated in how to manage money!!!

charlie2517

Hi there,

I was the same from when I left education it slowly grew, thankfully this month it's gone but I sooooo wish they'd do lessons in school, may just prevent a few more from being like me!

C

Shoe_Gal

Car loan at 20 - and in debt ever since (am 43 now)

leanne82duke

oh not just me then,
first debt when i was 16, wasnt paying rent to private landlord/boss and it all went down hill from there.
you can see from my sig how much i have left to pay,
i want it gone before sept when i start college I am 27 by the way, although unless i get a lotery win i thin i am being a little optimistic?! x

Poosmate

I'm 43 and have been in debt I guess since I got my first credit card. Until I got married and bought a house it was in it's hundreds, a car loan made it into thousands. I managed to pay that off but bought another new car putting myself into the same amount of debt. Marriage crashed, added to debt through paying half the mortgage and private rent prior to settlement/divorce. Bought another house where I am now, added more to debt. This was all manageable and not too bad. However, I was making minimum payments and living a life too, the thought that I'd have been paying the debt off for almost the rest of my life just didn't occur to me. I don't think in those days there was a warning on the statements about making minimum payments prolonging the debt and costing more.

Then all hell broke loose with a very traumatic relationship which left me in almost total financial ruin. I was advised to go bankrupt, but I was too proud and no one in my family had ever been bankrupted before and I wasn't going to be the first. I thought there was a stigma to it and I was already at rock bottom through the relationship bankruptcy would have been the final nail in my coffin.

This was all before I had a computer and internet access, I had no idea what financial institutes could and couldn't do or what my rights were. I'd never been in financial difficulty before even though I had always been in debt.

Luckily, I had some assets I could liquidise, cashed in my endownment policy, sold my not so new but paid for car, sold unopened designer perfumes for a snip of their value, cd player and cd's (before Ebay). £10 here and £20 there helped me get through the first few months. 6 months later I managed to have my name removed from a fraudulant load for £6.5k taken out in my name. Paid £2800 off another loan of £5k which was a joint loan and they even wrote that they wouldn't chase me for the remainder. Yay! My current account was suspended for a while because the Prince Of Darkness had withdrawn all of my money to just over the max of the overdraft. Luckily I was on good terms with the bank (HSBC) and they eventually credited my account with the stolen amount and cancelled the bank charges it caused. My credit card took a battering during these first few months and was the beginning of a spiraling debt problem.

This started almost 10 years ago and it took me a couple of years to be able to get to a whole month without incurring bank charges and it was only then that I could actually even try to make some inroads into my remaining debt.

For the next 6 or 7 years I bobbed along paying the minimums and watching the balance reduce so slowly, then it would increase because I'd have to put car insurance or tax or some other large bill on it. But at least I could just about make the minimums.

Then I found MSE. Using this site has taught me to save (even a paltry amount of £15 per month) to cover those larger yearly bills. Even though I am still living hand to mouth, I take comfort in that I am no longer reliant on my credit cards and finally, slowly but surely my debt is reducing. So for the past 18months to 2 years I have weaned myself off the credit cards, shifted the debt round to lower interest rates and this year is the year that I'll really be able to start hammering the debt.

That's my story, sorry it's so long.

Poo

RosaBernicia

Student loan for uni which I guess is fine, but was so miserable dropped out after second year and ran away abroad using a 1K overdraft. No idea why they gave it me as I clearly had no way of paying it. Came back and finished degree, think the mistake point was getting a credit card not during studies but just afterwards, to cope with the adjustment between studying and money coming in from temping (rent deposit, work clothes, travel, etc). Converted it to loan a couple of years later - at an eye-watering 16.9% because I didn't know any better (though have since got the PPI cost back). Then started paying for courses to do what I really wanted to do - at one point, 3K per year on a junior NHS admin salary therefore on another credit card. Maybe I should have waited and saved up first, but I figured that way I'd be 35 before I got to do a job I wanted.

As it is I'm 33 and have about 8K of debts on 0% or low life of balance cards, plus a car loan. Most of the debt is due to studies - tuition fees, books, travel, professional associations etc. I've just finished that course and am amazed how much more money I have to hand.

I don't think hindsight is necessarily always right though, as I don't know what would have happened if I'd gone another way. As it is, I now have a well paid job I love, further training funded from work, and hope to be debt free by the end of the year I'm 35. And of course I have learnt how to use credit properly via MSE

Rosa xx

Poosmate

RosaBernicia wrote: »

As it is I'm 33 and have about 8K of debts on 0% or low life of balance cards, plus a car loan.......

As it is, I now have a well paid job I love, further training funded from work, and hope to be debt free by the end of the year I'm 35. And of course I have learnt how to use credit properly via MSE

Rosa xx

Are you planning on having 2 birthday's this year?

Are you the Queen?

Lol!

bluebag

Alfie983 wrote: »

I just realised that I have been living on credit ever since I left school, straight out of school and into student debit. I guess this must be a pretty common story, anyone else been living on credit all of there adult lives?

God help you, It's very tough for the young these days.... don't think I've ever seen it quite so rough for school leavers and I've seen a LOT! It seems you can't get any sort of a job without going to university and there are no grants now, just loans.

I feel it's very irresponsible of the government to saddle our young talent with debt.
Getting a job is pretty hard too, even with a degree.


You have my sympathies. The only suggestion I can make is to try and keep your debt to a bare minimum, not easy when every man and his dog has a posh phone and a laptop, but try and live below your means as much as possible and save the 'cool' stuff for when you have a good job and can afford to pay cash.