How did u get into debt ?

LittleMissKitty

We were gazundered two days before selling our flat with two little children and no spare cash so we borrowed £9k from my parents to secure the sale and took out a £1700 overdraft to cover the shortfall. Then DH got made redundant, got offered a job 25 miles away and had no transport so we got a bikeloan so he could get a job. That's pretty much it, along with a few tax credit screw ups that resulted in borrowing from the in-laws to pay them off so they'd get off our backs (even though it was their fault. Grrrr) I didn't even get a fancy car out of it!

DS4215

As a proportion of my debts - holidays , car, driving lessons for Mrs (who failed), and using credit cards when out of cash. Strange how most of it was on us, but apparently its all my fault!

charlylovesphil

I was offered a CC at 18 with a £2500 limit..plus a £100 overdraft...spent all the CC on clothes stupid things, meals for my Mum...then got Topshop/New Look/River Island store cards..then £2000 OD...then got married (£18,000 wedding), got pregnant so gave up work...got loan to pay Cards...£5000...then got more CC £3500 to buy girls gifts...which is where I am at today with a £4000 Loan, £3500 CC £1000 store cards & £1700 OD...Fab

timefortea

Student overdraft, I just wasted money while at uni and now I've got nothing to show for it but £2,000 of debt. Not too much and it's still at 0%, so I'm not as badly off as some, but I don't earn much so it'll probably take me two years to pay it off.

ILW

PM1CAS wrote: »

For me it all began when I separated 3 years ago. I spent 5k on legal fees as my ex took me all the way to court.

Then there have been numerous things over the three years since, £840 this month for car repair/hire. previous car repairs, new dishwasher, £400. Throw in a month between jobs and two kids and it's been really hard.

I aim to be debt free by Christmas day. I can do it, I know I can.

Probably sums things up when a dishwasher is considered a "must have" that is worth getting into debt over.

clareabella666

I got pregnant at 18, ( boyfriend was 19 at the time) we took out a loan just after our son was born so we could furnish our house when we moved in. Then being a stupid 18 year old i opened numerous catalogue accounts, about 4 in total and used them to buy our son and my boyfriend expensive presents for birthdays and christmas etc. Then got another loan for a reason im still trying to work out. About 4 years ago my boyfriend managed to get a job paying 30k a year so repayments were rather easy. Things changed 2 years ago though when he was made redundant. We now have an annual income of roughly 12k if you include tax credits which we have found realy hard to adapt to. since then none of my debts have been paid. Oh the joys of being young and stupid

blueelephanttrunk

Mine started being 18, got a store card and ran it up to £1500 - being the idiot I was, moved house and completley ignored it for a year - they found me and I then paid it back (took 7 years though with all the interest and charges they added on) Then bought a house with my boyfriend, got a credit card and I don't even know what we spent it on, did a balance transfer, spent on the old credit card, did this again! Transferred all that onto a loan - decided to get married, got another credit card for £3000 and that's where we are now. Only useful thing I bought out of all that debt was wedding things.

Marine_life

We got into debt at the beginning of the 1990's when there was a property crash. We had 13,000 negative equity in our house which we were desperate to leave (new baby - needed a bigger house) so took out a nat west gold card and wrote a cheque for the full limit (10,000) there and then :eek:

Luckily with increasing income we paid it off over a period of 2-3 years and have never been in debt since (unless you count our current 400,000 mortgage :eek::eek:)

andymc29

Years and years of overspending and living beyong my means.
Now I'm on a decent paid job, I will be incredit for the first time in more than ten years within the next six months. Can't wait.

IHaveNoMoney.com

I am 29 now and i can't remember a time when i was debt free, started with a loan to buy a car, increased the loan when i changed the car and they offered me another 1500 more than i needed, the bank talked me into having it saying the apr was so much better and that we wouldn't be paying back much more. So had a lovely holiday with the extra how naive.

Then from there got credit cards, store cards, etc etc booked our wedding in the carribean i made a stupid career move and my income halfed we had also commited ourself to taking and paying for others (biggest mistake). Ended up taking a stupid loan from hsf where we borrowed i about £8000 but where going to be paying back around £14000, we were desperate as others had paid for themselve to come to wedding, in hindsight should have told the 4 people we said we would pay for that we couldn't afford it and have gone without them but two of them were hubbys parents.

Then ended up getting a loan with my bank for £20000 to consoladate all the debts it covered most of them then like idiots we ran up all the store cards etc again and at this point hubby got a loan to consoldate those debt and guess what we ran the debts up again.

Now we owe £23500 in total, 2 loans accounting for about £15000 and the rest is credit cards, but thankfully we are in the position to afford to pay it back things are really tight and we are looking at around 2.5 years until we are debt free but we will get there things our diffeent now we have a little boy and have realised we have to change for him.

My biggest regret/upset is that we can't have another baby until we are debt free meaning there will be around a 6 year gap between the baby and my son who is three now, but we are being sensible for the first time in our lives, we have learnt the hard way and it's going to make us a better family in the long run.

Sorry that was a bit long winded but thats why we are in the debt we are no other reason or excuse than greed and spending way above our means, we are now paying the price but i can see a different life when all this is cleared with some nice family holidays