LBM - What caused yours?

Gettingtherequickly

I'm being nosy really, I actually had mine (of sorts!) once I was debt free. I knew I owed the money and eventually set about dealing with it, it was only at the end I realised that I had paid back approx £30k :eek:

I read this forum regularly to keep me on the straight and narrow and am always amazed at the bravery of those who bare their soul. I know the size of the debt as a value is irrelevant, it is the trauma involved in dealing with it initially that is the most difficult and feeling of no light at the end of the tunnel, but having seen the support here (and I didn't know about this site until I was free), I can see the support there is from those in a similar experience.

samtoby

When I scraped together coppers to put money on the electric metre.

meow5678

My dad - to whom I am eternally grateful - lent me the money to pay off my student OD (£1000) and CC (£500), as I was only paying the minimums, gathering interest and never reducing them.

Once paid off I reduced the OD to £350 (just in case) but then ran them both up again with nothing to show for it and never had any money a week before pay day and no savings.

Now my OD is thoroughly in the black and I only use the CC for my expenses and pay off immediately when reimbursed.

I'm fortunate not to have any 'real' debt apart from my studen loan at this stage (I'm 26) but I think it's made me very conscious of managing my money and will mean I think twice before getting into trouble in the future.

FireWyrm

Standing at the checkout 5 days after payday with a belt full of food for the month and having your current account card declined for being horrifically overdrawn.

My overdraft is getting better and I expect to finish the month (ie payday) next month in the black for the first time in many years. Next job is to get my rebate from HMRC since my previous employer messed up my wages and that should take care of the nasty credit card debt I ran up after Christmas. Back to the straight and narrow for me!

olivia84

the financial crisis, getting older and learning more about my rights and the rights of creditors.

when you're in your 20s you feel like you have forever to pay back debt; you think you have all the time in the world and that you should live for the moment. my favourite saying was: "what's the worst that can happen? they can't get blood out of a stone" well i've now realised that you cannot just keep running up unsecured debt and think that it will be ok in then end; i'll always have a roof over my head. well, i now know that in extreme circumstances 'they' can take you to court, declare you bankrupt and force you to sell the roof over your head.

during the boom years, i also assumed that our jobs were totally fine - that the country just would not stand for going back into a recession and poverty (my god how naieve!) now i know that (touch wood) although our jobs are ok for now, it is entirely possible that our companies may struggle and we may become unemployed.

i also woke up one day and was 34: i really want to move house, but i am probably in negative equity and still have some debt and bad credit rating, hindering me from getting another mortgage and i have no savings for the deposit that most lenders demand you have now (as opposed to the boom years of the crazy 125% mortgage) i am running out of time to fix the damage i have done!

the lessons i have learned: don't take anything for granted; time goes too fast - you don't have forever to sort it out and make sure you are prepared for every eventuality!

xx

foxgloves

We never had any problems paying our debts but what brought about the LBM was one day when I added up all the money that was going out of our accounts just to service debt repayments & I thought 'That's just ridiculous'. It suddenly really struck me what we could be doing with that money each month instead of handing it over to financial insititutions & what a waste it seemed. I suddenly felt very silly. I'm well-educated & my old-style skills such as cooking from scratch, make do & mend, veg growing, etc, were good.....it's just that I never ever used to bother with budgeting & always spent more than I earned on whatever I fancied buying. Partner exactly the same.....he had his LBM a little bit later. Both of us enjoy being reformed characters & the budgeting skills I've learned have been so useful as a redundancy has meant that we are living on a much smaller income, but are still living within our means. I've posted this before, but there is no bag of tat I could come home with now that would make me feel as good as feeling in control of my finances does. Different things lead us to LBMs. I wish I'd had mine at 20 instead of 40, but better late than never!

katy_ann

Realising that if I carry on the way Im going I wont ever be able to rent a home again, let alone get a mortgage or ever get credit again. Im so glad this moment came before my debt got to out of hand, and my LBM came at a good time

t4mof

FireWyrm wrote: »

Standing at the checkout 5 days after payday with a belt full of food for the month and having your current account card declined for being horrifically overdrawn.

So similar as my lowest point which was going to the cashpoint on 2nd April having been paid on 24th March (2007 I think) and being over our overdraft limit of £1500. Absolutely crazy.

That was a scary moment but I still didn't face things head on until finding this site in 2008. Then I made a conscious effort to reduce our outgoings, move all our CC debt onto 0% (and I know how lucky I was at being able to do that!) and actually have a budget.

3 and a half years on we're almost there - all CC debt should be gone when I'm paid in 2 weeks time, loan to in-laws will be gone in June and Tesco loan will be gone in September.

I've not been in my overdraft (now at £500) for 11 months and things are looking up.

It's going to be so nice to save for stuff - first stop new double glazing!

VitaK

The day i moved in with my wife. In the first week, one day she got 7 DCA letters all demaning payment. That day we agreed that this had to end and we sat up repayment plans for each of the debts she know she had. Never missed a payment since then.

The talk we had a good year after that day. Her telling how wonderfull it is not having to fear the letterbox no more, not having to check the number when the phone rang and being able to answer the door when someone knocked.

The thought of us being debtfree in two years time. wiiiiii!!!!

Mort

Extract from a post several months back

Mort wrote: »

.......I was at work when I got a call from Mrs. Mort saying there was no money in our current account and her credit card was being declined, this was within a week of my monthly pay going in..

what I didn't include was that the overdraft was maxed as well

Deep_In_Debt

Realising one day that my debt repayments per month were more than my monthly mortgage repayment - that freaked me out!

Also, having too much month at the end of the money and living on credit cards for the rest of the month until I started maxing out on cards.

I can't wait until this time next year as I'll be debt free. Still hoping to be debt free sooner though but not sure that's going to happen.