The Good Life

Bella_Smythe

its funny (well not really) a few years ago before illness/redundancy we were earning close on £60 k between us and we never had any bloody money then! still putting things on credit cards. we got a bit worried about it once and tried writing down everything we spend (cash or credit) including bills for a month and it was over £4 k which was more than our combined take-home. but we just said oh well and carried on using our credit cards when the cash ran out each month. i dont know how though! we had maybe one Spain holiday a year plus a trip to London for a show etc, other trips just visiting family. these days we're coping on less than half that (course we're not paying any debts off:( ) but we're not cold or hungry!! strange. ah well. still got the big jump to come :(:(. oh also we went out to local pub maybe once a week and have never been designer-clothes type people. ???

wildheart83

I was in a similar situation to yourself pre bankruptcy - I was earning good money, but was stoney broke at the end of every month. I was paying the minimum payment to cards, then using it as soon as it became available.
Then I found out I was likely to be made redundant. Without going BR I had to be earning a minimum salary just to keep my head above water and that was my lightbulb moment. I took the opportunity then to go BR and start fresh.
It allowed me to start a fantastic job, on a salary I could never have considered before, but gave me experience that you couldn't put a price on.
Now I baulk at the amount of money I was spending on debt repayments, and likewise on the amount of money I spent on brands, eg a £6k limit on my Next card meant I was buying everything out of Next because my thinking was I'll buy it now and pay for it when I get paid, regardless of the fact it was costing me 5 times the price of the same elsewhere, but I literally didn't have the money to pay cash for it.
Now it's the little things that make me happy - buying my car insurance annually for the first time ever brought a huge grin to my face!

Good luck Bella xx