What brought on your LBM?

southwester_2

Realising that I had aproblem gambling and stopping it and confessing all to wife.

LJD1_2

Hiya
My lightbulb moment came when I realised that our mortgage effectively hadn't been paid in two years as we kept spending up to the facility on our One Account and in addition our credit cards had crept up again after paying them off twice before and swearing we'd never use them again.

If anything i'm even more careful now that we've only got the mortgage left to pay. I write everything down that we spend and we still keep the budget pretty tight xx

Payingitallback

blackangeluk wrote: »

I sleep so much easier at night now

I blinkin slept well last night

x_raphael_xx

Hey all.
Mine was when I asked my brother if I could borrow £6 til the end of the week to buy my dog food. (I was content to survive on cornflakes til payday).
Then I received a letter from my old mobile comp asking me to pay a year over due bill of £180 that I had hoped they'd forgotted about.

I took my dog for a walk with my friend and suddenly burst into tears infront of her and everything came pouring out (she loaned me a little money too).

I have a brighter view on things now, and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

trulymadlydeeply_indebt!

Mine came when Dad died last Nov and mum gave me and my sister £3k from one of his accounts. I kinda lost the plot after that and gave up a job I liked, felt depressed and took me, OH and the kids to Lanzarote coz they'd never been on a plane before. I then spent the time after the holiday wishing I'd used it to clear a credit card.

In hindsight, yeah, clearing the debt would have been better, but I gave my family a great holiday and I would hate him to have worked hard all his life to pay off my debt. He would have preferred me to have done something good with it - and I did.

After the holiday, I watched a Trevor McDonald programme with Martin on about reclaiming bank charges. I found this website and like so many others have said, the rest is history.

coops024

My mum always used to listen to Martins slot on Radoi 2 (I used to tell her 'Radio 2 is for old people!')

But I decided to look on the site and see what it was all about 'Great site' I thought ! but Im only a few grand in debt and nothing as bad as these poor saps ! :mad: (its their fault they are in debt !!!)

5 Years on and HOW WRONG could I have been ? :eek: All the stories on this site are inspiring and no-one on here is a sap ! (that title is reserved for me )

So anyway I dont remember having a LBM but started to get annoyed that lots of my friends were moving on and up and leaving me behind ! I couldnt afford what they had :mad: but why ?

It seems that when I'd been running up debt they were careful with money and now it had got to the stage where my money was paying intrest and they were enjoying theirs !

So I came back to this site that I'd previously riddiculed and you all took me in ! you lovely lot !! :grouphug:

HairyHandofDartmoor

It was January 2006, I realised one cold grey morning that I had a tax bill I couldn't pay, other bills I couldn't pay due to overspending at christmas and having big debt repayments to manage. As soon as money came in it went right out again because of the huge credit card repayments, so I was working hard and getting precisely nowhere!

Now that I have slashed my spending and got all the cc's on low interest I am finally getting somewhere.

Snaggles

I didn't have a lightbulb moment, I had a wedding day. :rolleyes:

On the 24th September 1999 I had a small car loan and a small credit card. On the 25th September 1999, 'we' had £17k worth of debt! :eek:

Cut to 10th July 2007 and we have two lovely children, our own home, financial stability.....um....and a small car loan....:o

SarahNeedle1872

I was introduced to this site before I had my LBM - SIL actually knows Martin, and told me about the site....
Think I first came here Oct last year, loved the site and enjoyed reading everyones diarys, but it wasn't until after Xmas that I had my LBM... Sat at home on my first week of Mat leave thinking 'OMG we have spent WAY too much on Xmas, and we're having a baby in a few weeks time:eek: . How are we going to cope on 1 1/2 salaries for 6 months!?!)
So I came back here, and instead of reading peoples diaries and thinking 'aaah, poor them' I thought 'If they can do it with what they owe, I'll bloody well get off my heavily pregnant @r$£ and do it too'.
I read I_A's diary from start to finish - took AGES! - and was so impressed with what they had done in such a short space of time, at her age and with their income (hope that doesn't sound patronising, no way is it, I owe u/ur diary SO much!) that it spurred me into action.....

And the rest is history

Sarah x

Gemmzie

From this site really, I'd heard about Martin and the bank charges reclaiming and started looking into it. Then I nagged dad into giving me the details of his overdraft charges and went :eek: then slowly persuaded him to give up their joint account to my control in a new account. Then one day he eventually gave up the cc statements and my mum's light bulb went on. His is eventually flickering now (8 months on).

I didn't really have one, I started mass clearing in Jan this year but 90% of the debt came from 2006, so it didn't really have a solid LBM.