£180,000 debt - done!

enjoyyourshoes · 19 January 2018 at 9:38PM

Excellent and a great motivation to others with debt problems and not being able to see a way ahead.

So over 12 years being a slave to compound interest.

Now harness what you have been throwing at the debt towards savings and benefit from compound interest for the rest of your lives.

The_MoneySavingKid · 20 January 2018 at 2:13PM

enjoyyourshoes wrote: »

Excellent and a great motivation to others with debt problems and not being able to see a way ahead.

So over 12 years being a slave to compound interest.

Now harness what you have been throwing at the debt towards savings and benefit from compound interest for the rest of your lives.

Huh? It says in the article, interest was stopped.

Robin_Banksy · 14 February 2018 at 10:51AM

If the people moaning about this woman were to read the story they would see that she wanted to and did actually pay off the debts that she owed instead of the easier route of declaring herself bankrupt and paying the minimal amount.

Back in 2007 I was also in a lot of debt to the sum of £45,000 - mostly down to my own stupidity and also partly due to credit card companies throwing money at me (one lender who gives you extra gave me a credit card with a starting limit of £250 - 6 months later that credit limit was increased to £12,500.00!) .

I contacted Step Change who were fantastic, they had interest frozen with all my debtors which enabled me to fully pay back what I owed - again I could have taken a much easier route to write off these debts but felt I wanted to pay back what I owed. After years of living on the bare minimum to pay off what I owed I was finally debt free in 2013.

Without the help of Step Change I was stuck in a catch 22 situation, I was paying towards my debts but the constant interest charges being added were making it impossible to move forward and were just pushing me further into debt. Step Change were a godsend!

I have learned my lesson, I only ever buy things that I can afford and make sure I save whatever I can.

It's very easy to fall into debt, anyone can so the people knocking this lady should sit up and think about it - it may be you one day!

lozzam · 9 April 2018 at 7:29PM

I went back today and re-read all the comments on the news article. Thank you to everyone who made positive comments - I really appreciate them, and thank you for supporting me.

Many people commented on how stupid I was to get into that much debt. They are totally correct - it was stupid. I can't defend it.

One clarification to the article. We didn't just give up foreign holidays - for a period of several years we gave up pretty much everything - no going out if it cost money, no repairs to the house if something broke, no new clothes. It did get easier over time, but we are delighted now that we can start fixing some of the things in our house that have been broken for years - saving up for each thing in turn.

During those tough years we really appreciated social media - we could look beyond all the happy holiday pictures, and used it as a way of keeping in touch with all the people we couldn't afford to see in person.

I'm happy that the article has encouraged people with a lot of debt that will take a long time to clear - that is why I wanted to do it - to show it can be done.

Stay debt free folks!