I have only recently realised that my debt problem started a lot further back than I thought it did. I could just say it started to be a problem just before I started the IVA, but that would be a lie. It actually stared way back when I was 18 and about to go to Mexico with my fiancee – now my hubby. This was when I got my very first credit card. The card had a £500 limit which was to help with paying for trips etc. I was never going to spend all of that! Well, as we know it was soon spent and the limit raised to £1000. Soon after I gained a store card – House of Fraser. 20% off what you were buying if you opened an account. Obviously what I was buying soon doubled! At this time I had no idea what APR and interest were. I really didn’t care as people were giving me money to spend! We lived in staff accomodation and had no bills etc to pay! Keeping up with the payments was easy!

Soon we decided to move into a flat of our own. This came with the real world. Rent, bills, food shopping. Soon I realised that it was going to get harder to pay for credit. But do you know what? It still didn’t stop me raising the limits on my cards! I also found out around now that hubby had a loan and cards from before we got together. But this was none of my business, it didn’t affect me!

After a year or so hubby was offered a job up north for more money, so off we went. This time though we didn’t rent. We bought our own flat. £37,500. It makes me laugh that we wouldn’t get much for that price now!! We did both get really good well paid jobs though and soon we were actually getting the debts paid off. What could possibly happen next? Only one of the best things we ever did, but certainly not the best timing! I was pregnant! This revealed a whole new world! How much babies cost and how rubbish maternity pay was back then were just two!

By the time baby came we had managed to accquire higher credit limits and had spent quite a lot of them! The debts weren’t that bad compared to what was to come, but if we had been sensible and saved some money instead of spending it on interest, maybe we would have been better off! Hindsight – oh well! We also had a slight case of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. Even though people like my parents (and others) were considerably better paid than us and had no kids at home we still felt the need to be able to have and do everything they did! If they had it we damn well would too!

Things weren’t exactly desperate, but we were starting to discover that if I didn’t get back to work soon we wouldn’t have any spare cash, so when my daughter was 8 weeks old, back I went to work full time. This is something I regret to this day and which was wholly down to my debts and the need to pay them. If I could go back and spend more time at home with my first baby I would do it and it is only recently I have realised this. I feel I scarificed time I will never get back because of money.

Anyway, soon debts were bieng paid again and things were getting back to normal. You would think we’d learnt our lesson? Oh no!

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 7th, 2009 at 11:15 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.