🎂  Age?

30

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🌎  Location?

Birmingham

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🫥  Source ?

Anonymous

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💸  Debt balance?

£15,000

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👂 What will you be sharing?

Spending regret story

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📖  What would you like to share?

"I got my first credit card when I turned 18 and haven’t stopped using them since!

I grew up with very little and so as soon as I had a job and the ability to get credit at 18 years old I took it.

I have struggled with debt since then.

At 25 I had racked up £10,000 in debt due to spending on travelling, clothes and food. I had to have help from family to pay it off.

I then got back into bad spending habits during lockdowns, racking up what is now £15,000 in debt from a car purchase, clothes, and eating out."

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❓ What happened for you to be in your current debt situation?

"I have always lived beyond my means, using credit to keep up with the things I wanted like clothes, holidays etc.

I had zero financial education.

You often read about people that grew up in poor/working class family’s being really good savers and not spending much because they are scared of not having money. For some reason, I have ended up quite the opposite.

I grew up with no money but as soon as I was old enough to earn my own, I wanted to splurge on all the things I never had access to when I was younger, no one was there to say no to me. Unfortunately my wage could never keep up with my wants and as soon as I was able to, I got a credit card.

My first debt crisis happened at around 25 years old, when my partner wanted to start talking about buying our first house and I had never told him about my debt. At that point I had over £10,000 across 3 credit cards and was struggling to keep up with payments. As a result him and another family member had to pay me out and I spent two years paying them back.

You would think I had learned from that lesson, but lockdown brought a new wave of spending and I now find myself in over £15,000 worth of debt across a car loan and 2 credit cards.

My partner only knows about the loan and I am currently too embarrassed to tell him about the rest. A big issue for me is that I am heavily “influenced” by social media. I now have to take breaks from it and delete the apps entirely when I feel myself going down a dark spending hole.

I am now a mother to a 1 year old daughter and I am on a journey to take  back control of my finances with a plan of paying off my debt in the next 2 years so that I can start saving for her future.

It will be so tough but suddenly having the responsibility of another human has put money into a completely different perspective for me. And I am so determined to give her the financial education I never received when I needed it most."

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