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Introduction | Reader responses: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
| $3500 goofing around |
| Boob Job $2500 (mom paid for one boob...THANKS, MOM!) |
| No debt at all, I lived cheap and worked whenever I wasn't in class. |
| College, trip to Europe, marriage- $20,000 |
| My credit card debt hit a peak of about $3500, and was a combination of cash advances to pay the rent that my roommate was skipping out on, bus tickets home, and the occasional grocery bill. |
| Drug-addicted Ex. $15,000 |
| My girlfriend dumped me and kicked me out of her house. My unused credit card came in very handy for the drinking problem I was about to develop. |
| We owe The Man somewhere around $10,000, pretty much all of which was racked up in about four months at the end of my wife's medical school. It was the only way we could afford to move for her residency. |
| beer, babes, and broccoli 15000 |
| I have now paid mine off - but I got into it while Renovating a house (any house you can buy for under $30 g皜and....probably shouldn't be bought!) |
| Women. I have always paid off my credit cards every month. However, I did once have a girlfriend who was the epitome of the irresponsible spender. She applied for all the "student" credit cards, somehow got approved for all of them, and then went on a wild spending spree and maxed them all within about three weeks (clothing, mostly, plus a plane ticket to visit me at school). She then spent the next five years avoiding creditor's nasty phone calls and having her credit rating screwed as she couldn't keep up with the mounting interest payments. Add to this the vast amount of student loans she was accumulating. Last I heard, she still hasn't paid her credit card and student loan debt even though she graduated over 15 years ago. Beware the credit card interest payments!!! |
| none. only spend what you have, foo' |
| Computer hardware... Aquarium stuff. porn.... Actually, I don't pay for porn. The internet is for free porn. Hmm, food too. Currently in debt a few grand. And I'm graduating soon. SLATE of masterslate.org |
| I produced a play for a community theater company, and Violated Max Bialystock's first rule of producing. "Never put your own money in a Show!" But of course, it wasn't really mine, it was Citibank's $2500. |
| Divorce and reckless spending on booze, clothes and charging everything from gas to groceries! About $28,000.00 in total from about 4 different cards. |
| getting married....and moving to a new city. it's been steady hovering right 'round $10K for a couple years now. every time we make progress, something else happens and we have to resort to the ol' cc again. but, 3 years into marriage - starting to see the light! |
| I spent my money doing research for my PhD. I haven't finished yet, but I recently took a student loan and knocked that crap back! |
| Medical Expenses... 3 in the family with asthma and allergies. Even with good health insurance we still average +$700 per month for medical expenses. No end in sight. |
| In response to the guy who bought weed on credit.... What type of drug dealer accepts credit cards? SLATE of masterslate.org |
| no CC debt (I worked), but $100k tuition debt (and counting) |
| College, restoring my pickup truck, traveling, and my wedding. Yep, mostly the wedding. |
| I owe about 3 grand. Mostly on my Office Depot credit card. Thats a new camera and a laptop. I also owe about $300 on my Apple credit card for a macmini. |
| 2,600.00 total credit card debt. 600.00 dog, 500.00 dining room set, 500.00 medical bills, 1,000.00 misc (i.e I don't remember!). |
| $1500 for a bad transmission on a used car i bought 1 month earlier |
| Not too bad, $1600 on $6800 available. It's a college thing. I used to work my ass off and be well employed and it wasn't an issue. Then I office spaced on my job a couple months ago and, not surprisingly, am broke. |
| 0$ Now! Thanks, Dave Ramsey Was $17,00 dollars 1 year ago! |
| Food, trips, clothes, golf, you name it. Seth, WV |
| Decided to live on my own during college, then I needed some books and of course food and computer games, etc. Came up with a total of $3300. |
| Almost word for word the same story you tell, except it was about 4 grand, it was January when I mailed my last check, and none of it was for books. |
| Accumulated $30K debt paying tuition and buying useless junk. Took four years to pay off, at $1000 per month. Coulda bought a car for that! |
| Amazon,Ebay, Bath and Bodyworks ,ANY ONLINE STORE!! :) the total is around $2500,between 3 cards. |
| I accumulated the bulk of my credit card debt by putting an emergency flight ("evacuating" under orders from my government from Pakistan after 9/11) on my Visa. I didn't have the money to pay it off when I arrived home. I'm still paying it off now, almost 5 years later. The total was about $5700 at one point. I hardly ever used or use my credit card, so it was all interest payments and trying to pay down the flight. I'm now down to a manageable (ha) $3000. |
| I have zero debt (other than student loans) and I am sworn to keep it that way. I had a crap ass SF landlord who evicted us and took all of our posessions after having to replace everything that we owned we had a lot debt. Not to mention our life looked like an old navy/ikea ad. We got out from underneath it with the help of a website that did the math for us. A lot of my friends have huge amounts of credit card debts (one of them has >25,000 just from a purely credit month long trip to Australia). They all ask why I never go out to bars and clubs and spend 200 bucks like them. It's cause I pay cash for everything. |
| NO DEBT!!! |
| I did the student loan method instead of the credit card. Much worse idea. (In Canada) Student loans do not erase your debt after 7 years (like credit cards) - and they can track you through tax returns (even though it is illegal for other companies to do the same) |
| sex, drugs and rock and roll |
| I have no credt card debt... yet. I hope to learn from all of your experience how to avoid it. |
| My wife and I got married and instantly were hit up for all those "free vacation just for watching us tout our wares" things. We bought a very nice set of pots and pans, and thus started our credit balance. (note that even today the pans are great, and were worth what we spent on them - but we shouldn't have spent the moeny on them that early). |
| I was working full time and going to school, and also operating a computer consulting business. I let many of my customers pay for the computer or upgrades when they received it, and between the time I purchased the items and then received payment I was paying interest. It's not bad if everyone pays on time and if all the purchases are small, but when people are getting thousands of dollars of equipment, and not paying until a month or two after I purchase the equipment I started getting a balance just off the interest. |
| I was (am?) not a good business person at that point and the interest alone grew as I wasn't charging my customers enough to cover it after other expenses. It grew. My wonderful wife is great at juggling credit card balances (and the credit card companies love us - we have great credit) so generally we are paying 0% interest on our large balance. A few years ago we had credit card debt of over $17,000. We are now below $8,000 and have a plan to get rid of it completely within this year. Learning how the credit card companies worked, and how to juggle balances saved us thousands of dollars. The biggest annoyance we discovered is that if you transfer a balance to a new 0% credit card, then use the credit card for regular purchases those purchases gain interest at the regular rate, and any payments go to the 0% balance. So let's say you start off with $4,000 at 0%, rack up $2,000 afterwards at 10%, and pay $2,000 within 30 days of the purchases. You now have $2,000 at 0%, and $2,000 at 10%. They've just converted half your 0% balance into a 10% balance! Now that we know we juggle a little differently, and I don't beleive we've paid/accumulated any significant interest on our large credit card balance in a few years. |
| Lazy ex-girlfriends who couldn't hold a job, alcohol, drugs. |
| I ran up the plastic on drinks, eating out, vacations and generally not keeping a budget. When my balance hit $10K, I finally realized that I was supposed to spend LESS than I earned. It took 3 years to pay off. Hope your question ins皜ires people to learn this lesson sooner than I did. |
| Ohmygod...the credit card nazis knew exactly what they were doing sending me a credit card. FREE MONEY!!! or so I thought. Books, eating out and gasoline were my downfall. What a numbnutz I was. One bankruptcy and a Dave Ramsey later, I'm under control and actually saving! |
| I have about $4,000 in credit card debt... mainly from ordering pizza! |
| buying useless shit. i managed to pay off one card that $6,500 thinking i really was gonna get enough frequent flyers miles to fly my ass to iceland, but no... i paid it off and cut it up! |
| currently i've got $2,000 on a card that was mostly moving from the states to the UK. i hope to have it paid off in the next 12 months then i'll work on clearing my husbands credit card debts. |
| as far as college is concerned i still owe in the ballpark of $22,000 for both my undergrad and masters degree. i hate paying those every month and figure i'll be able to pass them on to my children since the dickhead in the white house has totally f*cked our country's economy and interest rates so i'll never get a head... |
Introduction | Reader responses: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
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July 8th, 2006