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Introduction | Reader responses: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
| I'm up to about $5000 because a)it's summer and my school job isn't there in the summer b)the government loans don't cover summer. I accumulated it through two out of state trips, car insurance, health insurance, clothes for a job interview (so I can hopefully pay it off), groceries, etc. It all adds up. |
| I married it. |
| Online Gambling...ohh...almost a straight! |
| I racked up about $10K during college and the two years following when I was looking for a job and settling into a new city and job. |
| Currently over $14,000. Began accumulating in my sixth year of college, when I took loans and transferred to a university to finish my undergraduate degree. Bought major purchases on credit, such as appliances, auto work, vacation expenses, etc. Maintain nearly a dozen accounts, shift balance between accounts to keep the lowest possible interest rates (usually below 6%). With smart attention one can avoid a crushing debt load (and I have). I can afford payments but tend to buy more each month than I pay off. Currently have a plan which should pay off debt in three years... assuming I control my spending. Overall I wish I had controlled spending before (I estimate I've paid thousands in interest by now) but do not regret the opportunities that credit allowed (such as travelling to the UK for 8 days' vacation - a three thousand dollar expense that was well worth it!) |
| My credit card debt is so high it hits the moon. I accumulated it with a butterfly net. |
| buying electronics-computers (PC & Laptop), Ipod, TV, DVD player, DVD Recorder, & Digital Cameras. My debt is too much, don't want to say! |
| Haven't. Never had a credit car and I have zero debt. Yes, I'm that annoying, unsympathetic jerk at parties. |
| It made up the difference between unemploment and my bills for 8 months a few years ago. It's almost paid off now. I wish my answer was more fun... |
| Arnie Heitz $4500.00 divorce/mistress expenses |
| almost 3000, clothes, food, gas, all those life necessities |
| I have no debt at all! I used a clever little trick called "good money management". |
| Whenever I needed to buy groceries and my bank account was nearing empty, I'd just apply for another credit card. I'd pat myself on the back for being so clever. No need to beg the parents for a little loan. Groceries, and that tv I really wanted, covered! So now I'm about $5,000 in the hole... but I do have a lot of very nice electronics, and food in the fridge. |
| by being out of work for 5 months |
| Around $14,000, Mostly because of school & Books. |
| Porn. Astronomical. |
| i bought a nice new shiney tool box... got me for 8 grand |
| $4000 from studying in Paris. (studying meaning: drinking, dining, and fondue) |
| Christmas presents and a cruise/airfare, thousands. paid off now! |
| My wife is bipolar and cannot control her spending. For a long time I was a wuss and did not try to control HER. She kept ordering credit cards behind my back and the companies kept sending them to her; she would max out each one in turn and order another one. At our peak we had $52K in credit card debt. It took eight years and considerable emotional investment on my part, but it's all paid off, as of about two months ago. |
| Freebirds, IV Foot Patrol, Meister Brau, gift to the Leprechaun |
| no credit card debt in college, but ran up 1800$ trying to set up house after i graduated. paid it off by using a car insurance repair check instead of having my car fixed when a squirrel dropped a nut on the roof and totally dented it up... this wouldn't have been a big deal, but this was my first brand new car, and it was only 2 weeks old! i still have the car, but no debt. oh yeah, the car will be paid off next month. |
| I bought a farm in Iowa and started growing corn. Then a voice told me to build a baseball diamond inside and i listened. The materials for the feild cost me thousands and the reduction in my crop yeilded less money come皜harvest time. I ended up losing my farm and ended up with a total of 22,000 in credit card debt. |
| $15000, as a 'wedding gift' from my wife |
| Hookers and booze |
| None yet! |
| crazy intrests and crazy spending |
| By swooning the girl I would marry; it got up to $US4000. |
| Fortunately, I've never had credit card debt. I pay it off every month. |
| College as well. It should be illegal for you to be able to count student loans as actual income. I mean, I didn't even see that money since it went directly to the school, yet Citibank expected me to pay them with it. Then more credit cards to pay the interest on the first ones. About $5000 when I graduated with no job in sight. |
| I aquire my debt by buying stuff. But then paying it off at the end of the month. Credit Card debt is for chumps. Stupid chumps that can't plan and have little common sense. |
| The first time was school - about $3000 on credit cards, $15000 in student loans. The second time was being unemployed for about 15 months - about $7000. |
| Got married - ran up about $30k in bills. They lasted longer than the ex-wife, but weren't nearly as irritating :-) |
| I pay in cash and small sexual favours |
| hospital bills for cancer, about $10,000 |
| Well ... first there was the medical school. Then the multiple trips to Europe, and my general unwillingness to stay in hostels. After that was the big move where I had to buy furniture for three new rooms I'd never had before. And then there were the required expenses for work ... medical malpractice insurance, licenses, exams (1450 for hell??) and other various fees. $160 000 later, I very much look forward to the day when I'm a practicing physician. |
| i dont own a credit card. but i do have a thing for cheese. |
| I don't have any debt myself yet, but I believe my parents managed to rack up quite a bit of credit card debt through vacations to Disney World years ago. |
| Furniture. $6k. |
| Two words: My wife. $21000 |
| new computer, books, dvds, computer games, gas, and resturaunts |
| $8,000 |
| I moved into an apartment with my girlfriend... Hit almost $10k before I stopped, got it paid in just under a year and bought a house. |
| Currently $9,000. How the hell DID it get that high? It always seems to creep back up to that level, usually with car repairs, hospital bills, or trips back to visit family. |
| NONE! Bitch. |
| living expenses when i was low on cash. I'm about $600 in debt. |
| I spent tons and tons on credit cards and lines of credit. I got movies, a surround sound system, a tv, books, video games, pornography, baby clothes and diapers, new mattresses, new pots and pans... you name it. |
| We owed $45,000 before we cut up the cards and stopped using them. Now we're 3/4 done paying them off (at $700 per month) and the future looks bright! |
| I'm lucky enough to be learning from my parent's mistakes, and I don't plan on opening a damned credit card. Poor bastards, them. |
| Strip clubs, Adult web sites/chat, Adult Massage aka Rub n' Tug, and sex parties. |
| My credit card debt is AU$6800. That's over a few years of paying bits off, buying something else.. and the cycle continues! Now my car is paid off, I have an extra AU$500 to throw on both my credit cards! |
| Art supplies in college, fresh flowers and lots of dinner and a tent and a bed and some car repairs and part of a car. It was 25,000 at its height. |
| Right now, my credit card debt is approximately $2325... just bought a new Big screen TV!!! woo hoo. Balance should be paid off in the next few days though. |
| My wife and I are down to about $6000 of credit card debt. At one point it was up to 15,000 and it stayed that way because I just could not make payments on time. I made them, but about 5 days late every month. I got that debt buying books and art supplies. Lots and lots of art supplies of all kinds. Computer stuff, music stuff, paint, wood, tools, paper, cameras, etc. |
| My wife ran hers up on restaurants and clothes. A little at a time, all the time. |
| I went shopping after I got divorced. It wa皜 all spent on sexy underthings and shoes. The best part is how I paid it off: with the settlement money from the divorce! |
| My friend was denied credit at BestBuy. I appplied, was accepted and let my friend purchase a computer on my new credit card. |
| Living beyond my means! 3 years later it is zero. |
| Cockeyed.com t-shirts |
| it wasn't pretty, just leave it at that |
| NO DEBT!!!! WOOT |
| KY!!! |
| still in high school. |
| my debt is through student loans, about $20,000 right now, stupid private colleges. |
| and as for the debt.. smoking. take that as you wish. |
| Getting a CC I couldn't afford and running it all the way up and oweing more in interest than I spent.. so now it's all written off.. just 5 more years till it clears up.. probably only $4k. |
| Have about $7k myself...couple of high-dollar medical procedures when I was in college with no insurance ... also an iBook, digital camera, and some plane tickets (one was $2k after I missed my return flight from Norway). A fixed 4.9% Capital One card helps a lot. |
| Medical expenses, and not being able to work... its not as high as it was.. was about 30,000. |
| I went on a road trip with my sweetie and ran up a good couple of thousand bucks on my cards over two months. The bus blew up and that was what really drove the total up. We had to stay at a hotel for a couple of days and then get a greyhound from New York all the way to Sacramento. Paid it off eventually, along with some penalties for the period when I wasn't making my payments. |
| um...i didnt. and its not high at all because its non-existant. |
| I don't have any, I don't buy more than I can afford |
| No debt - I planned ahead. Hey, when will you finish the heigth / weight chart? |
| About $3000, used paying the occasionabl rent check, buying stupid shit, video games, and computer stuff. I've never regretted a bit of it. |
| None, scholarship! and dad's help. |
| State of Tennessee men in blue pulled me over doing 93 in a 65. I had a cooler full of cokes, and the cop said "Ya got any liquor in that cooler, son?" I said "Nope." He said "Mind if I check?" I foolishly said "Nope." Well, he ended up searching the entire car, finding a bag of "Herbal Refreshments" and a bunch of "Herbal Refreshment Utensils." Slapping me and my buddy in the back of his car and taking us off to the slammer. To avoid the slammer, we paid approximately 1500 bucks to a bail bondsman, and left that evening. That's pretty much the story for that credit card. I've had several others that I bought a bunch of fancy nancy clothes with back when I was a preppy dorkwad. Most recently I got another card with which I've bought some landscaping material and groceries... Total debt is really not too bad, all said and done it's probably about 2500 bucks. The lesson? Don't let the cops search your car, and pay everything with cash. |
| lending money to my sister....$3700 eek! |
| The C.H.U.D.'s Guide to Credit Repair: I went through a phase in college where I would get depressed and then go on miniature shopping sprees to cheer myself up. By the end of my freshman year (1998)I had three credit cards and owed about $3000. Over the next year I dropped out of college and wasn't making enough money to make payments on the credit cards. Between interest, late fees and over-limit fees, my credit card debt quickly surpased the $5000 mark. Fast forward to June of 2006 and things get absolutely ludicrous, and enjoyably so. I never did getting around to making any payments on the credit cards (Stay in school, kids! Please!), and still owe around $5000 to various banks and credit card companies who have, at this point, charged off my delinquent accounts and ceased bothering me about it. I had some car trouble in June, and ultimately was forced to obtain sub-prime auto financing at about 21% interest so that I could drive to work so that I could make my car payment. When I was going over my credit report with the finance guy I was shocked and amazed to see that seven years had passed since there was any activity on my old credit accounts and that they no longer appeared on my credit report. Even more fantastic, the best advice seems to be that I should never attempt to make any payment, because that would only cause the delinquent accounts to be reported to the credit bureaus all over again. There are even a few very small items I didn't know about that are about to drop off my credit report. I said to Finance Guy, "Geez, I could pay those off right now!" "No, don't do that," Finance Guy chided. "They'll just stay on your credit report longer" So, there it is. If you've got enough patience the path to good credit is as simple as /not doing anything/. I feel like I'm living inside a Yakov Smirnov "Only in America" joke. |
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July 8th, 2006