A Reader’s Debt Story – 27 Year-Old Woman from Seattle

A while ago, I asked for readers to submit their debt story. I haven’t posted about it, because I didn’t receive any to share with you

But that changed, I received one on Saturday

This story comes from Debt in Seattle.

“I am 27 and my husband is 29. When we first met, I had $200 in credit card debt and my husband didn’t have any. He was always at managing money than I was. My parents, bless them, were fantastic with money but they never taught me how to save money. What they did instead was lecture me to save money by not buying anything at all. They did not want me to go out to eat and absolutely no shopping!!! At the time, I thought that they were just trying to control how I spent my money. I tried to listen to them but with my friends constantly going out to eat & inviting me along; shopping every weekend, well I never did learn to save money. Instead I got further and further into debt.

By the time my husband and I were married in 1999, I was 21 years old and had $7,000 in credit card debt. I should have taken care of it then but I didn’t. My husband and I didn’t get serious about debt reduction until about 2003 when I lost my job and was out of work for about 5 months. I had always been the bread winner while my husband worked retail to stay home with our two children. I provided the paycheck and healthcare. DH supplemented our income but he only worked bout 5 hours in the evenings and 8 hours during the weekend. This was a wake up call for us.

When I finally found another job and my husband also started a job full time, we were able to start tackling away at our debt. I began to grocery shop with a list. I was able to feed our family of 4 on $200 a month by shopping sales & using coupons for everything. I put together weekly menus to save money and utilize all the food in the house. We stopped going out to eat and I stopped buying whatever I wanted. I cut up all of our credit cards and focused entirely on paying off our debt aggressively. In 2004, I found out that we were pregnant with our 3rd child. This pregnancy was unexpected and it put a fire on me to start saving some money because my employer at the time did not offer paid maternity leave. I was panicking because we had $100 in savings and were roughly $26,000 in credit card debt alone. In 2004 and 2005, we paid down our credit card to roughly $8,000. It was then that we decided that we needed a house for our growing family.

In April of this year, we bought our house & though we love it, I sometimes regret the choices we’ve made since we bought the house. We used almost all of our savings to buy the house. We live in Seattle and the medium price of a house here is $350,000. I tried so hard to find a house that was under $300,000 but couldn’t find one unless I wanted to move 50 miles away from work and family. We bit the bullet and bought a house for $360,000. We have a pretty big mortgage but it is manageable.

Because we used so much savings to buy the house, I resorted to using the credit cards to buy things we “needed” for the house. We didn’t have any furniture because we had moved back in with my parents due to them having health problems. We had to start from scratch! So we bought gently used couches, coffee tables, refrigerator, washer/dryer, and other items for the house.

We sit at $18,000 right now in credit card debt. I am sick with shame that we get caught up in having the house and increasing our spending again. That is when I decided to start my blog {debtinseattle} to hold myself accountable. October will be the first month that we will start living with a budget again after taking a 10 month hiatus. The good thing about this is that my husband and I donâ€™t fight about money at all. We know that we have bad debt and are in it together to pay it down.

Our plan at the moment is to buckle down and tighten up the purse strings by not going out to eat; bringing lunch every day to work, and no shopping unless it is necessary. My husband is working as much over time as possible to bring in extra money, which we will use to pay down the balance. I offered to get a second job but he is adamant that I spend more time with the kids.

That’s our story for the moment. My goal is to hopefully pay this off by the time I turn 30 in October of 2008.”

Thank you Debt in Seattle for sharing your debt story. I actually see many similarities between our stories. Those little punches that life can send your way can really wreck havoc on one’s finances. The main thing, as your story shows, is to not give up.

Posted by Tricia on October 2, 2006 at 8:07 AM in General Debt | 6 Comments »
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Matt responded:
Posted: October 2nd, 2006 at 2:59 pm
Thanks for posting this up, I meant to send you my debt story and I still plan on it.
Curly Tree responded:
Posted: October 3rd, 2006 at 1:41 am
Your stories are all very inspiring! It is just great to see people empowered and take control of their debts. I was in the same situation 15 years ago and it was a long, hard climb out but in the end, so gratifying! After I paid of everything, i subsequently started saving and placing the savings regularly in the stock market, which has now grown considerably. Keep up the great work, you’ll soon be where you want to be!
Tricia responded:
Posted: October 4th, 2006 at 9:31 pm
Matt – send it when you can. The deadline is over, but if I receive some I will post them

Curly Tree – thanks! It’s always nice to hear words of encouragement from those that have made it out of debt
Frugal in the City responded:
Posted: September 6th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
I found this by accident looking back through your blog, and I’m curious whether you have an update from this poster since her blog appears to be down:

We apologize for the inconvenience. Please contact the webmaster/ tech support immediately to have them rectify this.

error id: “bad_httpd_conf”
Tricia responded:
Posted: September 6th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Hi Frugal – I don’t have an update. I just checked my feeds, and I don’t see anything in there so I’m not sure when the blog went down.

It looks like it is just a website problem. Hopefully things will be back to normal soon!
Frugal in the City responded:
Posted: September 7th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Yep, I’d love to hear how she’s doing especially since we’re coming up on her goal date.

Thanks for the response.