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A wise man once said, “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have” Socrates
I preface that to begin our ‘stupid tax’ story on how we descended into our debt spiral that ultimately affected our family.
EARLY YEARS
First off, both of us were products of broken homes where there were no father figures around.
In our culture, we never talked about money, but instead, joke about how to spend it whenever we got it; but never how to handle it.
We got married pretty young and from the get-go never had the habit of saving.
We’d always spend more than we made and got into debt for whatever we couldn’t afford.
After three years of indulging, we had our first taste of bankruptcy, at that we lost one job, was in debt for a little over $18K, read about how to erase debt, and just filed; not caring about the consequences and honestly didn’t care.
As soon as we got discharged from BK after only 3 short years, we were back in debt. A house, 2 new cars, 5 visa and master cards and an American Excess, I mean Express.
FIRST HOME
We bought our first home, a condo for $125K in 2001 and were able to sell at the top of the market in 2006 for $375K.
We eventually paid off all the cards at that point then upgraded to bigger and more expensive cars and the bigger and more expensive house to go with it for $560K, all because everyone else was doing it.
We wanted all the upgrades, the kitchen, the driveway, the bathroom, all of it financed with credit.
Then the inevitable happened, the housing market began to crash mid-2008. We financed our house with the loan of the time, the subprime, interest only adjustable loan which raised our monthly payment after the 25th month and every month thereafter.
We had to use our credit cards, even more at that point, sometimes even having the mortgage charged on them; it was terrible.
THE RECESSION HIT
The economy was really starting to churn by 2009, Moira lost her job, I was notified of an impending layoff in mine, we were making $90K combined but it wasn’t enough to sustain our lifestyle, and potentially about to lose both our jobs at that point.
It didn’t take long to rack up another $20K in credit debt within 2 years living this way.
Luckily my layoff was put on hold, but we were still down to one income, so by 2010 we again decided to file for a fresh start; you guessed it, another round of BK, chapter 7 to be exact.
We lost everything at this stage and had to start over…. again.
No house, no cars, we downsized everything. Not proud to say that in a span of 17 years, we filed for bankruptcy twice; which showed how irresponsible we were with money.
CONCLUSION
It took a while for us to realize that credit card companies really actually targeted us, all the while we thought we were just lucky to be getting daily offers in the mail for gold, platinum, and every color card there was 🙁
There were sleepless nights just thinking how miserable our situation became and how we subjected our family to this madness, all because we were negligent and stupid with finances.
Stay tuned for Part 2….
Do you have a similar experience in the past? How did you overcome? Please leave us a comment or insight below or email us at thedebtfreejourney@gmail.com.
Peace and Blessings to you All.
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