Anytime that you, my readers, would like to share your debt story, feel free to send it to me in an email and I will post it on here. It s not easy reading all of the stories, because there are so many people struggling. But with sharing our stories, we know that we are not alone. Debt can affect anyone. Eight years ago I had a hundred and fifty thousand bucks. Now I m 25 thousand in high interest debt and struggling. To pay it off, I ve allowed myself 10 dollars a day for food and gas, refuse to use the cards, use advances from work to handle emergencies. What I did wrong: I bought a fixer-upper with a man who turned out to be a total flake. Then we had a baby. To get out of owning real estate with an unstable person, I lost my shirt on the house. With about USD10,000 left, I moved back to Seattle with my son, got a job, enrolled him in preschool. The preschool was expensive, but child support helped us get by, until child support ended, and it looked like it would be gone for a very long time. Ran through the savings, started using the credit cards to pick up the slack. Just three more years til kindergarten, then I would stop with the credit cards. We were getting by until I was robbed, stalked, had to move to a different, even more expensive preschool, had to change apartments. This might have been manageable except that kindergarten isn t as cheap as I thought. So now I m in debt, living day to day until I pay down this debt, which I calculate to be about a 5-year haul if I suck it in and keep to my USD10 per day budget. When the lease on my apartment is over, I m moving to a cheaper apartment (I moved to a more expensive one when I was running away from the stalker, not thinking straight because of fear.) I might even try living without a car. Thank you for sharing your story. I think yours is one that many can relate to things were going well but then a series of unfortunate events created the spiral downward into debt. Which reminds me. There is a banner on the left hand side of my blog that will take you to Modest Needs. People can go there to apply for help with such expenses and others can go there to donate to help others. I support this organization 100% (take a look at their financials - they are very impressive). Share This ...read full story