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Credit Card Debt Success!!
By Robyn | August 7, 2008
I read up recently on a family that lost their breadwinner in a freak, tragic accident. I can’t even imagine what goes through a woman’s mind when her husband is taken away like that. I know, men go through it too, but for women who are raising children and out of the work force, the thoughts of suddenly picking up the pieces and moving on is terrifying. Where would we be if something were to happen to my husband?
We’ve been very blessed over the past few years. The only outstanding debt we have is our mortgage and a $500 credit card that is no where near maxed out! Both of our cars are paid off, and there is nothing else requiring a monthly payment (other than our utilities). This hasn’t always been the case! When we first moved to Arizona, we got there at the beginnings of the summer. Working in the hospitality field in Arizona, the summer time is nearly non-existent for business. But because we had just moved in, our mortgage payment wasn’t due for a few months, and we were nearing the fall pick up when the monthly bills kicked in. My husband worked normal hours and many overtime hours so that they could cut the staff during the low time. By the fall and business pick up, we were making quite a lot of money. A mortgage payment and a half in each paycheck. Then…my husband took a job promotion. He moved from hourly to salary, and it cut out all of his overtime. We went from living high on the hog, to not having a full mortgage payment in one paycheck. We were living on credit and were firmly entrenched in a black hole before I was able to find work to help dig our way out. We looked into Credit counseling but found that most of the companies expected a one time payment equal to our mortgage. If I had enough to pay the counselors…I could pay my mortgage!
They were scary times. We clawed our way out of that mess, and moved to Chicago. Life here has been pretty good until my husband was injured on the job and forced to take 18 months off! Now…that was scary! We were getting some assistance from Workman’s Comp, and lived on food stamps, but because we had already gone through the black hole of credit debt, we were much smarter this time around. With help from family and the hubby finally being able to get back to work, we came through this round relatively unscathed. It wasn’t fun…but we survived it!
I don’t think you can consider someone a success story unless they’ve learned from their mistakes. We have a lot to learn, but really are a lot better off than some of our friends who carry as much credit card debt as both of our paid off cars values put together! That would cause some sleepless nights for me! I recently took the BillsIQ test, and I scored 85%! Not bad, but definitely need some fine tuning to get our score up to the high 90’s where I’d like it to be!
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