I was 23 years old and $50K in Debt!

Estimated Reading Time: 2-3 minutes

Anyone who has been in any sort of relationship, will tell you relationships are hard. And I full heartily 100% agree. They’re hard for so many reasons. In my case, the very first ‘hard’ thing was telling my then boyfriend, hopefully future live-together boyfriend, about the serious debt I had lurking in my wallet. Debt he had no help in building, the items purchased meant nothing to him and, well yeah, it was a huge pile of shit he had no part in making. We were about nine months into our relationship at the time and had made the decision to move into together. Given the life change we were about to make, we also decided to open a joint bank account to help balance joint expenses.

Let me lay a little background on the situation even more, my now husband better know to you as ‘The Saver’, was an A+ financial steward. Yep, no bad debt and saving was his #1 priority.  He pretty much was doing EVERYTHING by the book.

Here is how my debt broke out:

• Credit Card #1 – $2,565
• Credit Card #2 – $7,338
• Student Loan – $36,390.  Which was really used to purchase a car.  Then I took out an additional $15K to help!
• Credit Card #3 – 7,617
  Grand Total = $53,911

The day had come, my secret was about to be let out of the bag.  He had NO IDEA.  My mind started to wonder. Was he going to stick around when he learned about my $50,000 in credit card debt and loans? Or would he peace out and lay no caution to the wind?  I was scared, petrified.   It was time to be completely transparent of all my financial indiscretions. One-by-one I laid out every credit card bill, every loan payment and all the credit cards I had kept “just in case”, aka when I maxed one out there was a backup ready.  There was a lot of silence as we went through all the statements.  I could see the cringe as the calculator continued to add the numbers up.  I can only imagine what he was thinking.  It took us 3-4 hours to go through it all.

So you probably guessed by now, he didn’t peace out. Together we formed an action plan to get me out of the debt. A plan in which we both sacrificed. It made us stronger in the end, but of course there have been bumps along the way.  We talk about this time in our lives often, and we actually have a lot of fond memories.

My hope in sharing this with everyone is that you can get out, there can be a light at the end of the tunnel.  The exact details of those ideas are planned for a “Saver” post coming soon.  And I’ll be sure to share some of those bump stories, believe me, there are plenty!