Credit Cards Will Drain Your Soul!

I just checked my bank account and promptly went into a rage! For a certain credit card company has just taken £0.21p from my account.

B**T**DS!!!

Ok, so it’s only £0.21p right? But the fact is, over the last three months I have paid off every single one of my credit cards in full …

And they are still trying to bleed me dry!!

Now, you probably all think I’m lucky to be debt free at this point, and of course you’re right. But in truth, the only way I’ve been able to do this, was by sacrificing tens of thousands of pounds from my pension.

Yes, that’s right. I said, ‘Tens of thousands!’

Sadly however, the realities of my debt are even more harrowing. For I have now worked out, that with all the extortionate interest charges I was paying (due to only ever being able to afford the minimum payments), the total amount I paid back to the credit card companies reached over an eye watering ‘ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS!’

Now, while this is probably only around 30 seconds worth of Elon Musk’s take home pay (It’s actually true, I looked it up!) For someone like me, it would have been enough to start a business, buy a small house, or perhaps even triple the amount by investing like Warren Buffett! (I bet he doesn’t make minimum payments!)

So how did I end up this way?

Well, in a nutshell. Life!

My wife and I were rolling along nicely. We both had good jobs in the emergency services and were bringing in a double wage. So of course, like many people do in our position, we sometimes paid for things up front on our credit cards. A holiday to Disneyland with the kids perhaps, or a new mobile phone. We were always good at paying them off, and due to our good credit record they were mostly interest free …

But then my wife became sick!

Out of the blue, my wife developed a chronic illness. She was able to manage work for a short while, but little did we know how bad it would become. Sadly, just a few months after her diagnosis she had no choice but to leave. She was just 30 years of age. It was devastating.

At the point when she retired, we were still servicing a credit card bill. But now with only one full wage coming in, it started to become more difficult to manage. I was working overtime to help pay them off, but gradually it became harder to keep up. The cost of living was rising and I was becoming exhausted. The debt continued to climb.

This is the point when I should have taken decisive action. I could have spoken to the credit card companies, explained our situation and they may have helped. We could have had the interest frozen perhaps, or even the debts written off. But my biggest problem was pride. I felt a sense of shame in not being able to pay our bills. I didn’t want to admit my debts. So I did the worse thing I could possibly have done. Ignored it completely and just pretended that everything would be ok.

But It never was …

I literally went along like this for years. Swapping one credit card for another, while finding as many interest free deals as I could get to keep the payments down. But like anyone else who has tried this already knows …

Eventually you run out of options!

So here I am. I have sacrificed almost thirty years of my pension lump sum to cover my credit card debts. It should have been money for my retirement. If it were invested, It could have paid for a couple of nice holidays each year for my wife. God knows she deserves it, after what she’s been through. But we now have little left to spend, while the credit card companies have reaped all the rewards (Including my £0.21p)

So if my story resonates with anyone reading (which I have a feeling it will) I have just a few things left to say that I hope could make a difference …

If you are young, PLEASE DO NOT GET A CREDIT CARD!

If you already have one, PAY IT OFF AND CUT IT UP!

If you are trapped in credit card debt, then please ... SPEAK TO AN ADVISOR. TODAY!

Life is far too short. Please don’t end up like me!

Thanks for reading

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Originally published at https://medium.com/never-stop-writing/credit-cards-will-drain-your-soul-c7bcc7bacabc