I was one of the lucky ones. I had a career waiting for me with a nice salary after graduating college. I was going to take over one of the manager positions with the business that had been in my family for over thirty years.
In my younger days, words like income, budgeting, and planning ahead meant nothing to me. All I knew and cared about was how high my hourly wage was compared to other positions within the industry. I was making great money to say the least.
The problem begins
Because of my income, I was right away approved for a couple of credit cards. However, because of my lack of credit history, each of them came with a high interest rate. I can remember taking a group of my closest friends out for dinner and several rounds of drinks when the first card arrived in the mail.
Within the next year or two, I added a mortgage, truck note, and a motorcycle payment to the list of monthly bills. While most mature adults would have started using the credit cards more wisely with the addition of the other responsibilities, that simply was not the case for me.
I can still vividly remember the first time one of cards were denied. I was on vacation in southern Florida with three friends, one of which was depending on me to cover the bill. Less than a week later, the same thing happened with another card. Eventually, I would have to use one card to make the payments on another, just to make a small advance towards lowering the original debt.
Getting stuck
I was in serious trouble and it felt like I had nowhere to turn. I couldn’t go to my parents for help, they were trusting me to run a six figure company for them. Seeing the shambles my own credit was in might have caused them to rethink my position.
Due to all of the focus and attention on my credit cards, I received a letter in the mail concerning my motorcycle. It had been almost six weeks since my last payment. I was making a great salary and working well over 40 hours per week. Where was all of my money going?
Turns out, the amount of my debt I had accumulated was much higher than I had anticipated. Payments were being deducted automatically from my checking account and I wasn’t taking the time to figure the amounts into what I had available. It seemed like every week I was receiving a new notice in the mail of an overdue balance. I was no longer approved for borrowing money from my bank.
When there was nothing else I could do, I began looking for the best place to get a debt consolidation loan. Subsequently, within a matter of weeks, all of my debt had been compiled into a single monthly payment. There was a lot of work ahead of me, but I felt as if I could finally breath after holding my breath for what seemed like months.
Don’t allow yourself to make the same mistake I did. If your debt is starting to get out of hand, don’t wait until the last minute to do something about it. Contact someone who knows how to help today.
James Hendrickson is an internet entrepreneur, blogging junky, hunter and personal finance geek. When he’s not lurking in coffee shops in Portland, Oregon, you’ll find him in the Pacific Northwest’s great outdoors. James has a masters degree in Sociology from the University of Maryland at College Park and a Bachelors degree on Sociology from Earlham College. He loves individual stocks, bonds and precious metals.