I earn a good salary and live quite frugally. I spend far less on myself than anyone I know, and yet I've been in debt all my adult life. However, several months into a debt management program my balances owing are shrinking instead of growing, for the first time in thirty years. Perhaps others can learn from my story.

Shortly after my husband and I were married, he wanted to buy a good stereo. We both enjoy music, so I agreed and we went to the bank to apply for a loan. The guy we talked to convinced us that we should have a credit card for purchases like this, rather than going through the bother of taking out a loan. We went along with that, agreeing that we could pay off the credit card debt the same as we would a bank loan. But it didn't work out that way. Before the stereo was paid off, Christmas came along and, living across the country from both our families, we wanted to go home for Christmas. We decided to use the credit card to buy airline tickets that we likely wouldn't have bought if we hadn't had the card. Then the car needed an expensive repair, so we paid for that with the credit card.

Imagine my surprise when I opened the credit card statement in January and saw the price of the ring my husband had given me for Christmas! In a matter of a few months we had gone from treating the card like a loan to be paid off as quickly as possible to using it as the doorway to a better lifestyle than we could afford. Suddenly we were making only minimum payments on our credit card debt. By then the low introductory interest rate had expired and the debt was costing three times what it would have if we'd have taken out a loan to cover those (not exactly necessary) expenses. But the bank was on our side! As our credit card debt increased, so did our credit limit. By doing nothing more than spend freely, we now had access to three times the credit we had originally arranged.

The debt grew month by month, and when my husband and I divorced almost twenty years later, I kept the kids, the house, the mortgage, and the credit card debt. He kept the business and the business debt. I had no intentions of letting the divorce diminish my kids' lifestyle, so continued with the music and dance lessons, new ski equipment each year (just for the eldest child, as it was passed down to siblings), and a decent wardrobe for each of us. I didn't think I was being extravagant, but with one income instead of two, the debt continued to grow. I applied for credit cards with

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