“The worst thing I ever did was apply for a credit card.”
Charlotte Gomez / BuzzFeed
During uni I somehow rinsed my overdraft despite working throughout most of it. In my second year, I didn't have a job for about six months but spent like I was working. I remember paying a credit card with a credit card then doing the reverse a week later. I had no safety net. There were times at work where I'd just get bread in the canteen, pretending I was saving money in a really happy, proactive manner, but I'd run out of cash and only existed in credit card land.
When I moved from Sheffield to London for my "grown-up job" after graduation, a nameless credit card company approved me for a £9,000 card limit. Silly people. By December 2014, I was in £14,000 of unsecured debt and paying £990 a month just servicing my debt. Of that, £260 was paying interest and charges in various places. It wasn't fun. I got a new job in December, and a great guy at my bank sorted me out to consolidate my debt into a loan repayable over 18 months. My friends are aware of my debt – it's a joke point between us all – but my family (especially my mum)? Hell no! They're all working professional people but no one has the spare cash around. It's hard to judge the real impact; debt just became my life. My whole adult life I've been carrying bigger and bigger debts, and I saw it as the norm.
Submitted by Martin, email.
I got my yearly statement for how much I owe the Student Loans Company: £15,000. Add to that the £10,000 loan I took out to fund my master's, then consider my graduate salary and how (based on the percentage deduction the Student Loan Company takes) I have only repaid slightly over £200 of my student debt in the last tax year.
Higher salary requires further education in my field, but a PhD only means digging the debt hole even further down. Living at home to recoup my losses and shaving my social life down to the bare minimum is costing me a huge deal of sanity, but allowing me to slowly crawl up out of the student debt pit. Yippee! So far it looks like we'll be paying back debts from beyond the grave!
Submitted by katherinep451814285.