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Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 7:04 am Subject: my story

I would like to know people's stories of how they got into the debt situation they're in now (or have gotten out of). I'll start.
So my wife is 6 month's pregnant with twins and she has just been officially put on medical leave from work. Things are ok, but really tight money wise. Then the car breaks down, and now it's gonna cost around $1500 to fix. So we take that month's mortgage payment and pay for the car repair. The car will take 3 weeks to get fixed, so we need to rent a car for 3 weeks (another $700 or so). So I take out an IPDL to help pay for the mortgage that month. Things get a little better so we pay off the 1st IPDL. Then WHAM the wife gets put into the hospital for 2 weeks due to complications. Now there is all of this additional expense on top of trying to get the other bills caught up from the car repairs.
So we have a brilliant idea. Why don't we take out a few more IPDL's, they're so easy to do right? So we take out about a grand worth of payday loans. So now we're eating up a good chunk of our paychecks, and now is when the cycle really starts up. We pay off a couple only to take out a couple more to catch up with bills.
Before we know it, most of our paychecks are taken up with just paying off the interest and fees on the loans. Now though, we have two beautiful baby girls to care for on top of everything else (diapers, formula, clothes). Bills really start piling up now, including the mortgage company threating to foreclose (taken care of now). I just couldn't see a way out of this trap that we were stuck in. So I searched a bit online and found this site. Shut down the IPDL's and now have finally seen our own full paychecks for the first time in close to a year.
So anyone else have a story to share?

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 4:59 pm Subject:

i'm sad to say, but your story is all too familiar for many of us. bills pile up, not enough money to pay them, take out loans, loans take away even more money. it's a horrible, sad cycle.
you came to the right place and i'm so glad you're out of the cycle. congrats.

Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2008 4:18 am Subject:

We gotta work on shutting these guys down

Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2008 10:00 am Subject:

I agree with the 2nd poster. MANY stories are such as yours. People are not trying to be careless, they are trying to LIVE and don't have a choice to bail themselves out.
It sucks that we all are in such predictaments.

I'm glad you quickly realized what you needed to do and I'm glad you found us.

Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2008 10:15 am Subject:

It just seems odd to have money in the bank account and no nsf fees.

Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2008 10:31 am Subject:

It has been over a year and I still get anxiety when I look at my account on line! I know what you mean. Picture this. I had six or seven IPDLS when my boss interuppted the direct deposit without telling anyone. Talk about a snowball effect of NSF's.