Why did you take out your first PDL

I see a lot of first timers coming on, feeling crappy, belittling themselves. So I thought if they could see a post of all the REAL reasons the others got caught in the trap they would not be so hard on themselves.

Well I got married and although I love my husband dearly he developed a drug habit and stole a ton of money out of our joint account, so I had to take them out just to put groceries in the house. But he is in rehab now and he hasn't been doing that anymore(of course I switched banks, put it in my maiden name and had all the info sent to my parents house but I truelly believe he is doing better but only time will tell). It just got to the point where my entire check was gone the moment it was deposited and I couldnt pay rent and saw no end in site. Thank the lord that I found this site and got the information I needed to fight back :)

I took out my first internet PDL almost 5 years ago to cover my inpatient deductible for a surgery I was having. After that, I found PDL's to be an extra paycheck. Little did I know!!! If only I knew then what I know now...........

Thanks guys,
3 people and 3 very different situations, I think this will help ease the mental anguish of those coming on for the first time. Our brutal honesty sometimes hurts, but also helps us face reality and start the healing. Might sound crazy, but if we compare our situations to this, we have all come to the debt emergency room to fix our boo boos. Thanks for your contribution. Hopefully more folks will come along and add to it. Goodluck guys, we are all in this together, supporting each other will help each of us get through it.

We took our out first one out when I was missing work going to the doctors before I had surgery, then they continued from there because I was out of work and bills were needing to be paid and was trying to get make house payments and car payments and things just spiraled from there. I had surgery 5 months after moving into our new house, so it was rough. HInd sight is 20/20, but at the time we were only looking at the short term solution and not the long term of having so much money drawn from our bank account every payday and how it was going to really hurt us to where we feared loosing our house and such. You know, desperate people do desperate things and that was us at the time.

Good question! I had been out of work for almost 2 years and when I went back to work it was for half of what I was making even with unemployment. At the same time, my child support becam eratic, (something that I counted on to help make ends meet the ex owes me 20k+). So when my checking account became overdrawn a friend suggested a pdl. I was hooked! What a false sense of relief - and the vicious cycle began! Hi my name is Colleen and I am a pdl junkie!

There was a thread asking this same question a few months back with several responses.

Hi, I'm Misty, and I'm a pdl junkie, too. I've been one for five years now. My sister was the one who introduced me to the pdl mess five years ago when I had to have major surgery, and I was off work for a month healing/recovering. Bills were due, and I was only drawing 50% of the net worth of my paycheck. I took out my first one, and over the years it has spiraled out of control to the point that now I can't pay any of my other bills because I'm paying back the pdls. My paycheck goes to one pdl, then I re-borrow so that I can pay back the second pdl, and so on and so on. My sister made it out of the pdl trap, but I didn't. I got hooked. It's like an addiction that I'm now addressing and hoping and believing to overcome so that I can have my life back and my paycheck back so that I can get caught up in paying my other bills and repair my damaged credit.

Sorry britney, did not ever come across the post. Thought it would be something good for people to vent. Especially good for new people coming on to the site, those older posts don't pop up, maybe we can come up with a way to refresh them every now and then. If we don't know they are there, don't know what to google to find them, how can we access them or think of accessing them. Can you give direction here? Where is the post and what would one looking for it google? Thanks

funny thing I notice.. Most not all were out of work.. Notice how PDL and IPDL" all say YOU MUST HAVE A JOB AT LEAST 6 MONTHS TO QUAL?? So I guess they dont check anything :D But I had to send a copy of my recent paycheck..??
me I had just lost my child support but not the child.. :) And I guess I didnt plan for that big gap in income..

For us, my husband was working when we got a couple of our, I wasn't so our income got cut drastically.

OK, I know this is off topic, but what is this "Quick Message" under some of your all's names?

Hi,
I am also an ex-pdl junkie too, who is trying to reform. I guess I got into it because I couldn't get approved for any other type of credit and thought it would be an easy solution to my problems. (Hah). Little did I know that it would get bigger and bigger, untill I was spending almost a third of my check on them. Then I discovered the IPDL's and you can guess where I was heading...

Because I had a cocaine addiction. That is why I took out the 2nd, 3rd, 4th.......up to 12th one. It got to be I had no paycheck. To make a long story short, I bottomed out(mostly because I had no way to get drugs), decided to change or die(a very hard choice), went into rehab, left my job, moved across the country, paid off all my debts(and there were tons). Have been clean since 05-10-05. That is why I took out my first PDL. I am proud to be clean. Broke, but proud.

I'm happy to hear you are now clean Guest! :D Better to be clean and broke than high and broke. That is a great accomplishment! Keep it up.

Britney, why you so grouchy all the time?

LOL, Brit...Are you grouchy again? LMAO!

YAWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Because I speak what I think and do not go along with the "crowd", that makes me grouchy? Hmmmmmmmmmm, YAWN!

lol!

When I first came here to the forums, I posted my thoughts about PDLs. I compared it to a drug addict looking for a fix (no, I am not an addict). I wrote how you get one PDL to satisfy a need and then are forced to keep getting your "fix" to keep up the habit you have developed.

I agree with you, Lorri. It's a serious addiction.

When I got my first one(and my second, really) it was exciting. I was thrilled that I could do this..I figured it would be a breeze to pay them back, and payday loans would be something I could use whenever I wanted or needed a little extra cash.

The first time I took out a PDL was to finally have a "good" Christmas. I also thought it would be no problem to pay it back. Little did I realize that that little splurge would cost me a small fortunate to repay.

It is amazing how many different scenarios got us all here. Predatory lenders depend on us to have these needs they can satisfy, I bet they never thought we would all one day band together and kick the habit. Strength in numbers, We shall kick the habit, one by one, loan by loan.

I took out my first payday loan because I had an emergency bill to pay and I needed the cash and like a dumb ass I didn't want to bug my family. It started out with one hundred dollars which I paid back. But then it got out of hand recently.

1st my coworker introduced me to the cas ino..gambled my rent..then went and took out pdl to pay my rent..2nd my grandma passed away wanted badly to go the funeral in Connecticut..borrowed pdl to buy the plane ticket..just a recycling habit different situations.

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Personally, my ex-husband stopped paying child support and my daughter's daycare/preschool got a month and half behind, I was desperate to pay this before they told me I would have to take her out until the bill was paid, so I took out the loan, and like others had to take another to cover the first.

We took out our first PDL well over 6 years ago when hubby lost his job (lost over $4000 per month income) I was only working part-time (my kids were little at the time) we needed to pay living expenses. Then we took out another to pay off the first, then another to pay interest on the second and so on and so on. Then I found the internet ones (because we had one at almost every store front pdl company in town) then got one and another and another. It just kept going until both of us got laid off at the same time and now we are just paying them back.We had about 20 PDL's total not including 3 loans that we took to pay them all off. We told each other that we would really hurt the other if they took out another payday loan. If we didn't have the money to pay a bill then we would call and tell them it's gonna be late and thats that period.Yes it's a quick fix but read the fine print.

It's definitely easy to get out of control with a payday loan! With such high interest rates and short turn around times...I know it's possible to "beat the system" by paying it off in full right away (but who can really always do that??)

I say if you have to risk it, which we all have since we're all here, to only get the amount that you really need...that's what I did and I didn't really spiral out of control too much. And now I just try to stay away.