My wife and I are in our early 40s and we are living pay check to pay check, despite the fact that we make a combined gross family income of $140,000. This is embarrassing to admit and we realize that we need to make some drastic lifestyle changes.
A few years ago we took out a home equity line of credit, which we tapped into for some home improvements as well as to consolidate credit debt. The line of credit was also used as overdraft protection for our checking account, which was a big mistake.