I asked myself this question often. I was so overwhelmed that all I wanted to do was to put my head in the sand and stay there. for.ever. Well, my problem wasn’t even the getting out of debt bit, it was searching and adding all the debts we had. My husband was pretty much in the dark about how bad the situation was and that’s where all my shame came from.
I sometimes felt that it would be easier to just leave my husband, get a divorce, than telling him the situation we were in. You see, I was the one that took care of the finances, I mean, I decided where the money would go. True, we had a cleaning lady that came four times a week and we went skiing every weekend, snow permiting it. We went out to dinner every friday night, always had friends over on saturday night for dinner and we bought whatever we wanted. So he knew we spent a lot but he never really asked me how we were doing, financially speaking.
But that didn’t really make me feel any better. I started trying to figure out how much debt we really had and it was so much that I thought we were going to die without having payed half of it. You see, I didn’t tell anyone about it and I was so ashamed that I tried to keep going doing the same thing I had done until then, spend! I figured it was so out of control that I would never get out of the hole.
I only took things seriously when my husband left to work in another country and I stayed behind with the kids. I was not able to pay our house and we barely had enough to eat, let alone pay any other bills. In a final attempt to save our house I moved in with my parents, all kids in toe and rented out the house, but the economy was crashing and it wasn’t even enough to pay the mortgage. I was defeated.
When I finally moved to be with my husband I just wanted to work, the more physical work the better, so that I was so tired at night that I had no time to think about the life I’d left behind. The worst of it? I had no one to talk to. I have a pretty good record of when the going gets tough I get running, fast. I did not want to take responsability for my actions. I blamed the economy, the friend circle, the weather, the politics… everyone was to blame except me.
I searched online for a solution, I followed everyone that talked about getting out of debt and finally it was a post I came accross from a Dave Ramsay that shifted my mind set. Unfortunatly I did not have the support or the accountability to keep going so I continually fell off the wagon and it was a struggle! But we finally did it.
I just want to tell you that it’s not easy, it’s really, really hard! but don’t give up if you find yourself in this journey. I’ll give you some tips on how to keep going when the going gets tough (and it’s not get running!!).
S
