It's amazing what can happen when one (or two) gets lax about their money. A credit card here, there, before you know it we have like 5 of them, all maxed out. My direct sales business that was going to make me a stay-at-home millionaire? Let's charge thousands of dollars in inventory; I'll sell it all anyway. It practically sells itself, right? ;) DH's investments in wholesale merchandise to turn around and make a huge profit? Let's charge it; when he makes his profit he can just pay the money back easily. Easily!
I have to say, not that it makes it any better, but it's not like we were out on fabulous spending sprees or going on amazing vacations. It would have been a heck of a lot more fun, though. We, being the idealistic idiots that we were, didn't stop to consider the possibility of what would happen if our investments DIDN'T pay off. So there's that.
Then there was just a lot of piddly little stuff - reasonable car payments, small student loan, line of credit from the bank...all the "normal" things that just add up. We were not living it up in any way. In fact, we struggled and argued a lot, I believe because the stress of not having any freed up cash is a huge bummer, to say the least.
We were living right up to the limit of our income, and we weren't even having all that much fun. Our debts were high and burdensome, but not insurmountable. I had discovered an online community dedicated to scratching and clawing out of debt, and a great way to do it. It was about living beneath your means and changing your money habits. For years, I mean like 5 years, I was determined to live this way and get out of debt. DH? Not exactly on board, but we muddled through. Fast-forward to about 6 months ago. Everything was going OK. Our freedom from debt (except for the evil overlord CF) was in sight - by December 2009 we were set to be nonmortgage debt-free.
Well, let me back up a little....
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