Default wake up call

Since leaving university I have dragged around a huge amount (relative to my experience) of debt. I pay out, and have paid for 9years, around £400 a month purely in servicing my debt, personal loan, credit cards and overdrafts...I had two, they let me have three!

When I was 8 I decided I would one day go to uni, despite noone in my family ever doing exams before. Now I am the one wading in debt and they all own their homes and aren't seeming stressed to the gills by the job they do.

My debt isn't the tuition fees everyone talks about, I don't even think about that it as it disappears out of my pay check (now that I earn enough for it to go). My debt is the money that kept me alive when I was at university, rent, food, travel, photocopying, printing, books. You may have a maintenance loan (I did, the max amount you could get) but don't be fooled that doesn't cover your rent more often than not. If you want to eat and be able to wash your clothes you had to find some money somewhere else. So I went to the bank rather than to the pole dancing club.

I owe...*adds it up honestly* £8620. That is one, two, three credit cards and one, two, three overdrafts.

I graduated in 2004, I then went back to uni to train as a teacher in 2007. Since then I have just about been able to pay the minimum amount on all of that debt. I pay out around £400 a month and have done for nearly nine years and the debts don't get any smaller due to the interest on them, That is ...400x12x9= £43,200 ......holy shite that is first time I have worked that out. I have ALREADY paid £43,200 out and get I am still dragging it around! How is that possible! Why do they let you get into this mess? How did I let myself get into this debt. If I had saved that I could actually buy a house!

It ends here. I am getting out of this. I earn £31,000 a year, I should not be in debt like this. I will not allow myself to be here again. Ever again.

How will I save £8620?  I will save it a bit at a time and pay it back a bit at a time. After deductions I take home £1700 a month. If I can get the cost of my living (include the current debt bill) to £700 a month then I can save £1000. Then by next new year I can be out of this. I could consolidate this amount as one loan and pay that off over five year...but I don't want another five years of it...and my credit rating is now so bad that I won't be approved. I tried.

Hmm....£700 a month... minus £400... £300 a month... I will have to move in with my parents, I will have to do without a car. I will give myself a budget of £4 a day. If I fail to cope I will still be in this mess next year and that would be a decade of debt. NO WAY!

Here goes.

Bella