One reader, Zach, shared his thoughts on one of my posts about comparing ourselves to an out of control family in some horrible debt.

I have to admit that I was actually raised in a frugal home.  My parents always had debt to pay off and grew up with a hate for it.  My wife was in a similar situation as well, but was very spontaneous with her spending in college.

Why Did We Start Spending More?

Photo by blake

The biggest change for us was when I landed a very well paying job in IT after college.  We saw these huge numbers (with respect to our parents) and immediately started a spending habit that was way beyond our means.  It was way too easy to just let things get out of control when you thought you could just make up for it in a couple of months.

This is exactly the kind of thinking that gets people into debt to begin with.  Thinking you have control of the future and can make up for things later in order to get that instant gratification that you want today.

How Did It Turn Out?

Well, as you can see by just being on my site, it didn’t turn out all the great.  In only 10 years, we’ve managed to accumulate over a QUARTER MILLION DOLLARS of debt and end up with a negative net worth!  I could go on and on about just how much this has effected us, but all you really need to see are those massive numbers.  Every example I could come up with were because of the same thing, thinking we could pay for something tomorrow what we thought we needed today.

How Do We Get Back In Control?

Photo by Almaz

The biggest thing we had to do was to acknowledge that over time our bad debt habit was going to bury us in financial problems.  Not only that, it would bury our children in our financial problems as well.  That was where we had to draw the line.  A very important part of breaking this bad habit was to stop thinking we could pay for things later.

Once we began to enforce the rule that if we don’t have the money to pay for it, we simply can’t get it.

"What?" you say.  "That’s it?"  Well, pretty much…yeah.  Simply stop the procrastination.  Our debt habit was completely based on the fact that we thought we could control our actions AND our circumstances.  Ten years of that not going right and I think we’re finally on to something…we can’t always control our circumstances.

Have any of you found yourself with bad debt habits that were difficult to break?  How long did it take you before you realized you even had them and had to do something about it?  Drop a line and share with us.