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Financial Denial – Featured in CreditCards.com
Here is a recent article from CreditCards.com written by Michelle Crouch. This is the last installment of a five-part series on sever money disorders. After hearing our story, Michelle called me up and asked several more questions about our situation. You can read from the beginning of her in-depth, fascinating series here or begin at the final installment which I quote below.
Many people are in financial denial. That is why so many Americans are drowning in debt. If you feel like you are spinning out of control when it comes to your finances, get help. Michelle provides resources in her articles.
When your finances aren’t in tune with reality
Matthew Peters of Madison, Wisc., said he started accumulating debt while he was still in college. “I didn’t really even pay attention to the debt,” he says. “I believed I was going to get this big, high-paying job, and I could pay everything off once I graduated.”
He ended up with a job that paid just above minimum wage and five maxed-out credit cards. When he married his wife a year later, he was $38,000 in debt. “I had this huge stack of bills by the door, and they were all past due,” Peters recalls. “When people would call — no matter who it was — I didn’t answer the phone because I knew it could be a creditor. I felt trapped, humiliated and embarrassed.”
Then, reality hit. His wife worked in the finance department of a large company, and a collector reached her there. “He was going to send a sheriff to her office to serve her papers if we didn’t start paying,” said Peters, author of “Don’t Own Don’t Rent Live Well.” “Since she worked in a finance department, that would have meant her job. So we had to get serious.”
The couple cut their TV, Internet and phone service and ate 25-cent boxes of macaroni and cheese for dinner. They became resident managers of their apartment complex to cut their rent, and Peters saw a credit counselor. Eighteen hard months later, he had paid off all his creditors. “It took a while to re-program myself,” Peters says, “but my heart doesn’t sink or race anymore when I open the mail.”
