37/M and being debt-free is finally on the horizon

L'auteur partage son expérience de dette accumulée depuis l'âge de 16 ans et comment il a finalement pris conscience de ses erreurs pour devenir debt-free

Just wanted to share because I'm genuinely excited but I don't have anyone else to talk to about it. I've been in debt since I was 16. Back then I used to get £30/week EMA for being in college. Being a teenager, rather than spend this on books or learning materials, I naturally opened an eBay account and started buying heavy metal sew-on patches for my denim jacket, using PayPal. Nobody had ever told me I could spend more than what I had in my bank account, and at the time I was far from a responsible young adult. Once the first wave of charges came in, rather than slap me on the wrist, the bank then agreed to let me have a £500 overdraft to avoid charges in future... at 16. That's the equivalent of nearly £1k today. Of course I immediately spent it. Over the next few years, I continually increased my overdraft, took out loans, credit cards etc. I purchased cars, took holidays, got food and even financed nights out, spent money impressing girls, dropped a bunch of money in crypto which I sold at a massive loss... I liked living a good life and I was still at home with my parents, who charged me relatively little rent. It makes my fucking cringe to think about now, but I would literally go to the cash machine on a night out and if it told me I didn't have any funds available, I'd walk home, log into my bank account and increase my overdraft by \~£50 or whatever. By the time I got back to the cash machine, I could withdraw it and spend it... for years I did that. For years it seemed like every time my salary went up, somehow did my spending and borrowing. Monthly repayments crept up, so more borrowing was done to get on top of them. I started getting consolidation loans to at least keep the interest payments at bay, but then I'd miss payments and get charged super-interest because of it. Bizarrely through this whole time I kept getting those "We've increased your credit limit" letters through for almost all of my credit cards. Once I moved out in my early 20