I had the same citibank card with a $500 limit in the 80’s in college. I think that I had ONE other credit card–an MBNA visa.
However, I NEVER got myself in the kind of shithole you both appear to have. Maybe it was because I paid my way through college? Maybe it was because I worked from the time I was 15? Maybe it’s because my dad died when I was 18 and I knew that no support whatsoever was forthcoming from my mom if I screwed up?
Who knows…however, sticking your bills in a drawer and hoping they’ll just ‘go away’…I’m speechless.
After graduating, I did charge up some cards. I think at my zenith I was about $8k in debt on credit card debt 10 years ago. However, even during several bouts of unemployment, I’ve never been ‘delinquent’ or had ANY credit account go into collections. If I couldn’t pay a bill for a few months, I did what any reasonable adult would presumably do, I called the company and told them my situation (“Hi, I’m unemployed, can I just send you a token $50/month until I have a job again?”).
I can’t fathom the thought process of people these days that get themselves $20k, $40k or $100k in the hole with revolving debt or the balls it takes to just WALK AWAY after they charged all that debt up and just shrug their shoulders and decide they can’t pay.
I’m not talking about people who end up having to pay tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills or who have the primary earner become unemployed for a family. I’m talking about the people who just spend, spend, spend who a) have no idea how much they actually owe and b) have no plan on how they will ever pay it back.
Maybe it IS time for some financial education in high school.
