I wasn't being mean. I remember thinking that if we just consolidated our debts we would bee so much better off and we could pay off our debts. Then, our debts would spiral one more. It was a circular problem. Then, the payments got to the point that we couldn't afford to chip away at the actual debt.
We had fallen into a trap of relying on credit. We weren't even extravagant in the scheme of things. We had just fallen for the story that it was ok to build debts as students because graduates get great jobs. We considered our overdrafts as part of our budget, madly. Payday would come and the wages would bring is out of our overdraft, but then of course our bills would come ands we had to eat, so we'd go straight back into it.
When we filed bankruptcy, we had no debt as we walked out of the court. We also had no credit available to us. No overdraft, no loans, no hire purchase, no 'buy now, pay later'. Just what was in our bank account.
7 years on, our income is even lower than it was then. However, our attitude to money is radically different. I go into a cold sweat if we have less than £200 in our account. To think that I used to be quite comfortable with a balance of -£1500! Insane.
You'll never escape debt. You either have to change your spending habits and pay off the debt, if your income/earning capacity can do it, or face that you are insolvent. We were insolvent because despite our overall debt being (relatively) low, our earning potential was hampered and CCCS advised us that our creditors would not accept an IVA and a debt management plan would likely not be accepted either.