For a while now (around 18 months) we have been trying to live with as little credit as possible, it's not always easy but it does make the day to day (well, month to month) finances easier to deal with.
There was a time when we were both working full time and our combined income was quite reasonable, during this time we consistently spent more than we were earning and that wasn't a problem because credit was easy to come by and we had enough coming in to meet the payments quite easily.
We went for a couple of years like this, had nice cars, lots of toys and generally lived "the good life". The debts were big but easily manageable, it wasn't something we ever worried about and it stayed like that until Georgia was born.
If you are a couple who both work full time and you then have a child, you need to decide what you are going to do after the maternity leave; either you both go back to work and pay for child care or one of you goes back. I think we always assumed that we would both go back to work, but when it came to it neither of us wanted our child to spend more time with other people than with us, so Clare stayed at home.
Big debts with one wage are a bigger problem, it still took a long time for it to become a real problem though, credit is easy to come by and you can use it if you have no cash (because all of your money is going on other bills). Eventually you run out of "new" credit and you are left with a stack of bills each month that are higher than your monthly income, it's very stressful.
We were very lucky because firstly, we owned our own home (with a mortgage of course) and secondly, we had moved away for my job and it wasn't working out, we wanted to sell up and move back to Oxfordshire. We had two options; either sell up and move to a smaller place and keep the debt, or sell up and rent somewhere smaller and pay all the debts off.
We chose the second option because the stress of living with huge debt was becoming unbearable. Thanks to the stupid house prices and our earlier move, our house had made more money in a year than we could have done in much longer, we sold it, we paid off the mortgage and all the debts and rented a house where we really want to live.
All credit cards were cut up, loans paid off and everything was up to date and we were happy. We still are, we don't have any credit cards, nothing on HP, no loans (except an old one that was a good deal and we didn't pay it off), and nothing else to keep us awake at night. We do have an overdraft facility and we do have an account with the Next Catalogue, but these are manageable and won't ever increase or go over their limits. We don't even have a cheque book!
Living without credit has been hard at times, but we won't go back. The biggest sacrifice is not being home owners any longer, as prices keep going up we'll be priced out of the market, but one day we'll buy again and it will be us starting afresh. The hardest part is probably that we don't have a reserve of cash or credit for when we might need it, it's not unusual to run out of cash completely a day or two before pay day but this isn't a big deal.
