People usually get crushed by the weight of their debts in two main ways. Some people feel like debt hit them like a tonne of bricks when they lost their job or got sick and couldn't work or had to spend a lot of money on medical bills. Other people find that their debt sort of "snuck up" on them after years of using credit cards for small purchases they didn't have cash for, or after making big purchases like a new car or a mortgage, only to find that unexpected expenses or changes in income have made it nearly impossible to keep up with all of the monthly payments.
No matter how you got into debt, everyone agrees that it's much easier to get out of it than to get into it.
Unavoidable Debt
Sometimes, a person can't do anything at all to stay out of debt. As was already said, sometimes you lose your job without warning, and you have to figure out how to pay for everything you were paying for with your full-time job with your new, lower unemployment income (if you qualify). It's not always as easy as just applying for a new job, and some people go months without a steady income. It's not hard to see how these people could end up with too much debt.
When you or a family member gets hurt or sick, this is another unavoidable event that can cause a lot of debt. If your health insurance doesn't cover enough of your medical costs, you could end up with too many medical bills and not enough money to pay for your regular monthly bills. This situation often leads to a "double whammy" because if your health problem makes you unable to work and your inability to work makes it hard for you to pay your medical bills and other bills, your debt will take over.
Avoidable Debt
For every person with debts they can't get out of, there are probably 10 who got into too much debt that they could have avoided. These are people who used credit cards to stretch their money a little further, but over time, with the help of high interest rates and late fees, they found that they couldn't keep up with all of their bills. People often use credit when they don't have enough cash to buy something they want, and they don't think about how long it will take to pay off an impulse buy. People usually don't realise how much debt they've gotten into when they use credit cards to buy things and then don't pay them off as soon as the bill comes.
People often get into a lot of debt because they use shopping as a form of therapy. When someone is upset about something, shopping can help them feel better. People who don't have as much money as they'd like often end up at the mall with a few good credit cards to forget their problems, or they go on a short vacation with the plan to pay off their bills as soon as possible.
Whether you got into debt because of things you couldn't avoid or things you could have, debt is debt, and it's much harder to get out of than it was to get into.
