Melissa Megason

We lived paycheck to paycheck, as many middle-class people do here in Maine, but we were able to manage it.

We would use credit cards if we needed to for emergencies, especially with four dogs come time to go for their annual physicals and shots and all that stuff.

That would be the type of stuff we would put on there.

We never took vacations.

Actually, we shared a vehicle for the longest time.

The peak would have been just a little over $20,000 for me.

I was shocked because you don't realize it.

But then you start thinking about it.

A lot of it is...

Late fees over limit fees, late fees over limit fees, every month that you don't pay.

And so those keep adding up.

It's like quicksand.

You just keep going lower and lower and lower.

At that point, he did have two that were just in his name, so he did have those.

But joint, we had, on top of the credit cards, I had one, two, three, four, five.

I think I had six or seven, maybe eight.

And I had done stupid things.

Like when we were trying to work on our marriage, I was trying to make myself look better for him and do all these things.

So I would shop at Victoria's Secret all the time and just spend a lot of money there because that's what he wanted.

I spent a lot of money getting my hair going from brown to blonde because he liked me better as a blonde.