Hello,
I’m turning 28 this year. I have a 20K debt. 8K credit card and 12K overdraft. 12K overdraft happened this weekend.
I’m lucky enough that the bank with who I have the overdraft and credit card isn’t the same that I pay the rent with and receive my salary.
My net salary is 4.6K and I have a 1500 rent+monthly payments.
I might have a bonus in May of around 10K net.
I’m ashamed and disgusted by myself. If I try to understand it, I believe I first gamble to not think about a situation, then I lose, then I want to make it up.
I’ve decided to stop and to accept the loss. It’s a lot, it’s too much. Honestly it’s a very shitty addiction. You barely sleep, you lose money, you think about the gambling most of the time. I would rather be a smoker.
That being said, I don’t know if I will manage not to gamble, because there is always a way, sport betting, crypto, options etc, it’s absolutely everywhere and very hard for me not to flinch.
Now, I don’t know how to budget it. I cannot go for the long run because of the big interest on the overdraft, but also life is quite costly where I live. So I was thinking of a repayment of 1.5K per month and hope for a 10K bonus so I could be free by May. What do you think ?
20K debt due to my gambling addiction
byu/Traditional_Topic378 inpersonalfinance
Posted by Traditional_Topic378
15 Comments
Look, just pay me $3k a month and I might double it to $6k sometimes.
I think your bigger issue is the fact that you don’t know if you’ll stop.
I think you need to look up the next Gamblers Anonymous meeting within an hour’s drive of you and go to it. And then go to as many as you can possibly manage for the next 30 days.
You need to treat this as addiction. Just stopping on your own basically guarantees you’ll give in again. You need a therapist or support group of some kind.
Call your credit card and ask for them to lower the rate in exchange for locking the card. Cut your spending to the bone and put every penny you can toward your debt.
High interest debt is considered an **emergency**. Think of it like a fire – it has to be solved right now, whether you want to or not. You need to look around your apartment, and sell **everything** that you don’t absolutely need.
You need a bed, some toiletries, a few clothing items, one set of silverware, and food. Everything else can be sold. Put it on Facebook marketplace, or, take it back to the store and ask them for a refund.
This is not only your best option financially, but also a good exercise. Your financial habits put you in a place where you own basically nothing. It brings your situation into reality, and you’re going to be able to hold yourself accountable without any luxuries that would otherwise drag you further into debt.
The choice is yours.
It also sounds like you have a gambling problem. A lot of this comes from FOMO – stop watching people on Instagram winning tons of money. They may be winning, but remember, a casino turns a profit. For all that money one person wins, everyone else lost theirs, and then some. Stop giving your money away.
Good luck!
According to what I was told by the person on the line I was trying to sign up my SO with (GA) you haven’t hit rock bottom until you have nowhere to lay your head at night and no one to turn to. Please don’t let it get to this point. Call the Gambler’s hotline and start now. It can def get worse. Good luck!!
Sound like a good plan
Maybe try to take 1 big loan at ok interest to close the over draft and credit card have interest loans
And go to get a professional help
It’s very hard almost impossible to get rid off that by yourself
Tell the family around you and get help
The debt is secondary. You have a good income and a possible bonus coming. You can manage that easily enough.
You need to seek counselling or even a support group about the addiction. Work on that.
Also, I know you have a lot of options for gambling but some of them probably have self exclusion so look into that as well.
If you’re in Australia you can notify your bank that you’re a gambling addict and they can put blocks on your accounts for gambling websites, casinos, etc. Might help with the stopping. It’s voluntary though so you can ask them to remove the blocks and they will.
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The thought is nice, I did that every paycheck. Next paycheck! I will pay 1k to my credit card, aaaaand its gone to crypto slots. repeat this for a solid 6 months and I was not doing too hot. Add in the concern of maybe not being able to cash out when I do hit something decent because KYC etc and what the heck am I even doing.
Check out Gamban or similar solutions, you do need to use a bit of self control with it (like not reformatting your computer, thankfully I am too lazy to go through the trouble) but it helped me completely stop. I am over a month of no gambling and my accounts are looking much better. I haven’t purchased anything besides groceries and its insane how much money I have in such a short time not throwing it all into the trash gambling.
Until you actually STOP, that 20k is going to be 40k before you know it, good luck.
The debt is manageable, your addiction is likely not and you need help. Treatment is imperative for the success of not relapsing. This is unfortunate but with treatment, you will make it on the other side of this. Be gentle with yourself, I wish you all the best.
If you have an addiction, you are focusing on the wrong thing. You are focusing on side effects of your addiction, and not on the addiction which is what you ought to be focused on. Given you haven’t told your gf and your other comments about the gambling part, focusing on the side effect isn’t going to do you much good.
With that said, if you have $4.6k/mo net and rent is $1.5k/mo, what are your surviving expenses? I’m sure that if you are saying you can repay $1.5k/mo, that you are hedging some and have probably more like $2k/mo or more you can use to repay.
I think first off is getting some kind of professional help to work on the addiction, there’s no shame in that. Some people use gambling blocks to block websites where they can gamble, but honestly if the problem isn’t attacked at the route I don’t see it working. Besides that, your repayment plan sounds good and sustainable, assuming you are able to keep your costs low.
You have to get yourself barred from every single casino. Find a credit card that has a $500 limit. And find someone that will keep you accountable. Best friend or brother, anyone