Top 20 Most Outrageous Credit Card Overspending Stories

The key to not getting into financial trouble is obvious: don’t spend more than you make. Of course, almost everyone who uses credit cards is violating that rule and that’s why we’ve got so much credit card debt in our society today. It may make you miserable to think of the thousands of dollars that you owe on your cards. But brighten up; things could be a lot worse.

The following twenty stories reveal the tales of people who have done excessive overspending on their credit cards. Their balances will put yours to shame. And the fact that their debt was racked up on things like daily coffee habits, get-rich-quick schemes and the financial mistakes their husbands wanted to make might make you feel a whole lot better about your own credit card situation. There are even a few success stories to show that it’s actually possible to pay off that excessive debt you’ve racked up.

1. Suburban Housewife Spends $400/Month on Starbucks. Oprah’s money section reported on a suburban housewife whose household income is around $60,000 and whose credit card debt is twice that. Her problem is due in part to a $400 per month coffee shop habit and the $5000 in silk flowers she has around her house.

2. Stripper Racks Up Over $300,000 in Credit Card Debt and a Judge May Help Her Not Pay It. There’s a case pending in which a stripper who charged over $300,000 on credit cards and then declared bankruptcy may have gotten some legal help to avoid making those payments. She apparently had a “friendship” with a judge who she alleges allowed her to deposit her money into accounts under his name in order to dodge the collection agencies. Now she says that he needs to give her back that money so that she can pay off those cards.

3. Former Millionaire Racks up $60,000 Debt On Wife’s Cards. This story is about a woman who couldn’t afford to make the payments on her $60,000 of debt. Turns out she wasn’t even the one who accumulated the debt. She let her husband, who apparently had lost millions of dollars and declared bankruptcy, use her cards and he just couldn’t help himself from getting her into as much financial trouble as he’d gotten himself into.

4. Tori Spelling is Addicted to Shopping. You would think that an actress who comes from a well-off family could manage to afford her life. Not the case for Tori Spelling who got herself hundreds of thousands of dollars into credit card debt because of an addiction she had to shopping sprees. Her family cut her off financially and she was forced to find a way to pay those bills off just like the rest of us.

5. Congressman’s Assets Don’t Delete Credit Card Debt. San Diego Congressman Duncan Hunter has hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets. Maybe he should think about selling them off in order to pay off the $75,000+ debt he’s got lingering on credit cards.

6. College Student Goes Consumer Crazy and Gets $20,000 in Credit Card Debt. USA Today reported on a girl who got sucked into signing up for a credit card that was being advertised on her college campus. It only took her a year to amass a fourteen-card collection that carried over $20,000 in debt.

7. Busted! Man Runs Up $1 Million Credit Card Debt and Claims Bankruptcy to Get Out of Paying. There have been multiple cases like this over the years but this one is about a man who operated a fraud ring. The people working for him ran up over $1 million in credit card debt without ever planning to pay it off. These folks lied about their actual earnings in order to get higher credit limits. Yes, you can go to jail for this.

8. Spending More Than You Make. The Consumerist reports on several cases of people who are spending more than they make on a regular basis and racking up some crazy credit card debt in the process. One example is a woman who spends $4400 of her $5200 monthly income just on making payments to her credit cards; no, that amount isn’t helping to pay off the balance since she owes over $200,000 on credit cards.

9. Reverend Spends $15,000 Of Church’s Money on Personal Expenses. It’s bad enough to rack up debt on your own credit cards but how about the case of the reverend who spent $15,000 on personal expenses, much of which was placed on a credit card belonging to the church?! He has been convicted of the crime and is ultimately going to have to pay back $18.000 on that debt.

10. Paying Off Credit Card Debts With Forged Little League Checks is a Crime. Some people apparently just dig themselves so far into credit card debt that they’ll do anything to get out of it. That’s why one former Little League treasurer has pled guilty to stealing nearly $70,000 through forged checks that were used to pay off her personal credit card debt.

11. $100,000 on Personal Cards to Support Small Business. There’s a man seeking expert financial assistance because he’s managed to dig himself $100,000 dollars into debt. He made the mistake of trying to keep his small business afloat using personal credit cards. Sure, he has a business but he’s also got a mountain of debt. Sometimes you just have to know when to cut your losses!

12. Family Adds $200 / Month to Credit Card Balances Just to Stay Afloat. There are some people out there who really are trying just to make their minimum payments and buy their basic necessities. Even with a strict budget, some families are finding that they can’t pay for life without their credit cards. This story tells of such a family that has to either take $200 out of their food budget each month or go ahead and put it on the cards.

13. Record-Breaking Consumer Bankruptcy Debt. This report lists a bunch of different people who filed for personal bankruptcy. It notes that the highest individual debt at the time was just over $175,000. That’s more than twice the individual’s annual income. The debt was spread out across twenty five different credit cards.

14. Seven Years of Medical Bills Means $100,000 in Credit Card Debt. One of the biggest reasons that people find themselves faced with huge credit card debt is because they’ve had to pay for expenses on credit cards while dealing with an illness. This forum poster reports that she hasn’t paid her bills in five years and is still trying to figure out how to deal with the collection calls asking for the $100,000 back.

15. $30,000 Credit Card Debt Blamed on Housing Crash. This is the story of a couple that found themselves with only one income after the wife lost her real estate job due to the downturn in the housing market. They used credit cards to pay for their daily expenses and apparently didn’t even realize they were in debt trouble until the bill reached $20,000. They went ahead and added another $10,000 on top of that because they just weren’t sure how else to pay for their lives.

16. “Homeless Man is $180,000 Richer Than I Am”. In this first person article, the author shares her revelation that a beggar on the street is $180,000 richer than she is because she doesn’t actually own anything that she supposedly owns. Not all of that is credit card debt, of course; she also has school and mortgage loans. But she owes $15,000 on credit cards for her “stuff”.

17. That’ll Be 56 Payments of $785 Each. Some people turn to debt management companies to help them get out of debt. That’s how one family finally managed to pay off their credit cards that had added up to over $30,000 owed.

18. Starting to See The Light. Not all of these awful credit card stories have bad endings. If you head over to Blogging About Debt, you’ll find the ongoing story of a young couple in their twenties who managed to rack up $37,000 in credit card debt. Some of that was from a failed start at a small business venture and some was just because they spent more than they made. However, they’ve spent the last couple of years trying to reverse the damage and the blog tells of their success. They’re now down to just $13,000 in credit card debt; still a huge chunk of change but they’re making some progress.

19. Couple Tries Not To Ruin Their Marriage Over Money. Another success story blog is Make Love, Not Debt which profiles the journey of a young engaged couple working to pay off their massive credit card debt. They both brought credit problems to the table. They’ve now paid them off and are saving to be able to afford their wedding.

20. $100,000 of Debt Paid Off. Perhaps the biggest success story is the case of someone who racked up $100,000 of debt through overspending but then managed to turn things around, get frugal and get rid of that debt entirely!

See, now doesn’t your own credit card situation seem a whole lot more responsible than it did before?

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Credit Card Debt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.