$60,000 in debt, and nothing to show for it

Allison Linn Senior writer • Profile • E-mail

Mary Uhazi has more than $60,000 in credit card debt and, by her own account, “nothing to show for it.”

“You have some clothes, you have some dinner, you have a handbag, you have whatever, but it’s not $11,000 worth or it’s not $60,000 worth,” Uhazi said.

Uhazi is drowning in a sea of debt. And, like millions of other Americans, it is a debt load that she built up slowly over more than two decades of easy credit that made it all too simple to spend. Now she worries she won’t be able to pay it off because of the recession, which has led to a reduction in her salary and an increase in her credit card bills.

“It may come to a point where I do end up filing for bankruptcy,” she said.

That’s a situation Uhazi, 43, never imagined she would be in when she signed up for her one of her first credit cards  — a Chevron gas card — around 1988.

At the time, she figured the card would be a convenience, so she wouldn’t have to stop at the bank to get cash before buying gas. In the beginning she paid it off every month.

But it didn’t take long before Uhazi’s wallet started to fill up with other cards, including a bank card and some department store cards. Once she had the credit cards, she said, it was easy to go from paying them off at the end of the month to maintaining a balance and figuring she would get to it eventually.

“It was just a gradual thing,” said Uhazi, who lives in Sacramento, Calif., and works for the state.

Piling it on the credit card
As the years went by, there seemed to be more and more reasons to use the card. If it was Christmas, there were presents to buy. If it was her birthday, she figured she could splurge on a short trip to to San Francisco for a baseball game. If she went out to dinner with friends, she reasoned that she should treat everyone because she made the higher salary, so she whipped out her card again.

“It was just easy to put something on the card,” she said.

Her debt built up slowly, and without any truly major purchases. There were a few vacations here and there, and new clothes she had to buy after taking a job that required nicer attire. Everything from movie tickets to gift cards for friends to an $800 car repair went on the card. She went to Home Depot one day to buy flowers and potting soil, and ended up with a store-branded card that still carries a small balance.

If someone asked her if she wanted to open a store credit card, she said she’d sometimes do it in part because, as a former retail worker, she knew the salesperson would get a commission. Sometimes, it was because of the free gift or one-time discount.

As the years went by and she kept on charging, the limits on her cards kept going up, and the offers for new cards kept coming in.

Slideshow Plastic flashback The Big Money: A visual history of the credit card The Big Money

“The more money I earned, it seemed like the more money I spent, and the higher my credit was extended,” she said.

Soon, her wallet was stuffed with 13 credit cards, from stores such as Costco, Target, Nordstrom, Macy’s and Sam’s Club plus financial institutions. Still, Uhazi said she didn’t often worry about her credit card debt, reasoning that she paid at least the minimum balance on all her cards. She said she only made a single late payment, and that was an oversight.

“I was able to make the payments, and as long as I was able to make the payments I was OK,” she said.

Uhazi rarely talked about her credit card debt with her friends or family until recently. Her own mother, who has since passed away, went through a bankruptcy when Uhazi was in high school. But, Uhazi said, “I didn’t learn from her.”

There were times, though, when she buckled down and paid off more than was required. In 2003 she received a $20,000 inheritance and used $15,000 of it to pay off credit card debt. But soon the balances started to creep up again.

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