My husband was in the same position. He had built 
up almost $10,000 in credit card debt before I 
met him. . . So bad, he had taken out a separate 
loan for it! And a good bit of it was for what my 
family refers to as "non-essentials". Once he met 
me and we became serious, I told him that was one 
habit that *had* to go before I would agree to 
marry him.

He started putting a very concerted effort into 
getting rid of that debt and is only free of it 
just this past couple months. That's almost *five 
years* of paying *hard* to get out of the debt.

A lot of people won't talk about this kind of 
thing because they think it's embarassing. But I 
worry that this hobby increasingly encourages 
young people to wind up in that nasty position! 
People who should be thinking about things like 
college and getting themselves into a position 
where they can *legitamately* spend that kind of 
money on themselves once in a while. . . without 
going into debt to do it.

Many Sharp Smiles,
--Drac