Overdrawn, underpaid and over it: how four people conquered their debt mountains

Abbie Marton Bell, a National Debtline adviser, is often the first person her clients will speak to about their debt, after years of carrying the weight of their financial worries alone. Most of the time, they haven’t even told their partner or family, she says, and “you can literally hear the relief in their voice”.

Debt carries a lot of shame, but it’s more common than people might think. In the UK, 84% of adults had some form of credit or loan in the year leading up to May 2024. The average household holds about £2,700 in credit card debt, and it’s only getting worse. Borrowing has been rising at its fastest rate for almost two years, with those hit hardest by the cost of living crisis increasingly using credit to pay for essentials.

When the National Debtline reopened after Christmas last year, they had 1,400 calls for help – their busiest day on record. “There just isn’t enough money to go around,” says Bell. “About 43% of the people who give us details about income and expenditure have a deficit.” Factors such as job loss, poor mental health, illness, divorce or unexpected expenses, such as a car or boiler breaking down, can push people over the edge.

Personality, upbringing, race and gender all play a part: ethnic minority groups face higher overindebtedness rates than white Brits; women are 68% more likely to use “buy now, pay later” services such as Afterpay, Klarna, Affirm and Zip; while neurodivergent people are more likely to make impulse purchases, lose track of outgoings and miss deadlines.

But no matter who you are or what your circumstances, debt can quickly snowball out of control. Social media has started to plug the gaps in financial literacy where schools, who have been required to teach financial education as part of the curriculum since 2014, often fall short.

So-called debt-fluencers and financial content creators have taken to sharing their own salaries, assets and budgets online in an attempt to help others better manage their money. But how exactly do you get a grip on your finances when debts outweigh your salary? And is it really possible to stay debt-free?

Here, we talk to people who confronted their debt head on. ‘It was really scary to face up to’ Clare Seal was in a fairly new relationship when she became pregnant with her first child at 24. She and her partner rented and furnished a two-bedroom flat in Bath, and bought new clothes for their child, modelling their lives on the perfect young families Seal had seen online.

“Keeping up with the Joneses has always been a problem for people,” she says. “It’s just that now there are so many Joneses to keep up with.” Soon, a second baby came along and years of slightly overspending on low salaries followed. Seal was a marketing executive for an interiors company, while her husband worked in hospitality.

Neither earned more than £30,000. Their biggest expenses were rent, which cost £995 a month, and childcare at £1,500, but other costs, including a wedding, quickly pushed them over the edge. In March 2019, the pair found themselves in nearly £27,000 worth of debt spread across six credit cards and an overdraft.

“It was really scary to face up to.” For a long time, “things would reach a little mini crisis and I would poke my head out of the sand to fix whatever that problem was and then shove it straight back in,” she says. But when her bank called in March to tell her she had gone into an unarranged overdraft and that she would be racking up daily fees until she credited the account, she was forced to face reality.