TO HELL AND BACKMY JOURNEY OUT OF DEBT

YOU journalist PIETER VAN ZYL shares how his spending spiralled out of control - but he sought help and is almost debt-free

I’M SINKING deeper and deeper into a quagmire of guilt and worry. The more I wallow in it, the tighter its grip becomes. I feel like I’m suffocating.

It’s 2017 and I’m R220 178 in the red. It’s all I can think about and it’s consuming my life. Every unknown number on my phone screen is a potential danger – either someone I owe money to or someone threatening legal action.

All three of my credit cards have been maxed out. I don’t have a cent to my name.

I go to the bank to see if they’ll give me more credit on my overdraft but they refuse – I’m too far in the red.

I have a panic attack as I walk back to the office through the Cape Town city centre. My heart feels like it’s beating out of my chest and I’m on the verge of collapsing.

Somehow I make it to a Dis-Chem branch where a pharmacist gives me an emergency sedative. I have to do something to get out of this terrible debt spiral. I don’t have a choice. 

My entire salary is gone by the second of the month and I haven’t even begun to plug all the holes.

I have to pay R10 000 a month to service my debts: three clothing bills, a large bill from an accessories store where I bought two flat-screen TVs, three credit cards, three loans from two banks and two loan firms that granted me more than R100 000.

I’ve blown it.

HOW did I get here?

It all started with a charge of driving under the influence on my birthday in 2007.

I went through a red traffic light and was arrested. I hired a lawyer and the legal feels kept piling up.