Having a baby was one of the most wonderful things to happen in my life, also one of the most expensive. I was living in a two bedroom apartment with my boyfriend on Evans Lane when our baby girl was born. It was a modest place nothing fancy and rent was not horrible at 550 a month considering we were living in Spearfish. Unfortunately it did not take long for my financial planning to go through the shredder.
I recently acquired a relatively new job before having my daughter; I was employed with them for 11 months before having my new bundle of joy. Unlucky for me the company I was working for did not provide me with the personal paid leave (PPL) I had earned the past 11 months. There reasoning was I did not qualify for the Family Medical Leave Act ( FMLA) because I was a month shy of working there a year.
Here I was about to have a baby and going to be jobless for the next 6 weeks with no income coming in, except the small paychecks my boyfriend brought home.
Desperate times called for desperate measures, I applied for a credit card. It wouldn't be my first credit card and I told we needed something to get by until I went back to work. When my credit card came in the mail I was ecstatic about how much I was pre-approved for 10,000 dollars the paper said. I was floored receiving that much credit, but I knew I had to be careful because I as being charged an interest rate of 29%. It started off innocently enough, I was using my purchase power for things such as the electric bill and food, but after the first week of having my daughter...