When we took out our credit cards we could clearly easily afford the payments (or they wouldn't have given us the cards), but what we didn't count on is our income decreasing by over 40% in the mean time, necessities like heat, electricity, food and gas are increasing by leaps and bounds.

Prior to this recent economy, our rule was we never owed more in payments than a week's worth of wages. That included our mortage, insurance, car payments, credit card payments, and utilities. Our rule of thumb about establishing what we were going to pay a month was the minimum payment + amount that was paid last month in interest + 10%, so we were paying off principle as well.

Don't get me wrong, we were careless, we should have saved much more money than we did. We should have realized that the trouble with the economy was serious much sooner than we did and make luxury cuts much sooner. The credit card companies didn't make us make those charges, but even now we get calls (which we refuse) and I'll tell them NO, I can't afford a credit card, and they try to sell sell sell "oh this is WHEN you need a credit card".

I can see how people (including myself) who are responsible in every other area in our lives can fall into this trap.