s alone as I felt at the time, I've since discovered that many Black women from all backgrounds have suffered from bad credit at one time or another. This is true for other races and ethnicities, but there are reasons that we in particular fall prey to this. "Black women don't meet the criteria of being the so-called right gender and race. To compensate, many of us try to bolster our sense of identity and self-worth by buying things that somehow give us a sense of worth and self-esteem," says Linda James Myers, a psychology and African-American studies professor at Ohio State University in Columbus "The key is to reverse the faulty formula that has us trying to define our worth by external criteria like how we look and what kind of car we drive."

A Family Affair

When I began to examine my behavior, I realized that most of my family members struggled with credit issues, too. I remember sitting around the dinner table during holidays, laughing hysterically at a relative's dramatic tale of how he or she had cursed out some annoying creditor calling for a payment. In my young mind, paying bills on time was not nearly as much fun as not paying them.
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Still I got off to a great financial start. I juggled five credit cards in college and always paid the entire balance on time each month. Because I had part-time jobs and made good money, that was fairly easy to do. Besides, I was very conservative in my spending then. It wasn't until I graduated in 1994 that things went wrong. I was malting a pitiful salary as a paralegal--a job I hated. Buying expensive clothes and shoes made me feel better when I couldn't figure out how to move forward professionally. Most months, I'd spend about $1,000 on clothes--while earning only $300 a week.

Soon my credit-card debt grew to about $8,000. I also blew off my student loans. After all, I figured I owed tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, and it would take years to pay off, so it could wait. I spent the little money I had on clothes and travel, extras I refused to sacrifice because they made me happy at a time when I was generally unhappy. I was in a vicious pattern of purchasing to make myself feel better and being miserable as my expenditures spiraled. Ashamed and unsure of bow to break the cycle, I continued to shop and avoid my bills. Denial was my best friend.

Eventually I could no longer ignore the debt. My cards were charged to the limit and since I had stopped paying the bills, I could no longer use them. The letters from Visa and MasterCard flooded my mailbox. The creditors who called were alternately sympathetic and truculent. They even harassed Ma, my poor grandmother, whom I had listed as a contact on my student-loan application.

And there were other reminders of what a mess I'd made. I couldn't get an apartment without my father's cosigning. I couldn't make hotel or airline reservations with no credit card. Then, when I finally got a job at a newspaper--a job I had wanted for some time--I got called out by my boss because my application for a corporate card was declined. At that point, deeper shame set in. Family members knew I was shirking my responsibilities, and I imagined that everyone at work knew, too. For at least a year I had to pay my corporate expenses out of my own pocket and wait for reimbursement. And that meant other bills were held up. The cycle continued.

I eventually gravitated to purchases that didn't require a credit check, like prepaid cell phones. Here I was, an Ivy League educated woman living like someone on the lam. At 26, I was a little more settled in my journalism job and feeling more confident professionally, but I couldn't do anything on my own. I felt as if everyone-but me--had her act together.

Secrets, Lies and Suffering

The discomfort that comes from ruining your credit extends beyond just getting rejected for a mortgage. There are physiological repercussions from constantly being anxious about calls from creditors or a visit from the repo man. Some psychologists say that people dealing with bad credit often gain or lose weight, suffer from insomnia or anxiety, and get depressed. On Saturday mornings, my heart would race each time the phone rang because that's when creditors usually called. For two or three years I didn't answer my phone then.