May 2005, I met my wife to be at the age of 19. Those early days were filled with dreams of moving to the states and have a family in SoCal. I was a mere minimum wage employee at McDonald's with no real long term plans. Pre market crash of 2008 we happened to save a nominal amount of money for purchasing our first home. I had recently started at university taking a student loan and a change of job into the public sector. We were lucky if we were breaking £20k a year COMBINED. Interest rates were enormous nevertheless we managed to get a 105% mortgage on a three year fixed rate paying painful amount of money a month. This was the start of spiraling into consumer debt.
